Marginalized and vulnerable groups have always existed in societies. Such groups have always needed protectors of their rights. In democratic countries institutions have had to be established to ensure that the rights of these groups are protected. National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) are part of these institutions. NHRIs are important and vital as they 'serve as independent bodies for the protection and promotion of human rights‘. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2010. / A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Law University of Pretoria, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Masters of Law (LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa). Prepared under the supervision of Dr. Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua, Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, Ghana. 2010. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/ / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

This thesis presents a new approach to blind deconvolution algorithms. The proposed method is a combination of a classical blind deconvolution subspace method and a marginalized particle filter. It is shown that the new method provides better performance than just a marginalized particle filter, and better robustness than the classical subspace method. The properties of the new method make it a candidate for further exploration of its potential application in acoustic blind dereverberation. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Doctoral education in the U.S. is essential to cultivating professionals, scientists, and researchers capable of advancing and contributing to national goals. However, the engineering field warrants diversification to respond to global, social, and demographic demands. It is necessary to support students from historically marginalized backgrounds by acknowledging their unique experiences and encouraging them to activate their agency while faculty and institutional leaders work toward dismantling systemic barriers. Such practices may aid historically marginalized students in completing their degrees which will contribute to reduced attrition rates, time to degree, and degree completion. Over the past 10 years, Blacks and African Americans, Hispanic and Latinx people, and Native Americans and Indigenous people have demonstrated steady growth in doctoral education in engineering, despite several challenges and systemic barriers encountered during their doctoral journey. Even though they are growing in the field, attrition rates, time to degree, and degree completion remain an issue. Higher education researchers, workforce stakeholders, and educational organizations have been focusing on diversifying the STEM fields. Still, little attention has focused on the psychosocial elements that influence historically marginalized doctoral students' academic journeys. For example, research shows historically marginalized doctoral students encounter various challenges in doctoral education such as isolation, tokenism, and microaggression among others. To this end, it is essential to understand historically marginalized doctoral students' motivation and experiences in doctoral engineering education to identify strategies for mitigating these challenges as well as increase degree completion and decrease the time to degree. Guided by the situated expectancy-value theory and the graduate socialization framework, this dissertation consists of two manuscripts. The first manuscript is a qualitative holistic single case study that explores Latinx students' motivations to pursue a doctoral degree in engineering by investigating the following question: What values motivate Latinx students to pursue a doctoral degree in engineering? The second manuscript applies transcendental phenomenology to explore historically marginalized engineering doctoral students' socialization experiences by considering the following question: How do historically marginalized doctoral engineering students perceive their socialization experiences? The data sources for both manuscripts consist of interviews and surveys from participants in a research boot camp conducted between 2017-2021 from a larger national science foundation (NSF) funded project named the Dissertation Institute (DI). These studies are significant because they will provide implications for students who identify as members of these populations, research, practice, and policy concerning historically marginalized doctoral students' socialization experiences in engineering. Findings from the first study revealed that Latinx student motivation to pursue and persist in engineering doctoral degrees contained different subjective task values from SEVT and was influenced by educational and research experiences, role model interactions, and socio-cultural values. The second manuscript unearthed that students' socialization occurs in progressive, sequential, and connected stages. Each stage indicates students' development, even with the possible recurrence of previous stages depending on the challenges tied to systemic issues. Both manuscripts uncovered motivation and socialization vary from person to person contemplating various dimensions, and they are interconnected and influence students' journeys. In addition, the engineering context impacts both elements with respect to funding sources, research emphasis, and the persistent White male normative culture. / Doctor of Philosophy / Black and African Americans, Hispanic and Latinx, and Native Americans and Indigenous people have made significant contributions to doctoral education and the engineering field. Still, their representation in these contexts does not align with social, cultural, and political realities. Often these populations leave their doctoral programs or take longer to complete their degrees. Substantial academic research has investigated the challenges in doctoral education experienced by these populations. Still, little research focuses on their motivation to pursue or persist in these fields despite their lack of representation and socialization experiences. This dissertation focused on those elements and encompassed two studies in the engineering doctoral context that sought to answer the following questions: 1) What values motivate Latinx students to pursue a doctoral degree in engineering? 2) How do historically marginalized doctoral engineering students perceive their socialization experiences? The results from the first study showed Latinx students' motivation to pursue a doctoral degree in engineering matched their sense of self, and the attainment value represents it, as they considered completing an engineering Ph.D. will help accomplish their future academic and professional goals. Also, the importance of family and community drives their desire to earn a doctoral degree and retribute and help others in the future by being a role model. The second study evidenced that students' socialization is represented by progressive, sequential, and connected stages. The student's advancement in these stages and the ways they navigate various challenges indicated students' development. Combined, both studies demonstrated motivation and socialization vary from person to person, contemplating multiple dimensions, and are interconnected and influence students' journeys.

The Indian diaspora is woven around castes, languages, dialects, religions- a young nation boasting of an ancient civilization in which inequalities are deeply ingrained in its culture and traditions. Although vital government interventions have succeeded in increasing the literacy rate of women in both urban and rural areas general household characteristics such as income, caste, occupation and education attainments of parents still continue to determine access, attendance, completion and learning outcomes of girls and women from severely disadvantaged communities. The critical issue investigated in the comparative case study is why and how established hegemonic roles changed because of the catalytic role of adult literacy. The research was conducted in Bhilwara District, Rajasthan and Howrah District, West Bengal, India where literacy has played an intrinsic role in transforming the lives of the rural and marginalized women. In Indian society social norms often prevent women from exercising their free choice and from taking full and equal advantage of opportunities for individual development, contribution and reward. So assessing empowerment/transformation would mean identifying the constraints to empowerment, how women’s agency has developed and finally looking if ‘agency’ was able to address the constraints to women’s access to adult literacy. This would also entail seeking answers to questions such as ‘How is transformation represented in their narratives? What was the impact of literacy upon their lives?

Magister Philosophiae (Land and Agrarian Studies) - MPhil(LAS) / Water supply and sanitation remain a huge problem in townships and rural areas of South Africa, in effect affecting the water supply, hygiene and health of marginalized communities. Following democracy in 1994, South Africa’s new government embarked on a program of eradicating backlogs in water supply and sanitation that had become endemic under apartheid in townships and rural areas. In addition, South Africa’s constitution categorically states that every citizen has a right to a minimum of basic water supply and sanitation. Internationally, access to basic water supply and sanitation are fundamental human rights. Thus the South African government aims is to ensure that all South Africans have access to basic water and sanitation services. This study investigated the quantity and quality of water and how these effect sanitation and hygiene of communities using Walmer Township in the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality as a case study. The study used a multi-pronged methodological approach including structured interviews with a sample of households, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, observations and secondary information. Although the Walmer Community felt that they had access to sufficient quantity of water for their daily use and that the quality of the water was fine, the reality was that most households use less than the daily minimum amount of water per person as required in the constitution because of the distance where they have to fetch the water, which is too far to collect more water than they absolutely need. There is need for municipality to provide more stand pipes in order to reduce the distance that most households have to walk to fetch water. 80% of Walmer residents still use the bucket system, which is the issue that the community is more aggrieved about. One of the reasons the bucket system persists is the unplanned development of the Township and the type of dwellings (mostly shacks) that people still use. Also, the Township has grown and mushroomed organically as a result of the constant influx of people looking for better economic opportunities from rural areas or other urban areas. This makes it very difficult for the municipality to plan for and provide services and infrastructure as the Municipality is always playing catch-up. Worse still, the average number of people that use each bucket toilet (over 80) makes it extremely difficult to maintain the toilets clean and in functional and usable state at all times. Another problem is that the buckets, in particular those managed by the municipality, are not collected as scheduled resulting in spill-over of the toilets. Most of all, there are currently no clear arrangements around management and maintenance of the bucket toilets. Therefore the impact that the bucket system has on the residents’ health and hygiene, and the general Township environment is dire. The uncontrolled and continuing influx of people into Walmer Township has led to very high population density, with the average number of people per household up to ten. Most people of working age in these households are unemployed, which means that most households in the Township depend on social grants for survival. The high unemployment rate and dependency on social grants by most households in Walmer Township means that the community cannot afford to pay for services and therefore depend on amenities provided by the Municipality. The majority of the population of Walmer Township depends on basic services provided by the Municipality. These are provided as public amenities available to all Walmer residents, which makes them largely ‘open access’. This has resulted in poor management and poor maintenance of these amenities. The unhygienic state of most of the bucket toilets and the poor state of water stand taps is as a result of this current management arrangement. It would improve management of these public amenities if a system of locating stand taps and bucket toilets to specific households that could limit access and use to these defined groups of households was introduced. These households would then be responsible for maintaining and managing use of the specific and allocated amenities. The current management arrangements for these public amenities point to the fact that there is currently lack of participatory planning and management between the Municipality and the community. The Municipality takes top-down decisions resulting in disjuncture between the Municipality and the Community in terms of real community needs, provision of these needs, and how they should be serviced and managed.

Thesis advisor: Rebecca J. Lowenhaupt / Background: Examining the underlying social networks of a central office leadership team in a school district focused on accelerated improvement may provide insight into the organizational structures that support or constrain improvement efforts. These networks play a critical role in identifying strategies and practices that will enable district leaders to better support marginalized student populations and strive toward the goal of halving the achievement gap for all students. Purpose and Research Questions: The purpose of this individual research study is to carefully examine and analyze the structure of social relations in a school district under sanction, aiming to answer the following research question: How do social networks between and among district leaders relate to turnaround efforts designed to support marginalized populations? Methods: This study applies social network theory of central office leadership and relationships within a public school district aimed to accelerate improvement and support traditionally marginalized students. The network boundary is limited to central office administrators. In concert with the Dissertation in Practice (DIP), this individual study was designed to be emergent and flexible. Data sources include semi-structured interviews and document review. Findings: This study found that day-to-day, central office administrators in one turnaround district, rely heavily on a high number of external ties. The advice network is highly centralized around two key players which may constrain the exchange of advice or knowledge and ultimately slows or inhibits efforts designed to improve outcomes for marginalized student populations. High personnel turnover and lack of network stability are to be expected in a turnaround district, however, it has a ripple effect on the district’s ability to establish systems and structures that facilitate accelerated improvement for marginalized student populations. Significance. Organizational change is often socially constructed. Understanding which actors have positive influences and positive social relations will ensure that formal and informal network roles are identified and maximized to their full potential. Social network analysis has the potential to provide school districts information regarding the capacity of central office administrators to implement accelerated improvements. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Thesis advisor: Rebecca Lowenhaupht / Abstract Purpose and Research Questions: To understand central office leadership, it is necessary to examine how language grounds leaders’ actions, and influences their effectiveness among themselves and with stakeholders, including other central office leaders, building principals, teachers, community and students. This study explores the relationship between central office administrators’ language and their support of historically marginalized students. Looking closely at how language shows commonality or disconnect in understanding and action, this study is guided by the following research questions: (1) What language do leaders use to talk about their work with marginalized populations? (2) How does this language influence practice? Methods: This qualitative case study analyzes with the use of discourse analysis the language of central office administrators and their work in support of historically marginalized populations, using semi-structured interviews, and document review to answer the aforementioned research questions. This is one section of a larger research project studying how central office administrators organize their work in support of marginalized populations. Findings: Turnaround districts such as the district in this case study face complex and urgent issues, which seem to influence the language central office administrator’s use. In this study, central office administrators expressed language of frustration to talk about lack of time. Second, central office administrators used language that either recognized or demonstrated implicit bias in what marginalized populations heard or saw. Third, central office administrators relied on expressions of mandated language when they communicated about their work in support of marginalized populations, and lastly, central office administrators used language of care to talk about why they worked in a turnaround district. Significance: Given the importance of communication in district leadership, practitioners should work to establish and integrate consistent language into practice. Researchers will find it a valuable contribution to examine the outcomes of central office administrators’ language use in supporting traditionally marginalized student populations, as research is limited. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Thesis advisor: Rebecca Lowenhaupt / Leading discussions in education today center on closing academic achievement gaps and it is widely believed that school districts are responsible for creating the conditions for all students to be successful in school. Recent state and federal policies place demands on central office administrators to help schools improve, which has resulted in a shift in the work of central office administrators. As central office administrators shift work practices to help schools develop their capacity for improving teaching and learning, they need to collaborate to build new and collective knowledge. This qualitative case study describes the collaboration of one central office administrator team when working to support historically marginalized populations. It is one section of a larger research project on how central office administrators organize their work in support of historically marginalized populations. Two research questions guided this study: (1) How do communities of practice emerge within the central office when working to improve outcomes for historically marginalized students? (2) What conditions foster or hinder administrator collaboration? Interviews, a document review, and an observation were used to answer the research questions. Findings suggest that structures in the district existed that both support and hinder collaboration of central office administrators. Time to collaborate and tools used provided structural support for collaboration. The organizational structure of the central office and limited authority to make decisions hindered efforts at collaboration. To better understand how communities of practice emerge, I focused on two specific elements, joint enterprise and learning in practice. The joint enterprise of central office administrators related broadly to improving outcomes for all students, however there were limitations to the extent that joint enterprise existed in the district. Further, there were instances in which learning in practice seemed to occur in the district, however an implementation orientation and overreliance on prior knowledge limited adult learning, at least at the central office level. Collaboration is held up as an improvement strategy for schools and districts, yet there is limited research on central office administrator collaboration. This study contributes to the body of research on central office administrator collaboration, specifically those working in support of historically marginalized populations. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

The history and challenges regarding segregation, desegregation, and resegregation remain tangible and threatening to public schools today. Public support has shifted away from the gains made during the 1960s-80s through civil rights action and litigation and public policies now reflect a more laissez faire position toward racial and cultural interaction. The political movement of “dismantling desegregation” has been well documented by researchers (Steinberg, 1995; Orfield, 1996; Eaton & Orfield, 1996; Caldas & Bankston, 1998; Orfield & Yun, 1999; Peoples, 2001; Zhou, 2003; Eckes, 2004). But what can be added to the existing body of work is a greater understanding of the voices of those most directly effected by the current trends to resegregate. This study addresses the following questions: How do members of marginalized African American communities understand resegregation and how it will affect their children in public schools? In particular, how do African American parents respond to the educational shifts impacting their children? For the purposes of this qualitative case study, African American parents with school age children are the primary informants. Each participant volunteer responses to a series of interviews relating to educational issues concerning desegregation and resegregation, school quality, student and faculty ethnicity, and racism. Through the use of interviews arranged into four case studies and other data sources (school district records, state statistics, and newspaper articles), a clearer understanding of a marginalized community in a segregated, desegregated, and resegregated African American community is presented. The study offers an analysis of statistical data and a brief summary of case study themes. Six comprehensive findings are examined in the last chapter. Two implications conclude the study. / text

There are many populations poorly served by the current Canadian approach to health and illness care. These populations include members of ethnic minority groups, those with poor socio-economic status, those who are homeless, working in the sex trade or affected by mental illness. One way of potentially improving the health of communities or populations is through policy. In addition, a deeper understanding of the health needs of underserved populations could facilitate expeditious solutions mindful of resource challenges. In spite of copious research, health inequities and disparities persist. My hypothesis was that the conscious use of specific lenses to examine policies or interview data was a useful device to both better visualize and understand actions related to policy development and community member input. Thus, this thesis research was comprised of two major components. The first was an exploration of two policies of an academic tertiary health care centre through the lenses of feminist, critical social and systems theory. The objective was to determine if viewing policy development using different lenses might influence thinking about issues related to underserved populations. The second component used the same three lenses to conduct a grounded theory analysis of eleven photo-elicitation and six photo-voice interviews with North End Halifax Community members. The focus of these interviews was on contributions to health found in the community of North End Halifax. The results clearly show that examination of policies through the three theoretical lenses serves to highlight hidden assumptions and to broaden the view and comprehension of implications and potential impacts of policies. A better way to formulate policies is one step towards achievement of improved health outcomes. The use of three lenses in the grounded theory analysis significantly enhanced the depth of interview analysis: the feminist lens accentuated the concept of caring and relationships and the extent of the White-middle-class male perspective; the critical social lens crystallized the power disparities at play; and the systems lens stressed the need to examine root causes. The conscious use of specific lenses could facilitate a more comprehensive and comprehended view of the health needs of underserved populations.