This thesis explores the issue of lifelong incarceration in the Canadian context. Lifelong incarceration, defined as a criminal sentence which forecloses hope of prospective release from its outset, is a new sentencing option in Canada, only possible after legislative amendments enacted in 2011. Sentencing for murder in Canada is examined from a historical and comparative point of view to contextualize the issue of lifelong incarceration. An interdisciplinary approach is also used, drawing on the field of psychology to explore the meaning and importance of hope. I argue that all sentences in Canada should leave an offender with hope of prospective release. My argument situates hope within the principles of sentencing law codified in s. 718 of the Criminal Code as well as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. / Graduate / 2017-10-31

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Few subjects have been discussed as extensively as the place of literacy in the development process. Yet, there is no clear consensus regarding definitions, levels, policies, methods or consequences. As a first step, a model is identified and used as a basis for the analysis of adult literacy's role in development. Literacy is seen as part of an integrated approach to development, being subordinate to overall educational goals. Literacy from this perspective is stripped of its mystique, allowing for a more realistic analysis of its role in rural development. After a review of issues, views and trends as regards literacy and its role in development and a description of the socio-economic and educational situation in rural Bangladesh, the field research is presented as a case study. The role of volunteer teachers, or facilitators, is studied in relation to the materials used in the project. The rationale for and methods of implementation of a post-literacy programme are analysed, concluding with an examination of the integration of literacy with other development activities. The study confirms the subservient nature of literacy to wider educational goals and clarifies some of the ramifications. Overall, however, the model was found to be inadequate for identifying literacy's role in development. An alternative model is presented, and the implications of this emerge from the study. Precisely because literacy has to be integrated with other aspects of development, in order to be significant for the rural communities that it serves, its relationship to the process of development remains ambiguous and elusive. Literacy is seen as an ambivalent aspect of an integrated approach to development. This dissertation challenges the assumption that literacy is an independent variable which can be measured by a universal yardstick, and illustrates the inextricable way in which the role of literacy is related to development strategies in specific contexts.

This dissertation explores why, even after nine years of studying the English language, graduates in the Punjab emerge with very deficient English. An examination of the currently prescribed syllabuses for the Secondary, Intermediate and Degree stages reveals that they are based on out-dated concepts of language teaching. They not only provide impoverished language content but fail to take into consideration the learners' actual needs. They are exclusively based on translation and 'dead language' techniques. Moreover, the examinations allow memorized answers to set questions which are repeated year after year. This dissertation examines the theoretical bases for a specification of a new syllabus. It considers the background of psychology, psycholinguistics, ELT theories and methodologies, and syllabus design, and attempts to develop a pragmatic approach toward the teaching of English in the Punjab. New syllabuses need to be proposed for all three stages of English language study. In this dissertation a proposed specification for the Intermediate stage is outlined, which, if adopted would function as a model for other stages. The specification is for a multi-dimensional syllabus, combining the benefits of both communicative and structuralist approaches, and taking full account of the needs of the particular learners involved and of the local context of education.

The present Labour Government is committed to "the era of learning through life". However, as the Kennedy Report (1997) into Widening Participation in Further Education argues, education is still an exclusion zone for an important minority of the population including women. If present policy, as set out in The Learning Age (DfEE, 1998a) is to work, further education colleges have an important role to play, becoming the vehicle for moving people "from unemployment through training to employment" (Smith, 1997:4). The present study initially sought to establish the nature of this role by exploring the impact of the current political climate on lifelong learning and the way in which local education authorities have interpreted the policy directives in this area. A detailed Institution Focused Study of one Local Education Authority and one Further Education College revealed a possible mismatch between provision and the needs of the population targeted under the lifelong learning initiative. It concluded that the initiative is likely to present a considerable challenge for institutions which, because of market forces, are increasingly viewing their client population in terms of funding units and academic output (Jarvis, 1998:220). The study subsequently adapted an action research approach to explore possible ways of meeting the lifelong learning challenge in the case of one group of female adults making a return to further education. A variety of data collection methods, including questionnaires, focus group techniques and reflective journals were employed throughout the two action cycles to record, in detail, the effects of the actions taken on students, lecturers, policy and practice. These provide the basis for an account of the characteristics of provision that could justifiably be described as a lifelong learning opportunity for adult females returning to education. The study concludes that an action research approach has the capacity for positively affecting lecturers' experience of teaching and the students' experience of learning within a further education environment.

This study, based on classroom observation of ESL students, is an attempt to explore the effects of prior interactions on the learners' performance in communicative writing tasks. The study seeks to ascertain how classroom discourse generated by students as they interact prior to writing is shaped by the tasks and how it subsequently contributes to the quality of the written compositions. The basic hypotheses projected for the study were that different tasks would generate different quantities and qualities of interaction patterns which would correspondingly affect the written compositions. The nature of the tasks was seen as being instrumental in determining the variety of words rather than the amount of words used and that determined the quality of the compositions. Similarly, the generation of complex syntactic and cohesion features by the subjects was closely associated with the opportunity they were afforded by the tasks to interact. Narrative composition tasks in which there was substantial interactions were more likely to generate these language features than were the descriptive composition tasks in which there were restricted patterns of interaction. The study reveals, however, that the interaction patterns arising from the oral language gave rise to language features which got incorporated into the written compositions but did not conform with the conventions of the written language. Moreover, the discourse acts employed did not invariably bring about a coherent semantic relationship among propositions because of the subjects' low language proficiency and their inability to appropriately employ cohesion features associated with the expression of propositions. A survey among subjects of the study shows that collaborative learning in pairs or groups is regarded as being more favourable to promoting features of language that lead to good quality compositions than a teacher-fronted approach, although input from the latter is seen as a prerequisite for the smooth running of pair work and group work. However, there is a general consensus that group work is a better method of learning than pair work, apparently because group work, offers opportunity for more substantial interactions than pairwork which often culminates in interlocutors being unable to sustain a conversation in English.

Asking questions is an essential part of teaching and has been an area of inquiry in educational research for decades. However, the research in teacher's use of questions in L2 context has a much shorter history and the findings are preliminary. The present study investigates the use of questions by teachers teaching English as a foreign/second language. The main body of the data used in the analysis comes from audio recordings of 40 lessons where a group of Chinese students were taught by three native-speaker teachers of English over a period of ten weeks. The recordings were conducted and transcribed by the author. One of the main findings is that teachers often ask more than one question in one move. This cluster of questions is termed "question unit", (Q unit for short). The focus then is directed to what constitutes a Q unit, the relationship between questions in a Q unit and the responses to Q units. The identification of a Q unit apparently involves the length of pause (termed wait-time) between questions asked in one speaking turn. It is found that the subsequent question(s) in a Q unit are often either repetition or reformulation of the previous Q(s) in the unit. It is also found that, when Q units are taken into consideration in the analysis of response rate (the percentage of questions being responded to), it would change the response rate significantly. It is argued that Q unit as a unit of discourse analysis does not affect the existing discourse analysis models but would add a supplementary but helpful dimension to it.

This research has sought to contribute to the literature to the understanding of the factors influencing women’s career progression in higher education management through in depth, semi-structured interviews and a focus group discussion conducted with 48 women working in junior, and senior level management positions in the universities of Pakistan. Addressing the first research question to better understand current gendered based distribution of management positions in the sampled universities, a quantitative survey was conducted. The research questions 2, 3 and 4 addressed the following three areas sequentially: first, the constraints faced by participants at familial, societal, organizational and personal levels; second, the supportive factors experienced by the participants at familial, societal, organizational and personal levels; and finally, Is work-family conflict a barrier to women‘s career progression in Pakistan? The aim of the focus group discussion was to extract some further qualitative information from a group of six participants working in one of the universities and to investigate whether participants had similar experiences. For the analysis of quantitative data the advanced charting and graphing features in Microsoft Office Word and Excel were used to develop basic table, graph, and chart structures to display the frequency count. For the qualitative data the inductive coding and thematic analysis was utilized searching for patterns and themes. The analysis of quantitative data revealed the dearth of women in senior management positions. The analysis of qualitative data provided an unprecedented and comprehensive view of the complex, contradictory, and multifaceted dimensions of distinctive factors influencing women’s career progression in senior management positions. The participants – both junior and seniors – informed about the hurdles they had faced when they got appointed or when they had moved into senior roles, as well as what kinds of help and support they had received for their career progression. It was expected that knowledge based on participant’s perceptions of the difficulties and social support and the strategies they exercised for facilitating the work-family interface, hopefully, will bring their insights to a wider audience. Such knowledge would support the management of women‘s human resources and their management careers in the cultural specific context and might emerge as a strong strategy for policy makers for countering the issue of the dearth of women in senior management positions.