With the proliferation of standards and accountability systems in education, questions about how they function and intersect with broader patterns of institutional relations await investigation. The existing literature in social studies education is replete with studies that frame teachers' expertise for managing how instruction unfolds in the classroom and how sophisticated domains of knowledge contribute to the ways that teachers manage the complexities of their work. While valuable for better understanding what makes teachers effective, this dispositional and cognitive framing makes it difficult to capture the myriad negotiations at play when teachers plan instruction. Further, relations of power are often rendered invisible. To uncover the negotiations and interactions that shape the work of teaching and learning requires research questions and method that bring the institution into view. There are two broad questions guiding this investigation. How are instructional design and planning activities coordinated, organized, regulated, and/or standardized by broader extralocal relations of power that function beyond the daily experiences of teachers? How do discourses and activities in the institution replicate, constitute, and/or challenge those institutional relations? My study drew on tools from institutional ethnography and was embedded in everyday experiences of teachers. Four teachers partnered with me, allowing me to observe their work as they planned their lessons. However, the interactional framing of the study required a shift in gaze away from teachers and to the production of instruction. Through teachers' conversations, activities, and materials, I mapped instructional units and analyzed them for predictable patterns and threads of interaction that crossed contexts and reflected institutional relations that shaped their work. Textual analyses related to curriculum documents at the state level were paired with the everyday experiences of teachers to illuminate points of intersection and how they were discursively constituted during planning. Rather than isolate these intersections as a study of the impact of standards on teaching, I positioned them in a complex landscape of negotiation that connected the work of teaching and learning beyond the classroom walls. An intriguing glimpse into the production of the institution and the relations of power that contextualized the lived experiences of teachers was revealed. / Ph. D.

As the population ages and income disparities increase, issues affecting older adults and marginalized individuals are examined more frequently. Despite this, little attention is paid to the community experiences of women over the age of fifty who face marginalization, criminalization and homelessness. This study is an institutional ethnography of older marginalized women in Ottawa, focusing on their identities, lives and their experiences of community life. Its findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork as well as interviews with 27 older marginalized women and 16 professionals working with this group. The women described their identities, social networks, daily activities and navigations of their communities as well as the policy and discursive framework in which their lives are situated. Regardless of whether the women had housing or were staying in shelters, upheaval, uncertainty and change characterized their experiences in the community, reflecting their current circumstances, but also their life courses. Their accounts also revealed how, through social support, community services, and personal resilience, older marginalized women negotiate daily life and find places and spaces for themselves in their communities. As an institutional ethnography, this research foregrounds participants’ responses, framing these with theoretical lenses examining mobilities, identity, social capital, governmentality, and stigma. Specifically, it uses the lenses of mobilities and identities to understand the nature of their community experiences, before moving outward to examine their social networks and the world around them. Governmentality theory is also used to describe the neoliberal context framing their community experiences. The study concludes with a reflection on the research and a set of policy recommendations arising from the study.

Rapidly spreading in popularity over the past fifteen years, gender mainstreaming has been adopted worldwide by state, supra state and international organizations as the "most modern‟ policy for ensuring gender equality. Yet, there is general agreement that it has not succeeded in achieving its radical potential. In this thesis, I bring together policy literature on bureaucracies, the civil service, and gender mainstreaming with work done on gender, work and organizations as a way to better understand the partial success and uneven implementation and institutionalization of what is supposedly a transformational agenda. To date, gender scholars have underplayed the "stickiness‟ of gender and its effects upon actors and everyday practices in political and state organizations. I argue that the "stickiness‟ of gender in organisations presents a formidable obstacle to the implementation and institutionalization of gender mainstreaming. I also argue that insufficient attention has been paid to the "embodied costs‟ of actors who act as internal gender mainstreaming advocates both in terms of the costs to the individuals and the impact of these costs on the prospects for the successful implementation and institutionalisation of a radical change agenda. Through an ethnographic examination of the Scottish Executive from 2006-2007, I probe the analytic question framing this thesis: what happens to the radical potential of gender mainstreaming during its implementation and institutionalisation in governmental bureaucracies? Using the sociological method of institutional ethnography, I provide evidence of ways that continued reliance on highly committed individuals and everyday bureaucratic practices continue to limit the radical success of gender mainstreaming at the Scottish Executive. I contend that the radical promise of gender mainstreaming is hindered because it is a strategy which must work within the confines of fossilised norms manifested in masculinist bureaucracies and because it is paradoxically predicated on changing bureaucratic norms through the use of the same bureaucratic practices it attempts to transform. By examining the everyday experience of "doing‟ gender mainstreaming in the case of a sub-state government in the UK, the Scottish Executive, I trace the ways that the radical promises of the gender mainstreaming agenda become diluted. The thesis examines challenges to the gender mainstreaming agenda and adds to wider discussions about the plausibility of gender mainstreaming‟s radical potential. In addition, my thesis moves forward methodological discussions in feminist politics by demonstrating the possibility of using institutional ethnography in political science as an effective way to operationalise, analyze and link multiple levels of politics from a gendered perspective. My analysis of local experiences of gender mainstreaming provides insight into the international trend of gender mainstreaming because it takes seriously the experiences of individuals who work within organizations, the role of organizations in limiting change agendas, and the international context within which the mainstreaming strategy unfolds.

As the population ages and income disparities increase, issues affecting older adults and marginalized individuals are examined more frequently. Despite this, little attention is paid to the community experiences of women over the age of fifty who face marginalization, criminalization and homelessness. This study is an institutional ethnography of older marginalized women in Ottawa, focusing on their identities, lives and their experiences of community life. Its findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork as well as interviews with 27 older marginalized women and 16 professionals working with this group. The women described their identities, social networks, daily activities and navigations of their communities as well as the policy and discursive framework in which their lives are situated. Regardless of whether the women had housing or were staying in shelters, upheaval, uncertainty and change characterized their experiences in the community, reflecting their current circumstances, but also their life courses. Their accounts also revealed how, through social support, community services, and personal resilience, older marginalized women negotiate daily life and find places and spaces for themselves in their communities. As an institutional ethnography, this research foregrounds participants’ responses, framing these with theoretical lenses examining mobilities, identity, social capital, governmentality, and stigma. Specifically, it uses the lenses of mobilities and identities to understand the nature of their community experiences, before moving outward to examine their social networks and the world around them. Governmentality theory is also used to describe the neoliberal context framing their community experiences. The study concludes with a reflection on the research and a set of policy recommendations arising from the study.

The purpose of this essay is to explore a common situation of special education in Taiwan. Paraprofessionals, mostly consist of women, are asked to afford most care works for disabled children under the institution of special education. As men join as paraprofessionals to take care responsibilities, duties may be distributed by gender categorization. Moreover, care routines for children in the practice of daily life are divided into educational and caring matters which also much influence the partnerships between teachers and paraprofessionals. Based on the Institutional Ethnography, that emphasize through problematic daily experiences of those actors, to find how the institution to govern their relationships in the hidden domination, author has adopted in-depth interview of sixteen paraprofessionals and five teachers, moreover, engaged in participant observations to analyze where the caring practice reoccur and how much the influence of power of the institution to represent the relationships differentiated between these actors according to their gender and professional degree in the classroom. This study reveals, first, that women are shaped to be perfect care workers for disabled bodies, they also satisfy with mothering imagination through daily practice. Second, a few men join to be care workers only for a short period. To maintain traditional masculinity, caring experiences of men in the classroom are presented within stereotypical practice associated with gender stereotypes. At the same time, gender division of work can well keep men from the accusation of sex violation. Third, professionalism is the important factor influencing the interactions and negotiations between those actors who engaged in the special education institution. Furthermore, care works in this regard are distinguished into a dichotomy of body/ mind care responsibilities, and it may reshape the hierarchy inside the women.

In this study 21 trans-identified youth in Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada were interviewed about their experiences related to transition. Using the materialist research strategy of Institutional Ethnography, I explore the organization of trans-specific health care services in Ontario. I describe challenges participants had in relation to accessing care and describe key differences in how care is currently delivered in Ontario. The ways in which various politico-legal and medical forms of organization shape the provision of trans care in Ontario are explored in detail. This work provides an empirically grounded addition to the growing literature that seeks to make sense of trans marginalization and exclusion.

This thesis explores, from a labour perspective, the relationships between labour and environmental activists: relationships that were created following decades of conflict and resolution of environmental issues. Flowing from the question `What can be learned from labour leaders' experiences of building relationships with environmental activists?' I utilized the stories of those who were actively involved during and after the `war in the woods' period. This case study used an institutional ethnographic approach to determine how and why the conflict occurred. I argue that while the personal qualities of leadership are essential, they are not sufficient for relationship building. Labour leaders also need to prepare the ground inside individual unions to facilitate authentic external relationships that can turn into lasting political change. The final discussion turns to exploring unions as systems, leadership in unions, and reflecting on how labour leaders ready their unions to work effectively with coalition partners.

No description available.

People with serious mental illness are genetically predisposed to diabetes. Their risk is heightened with the use of atypical antipsychotic medications. Contextual conditions also influence diabetes care and outcomes. There is a lack of research on diabetes care for the mentally ill in residential care facilities. Therefore, there is little understanding of the social relations that contribute to this group’s health disparities. Institutional ethnography was chosen to explore this phenomenon in a group of 26 women in a rural for-profit group home in southern Ontario. Work activities of residents and providers were examined to map out the social organization of health inequities. Interviewees included residents with diabetes, care providers, field workers, and health professionals. Observations and analysis of coordinating texts were further methods used to reveal disjunctures between discourses embedded within diabetes care guidelines and the actualities of living within imposed constraints of group home care. The overarching State interest in cost containment creates rationing that limits the care afforded residents, resulting in poor dietary intake and lack of quality of life opportunities. Further, group home policies regulate systems of safety, reporting, and financial accountability, but do not promote health. The medical and psychiatric divide also contributes to health disparities. Diabetes care provision supports ‘self-care,’ which is challenging for this group, and health providers lack understanding of contextual constraints. Combined, these social circumstances perpetuate disease development and make illness management difficult. These findings warrant the need for State financial support and policy changes that give primacy to illness prevention, health promotion, and medical management so the mentally ill can realize health and wellbeing. A linkage between mental and physical health care is also crucial. Further, health providers are urged to be critical of social ideologies that sustain health inequalities, and to deliver services that are sensitive to unique particularities.

People with serious mental illness are genetically predisposed to diabetes. Their risk is heightened with the use of atypical antipsychotic medications. Contextual conditions also influence diabetes care and outcomes. There is a lack of research on diabetes care for the mentally ill in residential care facilities. Therefore, there is little understanding of the social relations that contribute to this group’s health disparities. Institutional ethnography was chosen to explore this phenomenon in a group of 26 women in a rural for-profit group home in southern Ontario. Work activities of residents and providers were examined to map out the social organization of health inequities. Interviewees included residents with diabetes, care providers, field workers, and health professionals. Observations and analysis of coordinating texts were further methods used to reveal disjunctures between discourses embedded within diabetes care guidelines and the actualities of living within imposed constraints of group home care. The overarching State interest in cost containment creates rationing that limits the care afforded residents, resulting in poor dietary intake and lack of quality of life opportunities. Further, group home policies regulate systems of safety, reporting, and financial accountability, but do not promote health. The medical and psychiatric divide also contributes to health disparities. Diabetes care provision supports ‘self-care,’ which is challenging for this group, and health providers lack understanding of contextual constraints. Combined, these social circumstances perpetuate disease development and make illness management difficult. These findings warrant the need for State financial support and policy changes that give primacy to illness prevention, health promotion, and medical management so the mentally ill can realize health and wellbeing. A linkage between mental and physical health care is also crucial. Further, health providers are urged to be critical of social ideologies that sustain health inequalities, and to deliver services that are sensitive to unique particularities.