Employing institutional ethnography, this research is an examination of the everyday activities of mothers who provide licensed family child care in their homes in the southern region of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. From this standpoint, I map the work of being licensed to show how their activities, homes and families become articulated to the textual organization of an institutional matrix of regulation. While the institutional matrix is conceptually organized around ensuring the provision of quality child care, family child care providers’ descriptions of their work to maintain licensure illustrate how they find themselves acquiescing to and/ or challenging the ways in which their work is co-ordinated for the administrative purposes of legal compliance with minimum health and safety standards. / Graduate / 0626 / 0518 / 0630 / naomi.northstar@gmail.com

The perinatal nurse’s work is influenced by the particular needs of each labouring women as well as by institutional discourses and textually mediated work processes that guide obstetrical care in hospital. Institutional Ethnography (IE) was used to explore the work performed by perinatal nurses in relation to the pain management of women labouring with mobile labour epidural analgesia. The data collection process involved interviews with five perinatal nurses working in a tertiary care centre in British Columbia and an in-depth review of the institutional texts used by these nurses. The perinatal nurse’s work associated with the initiation and maintenance of the epidural involves a constant re-prioritizing of the nurse’s actions and interventions in order to attend to multiple demands associated with the care of a labouring woman. The nurse’s extensive knowledge work requires an awareness of the effects of the epidural on maternal and fetal wellbeing and the labour progress. The nurse’s work of promoting effective pain relief is managed separately from the process of supporting labour and birth. Once the epidural is inserted and the contraction pain alleviated, all manifestations of pain are perceived as problematic. Within the context of epidural management, the goal becomes taking every measure possible to alleviate the presence and re-occurrence of contraction pain. The nurse’s work of mobilizing a labouring woman with an epidural involves an additional layer of assessment and evaluations which require additional work on the part of the nurse. The nurse must choose and prioritize the care she provides to the labouring woman. Needing to focus more intensely on the safety of the labouring woman and her fetus, alongside ensuring the required epidural work processes are completed, results in mobility falling to the lowest priority level within the nurse’s epidural management work. The textually mediated work processes embedded in the intuitional policies and forms associated with epidural management reinforce this hierarchy of priorities and directly structure the nurse’s work time away from providing care that supports women to cope with labour pain and encouraging mobility to promote labour progress. The various hospital forms, policies and guidelines coordinate and organize the nurse’s epidural work so that promoting mobility is subsumed; potentially increasing the risk of labour dystocia and caesarean birth for women labouring with a mobile labour epidural analgesia. / Graduate / 0570 / 0380 / 0626 / isabelle@dccnet.com

As contemporary health care organizations struggle to control costs, yet deliver quality patient-centred care, the concept of care becomes socially transformed through the use of quality improvement models (i.e., Lean methodology) and quality assurance documentation. This research investigates how nurses’ care work is socially organized in a system that defines care through quality management practices. I use Dorothy E. Smith’s Institutional Ethnography as a feminist mode of inquiry and as a guiding framework for my interviews with nurse participants as I explore the complex social relations within the health care system from the vantage point of nurses undertaking care work. I argue that the social reorganization of care work has affected the emotional lives of nurses as they try to balance actual patient-centred care with their reporting obligations under quality management.

This institutional ethnography is an inquiry into the particular migrant category of International Migrant Workers (IMW) in Canada (otherwise known as Temporary Foreign Workers). It looks at how the daily lives of IMWs who have been deemed as ‘semi-skilled’ by the National Occupational Classification (NOC) system are organized by their immigration and job status in Canada. These IMWs are working primarily in the food service, hotel or retail industries in front-line and often precarious employment in Southern and Western Alberta. The data was collected through a literature review, interviews, observations, and textual analysis. The participants that informed this inquiry are IMWs, service providers in the immigrant sector, representatives from the Alberta Government, and an immigrant recruiter/consultant. This study uses an ‘ideological circle’ (Yan, 2003), which maps out the process through which governmental ideology is filtered down to all levels of society via a set of ideas, knowledge, procedures and methods about people and processes. It provides a vehicle to identify the specific social relations that organize people in different sites. It becomes apparent through this mapping that along with the political rationalities of neoliberal criteria and the logic of globalization, and market civilization and citizenship, certain administrative logic and technologies of government such as situating IMWs as economic units in the Canadian nation-state, processes of skill codification, and devolution of immigration policies and programs, become the foundations for the ways that IMWs live their lives in Canada. In particular, we can see how and why they ‘work’ for permanent residency, how and why they become vulnerable to precarious employment in their workplace and in other ways, and how and why they become isolated through family separation. The thesis ends with a look into how social workers and social service organizations are managing ‘professional’ relationships with migrant populations whose lives are organized in the above ways, and questions whether it’s possible at all to move beyond supporting ‘bare life’ (Agamben, 1998).

Since 1995, a thrombolytic therapy, rt-PA, has been approved for use with acute stroke that significantly reduces, and sometimes reverses, neurological damage. Treatment has to be given within a few hours of the start of symptoms and can only commence once a CT-scan has confirmed a particular type of stroke. In the evidence-based medicine and knowledge translation literature, variations in practice are constituted as a problem to be solved. It is assumed that a physician decides whether or not to use this therapy based on his/her evaluation of the scientific evidence. In this thesis, I demonstrate that what are less evident in many of these claims are issues related to the social production of knowledge. Little attention is paid to who conducts research, who promotes its findings, and who is expected to implement them. The positivist discourse of evidence-based medicine assumes that research produces knowledge that is neutral and can be translated into treatment that is in the patient’s best interest. Yet these assumptions remain empirically unexamined, despite social science critiques of these processes. Institutional Ethnography is an approach in sociology developed by Dorothy Smith. Based on Smith’s understanding of the social organization of knowledge, it allows for an examination of the complex social relations organizing people’s experiences of their everyday working lives. Beginning in the experiences of physicians who provide acute stroke services, this dissertation explores an example of how best practice medicine is developed, translated, and taken up in practice across various sites in the province of Ontario. For Smith, texts mediate and organize people’s experiences. In my study, the discourses of both evidence-based medicine and knowledge translation, designed to improve patient care, come into view as managerial tools designed to control the delivery of care. I render visible how in fact things work as they do in real life settings in a way that links back actual people to the texts, or discourse, organizing their experiences. In so doing, I am able to uncover some of the assumptions and hidden priorities underlying the current emphasis on translating scientific knowledge in medicine into practice.

This institutional ethnography is an inquiry into the particular migrant category of International Migrant Workers (IMW) in Canada (otherwise known as Temporary Foreign Workers). It looks at how the daily lives of IMWs who have been deemed as ‘semi-skilled’ by the National Occupational Classification (NOC) system are organized by their immigration and job status in Canada. These IMWs are working primarily in the food service, hotel or retail industries in front-line and often precarious employment in Southern and Western Alberta. The data was collected through a literature review, interviews, observations, and textual analysis. The participants that informed this inquiry are IMWs, service providers in the immigrant sector, representatives from the Alberta Government, and an immigrant recruiter/consultant. This study uses an ‘ideological circle’ (Yan, 2003), which maps out the process through which governmental ideology is filtered down to all levels of society via a set of ideas, knowledge, procedures and methods about people and processes. It provides a vehicle to identify the specific social relations that organize people in different sites. It becomes apparent through this mapping that along with the political rationalities of neoliberal criteria and the logic of globalization, and market civilization and citizenship, certain administrative logic and technologies of government such as situating IMWs as economic units in the Canadian nation-state, processes of skill codification, and devolution of immigration policies and programs, become the foundations for the ways that IMWs live their lives in Canada. In particular, we can see how and why they ‘work’ for permanent residency, how and why they become vulnerable to precarious employment in their workplace and in other ways, and how and why they become isolated through family separation. The thesis ends with a look into how social workers and social service organizations are managing ‘professional’ relationships with migrant populations whose lives are organized in the above ways, and questions whether it’s possible at all to move beyond supporting ‘bare life’ (Agamben, 1998).

Despite the benefits of physical activity for older adults, many residents living in long-term care homes (LTC) are relatively inactive. Previous research has revealed barriers to physical activity at the resident-level, organizational, and environmental level. However, little attention has been paid to other factors influencing physical activity within the broader institutional complex. The goal of this study was to uncover how the work of personal support workers (PSWs) related to the promotion of physical activity was socially organized. Institutional Ethnography (IE), developed by Dorothy Smith, guided this study. Smith proposed that peoples’ everyday experiences in local settings are organized, often unknowingly, by the actions of people located outside of the local setting and that this organization is textually-mediated. Two LTC homes in Ontario participated in this study. I began data collection by observing PSWs as they went about their work. Next, I interviewed PSWs and other people located inside (e.g. nurses, managers) and outside the LTC homes (e.g. representatives from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC). Lastly, I collected texts that organized the PSWs’ work, such as Ministry standards. The findings revealed that although the MOHLTC standards were viewed as producing something “good” for the residents, some of the standards disrupted the PSWs’ work, which made it challenging for them to support daily physical activity. The promotion of physical activity was seen as an additional program that happened a few times per week and it was parceled out as a professional activity that was socially organized “out” of the PSW role. The findings suggest that local solutions are needed. A good starting point would be to go and talk to PSWs and residents to determine what type of assignments would permit the incorporation of physical activity into daily care. To embed the promotion of physical activity into daily care, a major rethink and reorganization of PSWs work will be needed, including a greater investment in human and material supports for PSWs.

This thesis examines the establishment and maintenance of an early childhood playgroup project in an Australian university setting. It examines the playing out of the intention of a university to create a collaborative partnership with an early childhood playgroup initiative within a higher education policy climate actively promoting such endeavours. The study documents the struggle to establish the playgroup project, elaborating the conditions that enabled and/or constrained its inclusion into a university setting. To do so, it investigates the contextual and relational issues that sustained or impeded the operationalisation of the playgroup project, identifying the stakeholders and the parts they played in supporting the initiative. The aim of the study is to generate new knowledge of a little-researched area, namely that of partnerships between universities and the community in the area of early childhood education. The study is underpinned by the feminist theoretical work of Dorothy Smith (1987), and so takes the everyday world as problematic, using this standpoint as an analytic framework through which to observe and understand women's lives as they worked to establish the playgroup project in the university setting. Additionally the work of Marilyn Strathern (1997) concerning the audit culture of universities was used to enhance Smith's epistemological approach. The data collection methods for the study were in-depth interviews, participant observations and document analysis. In-depth, unstructured interviews were conducted with seventeen women involved with the playgroup project. The sample comprised ten playgroup parents, four women from the Centre for Human Services, and three lecturers from the Child and Family Studies section of the School for Human Services. Additionally participant observations were completed and recorded as field notes. The majority of these took place in the playgroup rooms. The collection and examination of documentation associated with the playgroup project focused on significant documents ranging from emails and parking permits, to government and university policy imperatives. These documents were analysed as texts mediating the playgroup initiative. Findings detailed the conditions that enabled and/or constrained the inclusion of the playgroup project into a university setting. It was found the playgroup project was enabled by: government and university policies encouraging university and community partnership; a genuine intention on behalf of the university to promote partnerships with the community; thematics in the discourse of early childhood education promoting the profession's caring nature; and, committed people who worked to ensure the continuation of the playgroup project. It was found that the playgroup project was constrained by: government and university policies promoting research agendas; a partnership that was not collaborative in nature; disagreements about decision-making and leadership within the playgroups; the hierarchical nature of the university; and, differing notions of work and play that made the playgroups difficult to sustain. The study identified factors that enabled and/or constrained a specific community and university partnership in relation to early childhood education. In doing so it begins to fill a gap in the literature in this area. Findings from this study may be used to inform early childhood professionals and academics by expanding their awareness of the issues involved in undertaking a partnership such as this one. The implications that flow from the study included the need for greater understanding of the anthropology of the university and its systemic organisation, a formal contract for the partnership specifying the obligations of each party and outlining expectations, and the inclusion of committed people, prepared to work toward genuine collaborative partnerships.

abstract: This project is an institutional ethnography (Smith, 2005, 2006) that examines the lived experiences of nine second language (L2) writing teachers, specifically with regard to the interpersonal, material, and spatial relationships inherent in their work. Using interviews, focus groups, and a mapping heuristic for data collection, the study investigates the current culture of L2 writing that is (or is not) created within this specialized community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and the individual participant motivations as actors within a complex and dynamic network (Latour, 2007). Because findings from the study are relevant for a variety of fields and audiences, the dissertation is separated into three freestanding but interrelated articles. Article one focuses on the data of one participant whose teaching roles/ranks in the writing program shifted over time: from graduate teaching associate to part-time adjunct faculty member to full-time non-tenure track writing instructor. Article two uses all nine participants’ data and focuses on their perceptions of and experiences with L2-specific teacher training. Results share the perceived benefits and drawbacks of teacher training to specialize in working with multilingual student populations considering various material conditions present in the institution. In addition, the article locates additional programmatic spaces where professionalization happens (or can happen), and ultimately assesses and questions the justification of specialization of teachers within the writing program and where that specialization can/should occur. Article three reflects on a specific data collection technique—a mapping heuristic—and discusses the ways in which this method is beneficial, not only for observing the different connections that L2 writing teachers create in their work lives, but also for collecting data in any institutional ethnographic study. While these three articles are intended to be independent of one another, together they comprise a dissertation-length institutional ethnographic inquiry that demonstrates the diverse voices, motivations, and experiences of second language writing teachers that inform the decisions made in an institution known as a writing program. WPAs can use the knowledge and takeaways gained in the study to learn more about how to support and advocate for this important stakeholder group. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2016

While interagency collaboration among Children’s Aid Societies and violence against women (VAW) agencies have been mandated by the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Service, little is known about these local collaboration agreements. This study seeks to explore how the Ottawa CAS/VAW Collaboration Agreement mediates the work of VAW agencies to protect women and children. Using a purposive sample, a total of eight VAW informants were interviewed. Smith (1999) argued that people’s everyday experiences are organized, often unknowingly, by the actions of people located outside the local setting and that this organization is textually-mediated. This study used institutional ethnography and the listening guide approach to critically examine the collaboration process. The results explore the narratives and standpoints as they relate to the informants’ understanding of the agreement and their descriptions of doing collaboration. This study also adopts the mapping technique developed by institutional ethnographers to map social relations. The findings indicate that informants differed in their familiarity and knowledge of the contents of the collaboration agreement – only two informants indicated that they have reviewed and read the document. The findings also show that although most informants were able to describe positive experiences of collaboration, most also described negative experiences. This study concludes that the collaboration agreement has made VAW workers’ work with women more focused and specific to helping women address Children Aid Society’s concerns. The findings demonstrate that the collaboration agreement requires an update and further research is required to evaluate these collaborations and whether they improve outcomes for women and their children.