Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / South Africa has among the highest reported rates of neonaticide and infanticide, yet we do not know much about the circumstances surrounding parental child killing. Therefore, this dissertation sought to address this lacuna in the research literature. The dissertation is divided into two phases. Phase one includes a scoping review, which describes research on the homicide of infants (aged 0-1 year), pertaining to victim and perpetrator characteristics. A search of 18 databases, yielded 53 included articles, of which 39 were case studies, two were qualitative, and 12 were quantitative. The review’s main finding is the shortage of good quality data as most included studies were case studies. Therefore, we hope that this review encourages the development of a larger scholarship of robust research focused on the homicide of infants. Phase two presents the findings of a life history study, couched within a biopsychosocial epistemology, undertaken to uncover the life stories of parents who are incarcerated for killing either a biological child, a stepchild, or a child in their care. The qualitative study draws on 49 in-depth interviews with 22 participants. Attachment theory, epigenetics, feminist theory, and the social ecological theory assisted in understanding this crime. Through a grounded theory analysis of the life stories presented, it becomes evident how traumatic parent-child experiences in the form of absent parents, neglect, and abuse, had a profound impact on these participants. Their narratives suggest that, in the absence of reparative environments, their histories of childhood abuse and abandonment were potentially risk factors for negative consequences in the parenting role, as they likely reenacted these cycles of unhealthy behavior with partners and children.

No description available.

This research addresses the concern that Anglophone populations in the predominantly French speaking Gaspé region of eastern Québec are experiencing high rates of social problems such as poverty and unemployment. Anglophones in this region, as in other rural regions of Québec, have identified facing difficulties related to access to social services, an aspect which further complicates existing social problems. Using a narrative methodology and post structural, feminist and intersectional lenses, this research explores the experiences of English speaking service users in accessing and engaging with social services on the Gaspé coast. This study also explores the boundaries and reproduction of linguistic categories and identity and offers insight into resisting dominant discourses pertaining to linguistic difference in Québec, specifically within the context of social services. The results of this research demonstrate that service users’ experiences were characterised by disproportionately negative effects in regards to service access and delivery such as intensified logistical problems and social work practice related weaknesses. The research also concludes that experiences involved multiple, intersecting problems, which were irreducible to the singular dimension of language. The intersections of language and race, language and class, and language and ability were raised as critical concerns in terms of access to social services on the Gaspé coast. Finally, the encounters between Anglophones and Francophones in the context of health and social services in the region were found to be entangled and inseparable from the historical and ongoing political struggles over language on this territory. / Graduate

Today, postsecondary engineering education stands perched on the edge of transformation. A precursor to impending change is national recognition that nontraditional students—adults and working students with socioeconomic backgrounds not currently well-represented in engineering education—possess untapped potential to improve the diversity as well as increase the size of the U.S. engineering workforce. To support nontraditional student participation in engineering, a qualitative investigation was undertaken to examine the ways in which nontraditional engineering undergraduates defined and experienced success during their engineering education. It is thought that, through a deeper, richer understanding of the ways in which the nontraditional engineering undergraduates overcome barriers and experience success, newer, more impactful alternative pathways that assist nontraditional students in becoming part of the engineering profession can be envisioned and developed. During this study, 14 nontraditional student participants were purposefully sampled from the population of undergraduates who participated in a distance-delivered, alternative engineering transfer program offered at a western, land-grant, public university between 2009-2015. Qualitative data from in-depth interviews were used to co-develop life history–style narratives for each of the participants. Completed narratives chronologically ordered and richly described the participants’ experiences leading up to, happening during, and occurring after their engineering education. Narrative analysis revealed that the nontraditional student participants viewed their own educational success contextually, relationally, and in terms of their long-term goals for social mobility through engineering careers. Additionally, the distance-delivered alternative engineering transfer program was seen to promote their educational success in three ways: a) working to promote long-range career goals through job market signaling, b) enabling academic bootstrapping in an adult learning environment, and c) maintaining connection to community-based support through place. Recommendations for engineering programs that seek to broaden nontraditional student participation are offered.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The main research question of this project is: How do the narratives of Caribbean black middle class civil society within the bounds of the “post-postcolonial” state, explain the evolving yet current environment of local and postcolonial civil society development? Using the Bahamas as a case, this project explores the historical, political, cultural, and social conditions that supported the development of civil society within the context of a postcolonial society. Furthermore, an investigation via in-depth interviews, participation observation, archival, and contemporary document analysis contextualizes the present-day work of civil society leaders in the Bahamas. Methodologically, the project employs narrative analysis to uncover the perspectives, voices, and practices of black middle-class Bahamian civil society offering an unfolding, dynamic, and nuanced approach for understanding the historical legacies and contemporary structure of local civil society and philanthropy. The study focuses on three primary forms of narratives. These include the narratives of the past (historical), the narratives of expressive and aesthetic cultural practices, and the narratives of lived experience. The project locates that the development of civil society is linked to historical and cultural forces. The findings show that that the narratives of history, social, and artistic development foregrounds a hybrid model of civil society development drawn from the experience of slavery, colonialism, decolonization, as well as the emerging structures related to economic and political globalization. Furthermore, observed through resilience narratives, local civil society leaders negotiate the boundaries of hybridity in their understanding of their personal, social, and professional identities as well as the way in which they engage government, the public, as well as local and international funders.

No description available.

Grieving Online: Street-Involved Youths’ Use of Social Media After a Death conveys the context and lived experiences of 20 street-involved youth in Victoria BC, who live both on the streets and on line simultaneously (boyd, 2008a). Using a narrative methodology, including poetry, I explore how these realities affect the grief experiences after a death. Youth strategize to find access to computers and cell phones, using free wifi, sharing minutes, or buying or trading devices in the street economy in order to communicate through texting and viewing and posting to Facebook. Dire financial and unstable living situations, the complex and difficult relationships they have with both family and friends and the traumatic circumstances they have endured directly contributes to stress and anxiety and the ways they grieve the losses of people in their lives. This vulnerability, violence and instability is entangled both in their face to face interactions and in private and public communications online. It is also directly connected to the concept of precarity: “that politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death” (Butler, 2009, p.ii). There are several key findings from youths’ narratives. First, although youth often see themselves as outsiders from “regular society”, they have taken up a normative discourse of a “grieving subject” in their language and stories. This is a discourse of progress that includes stages and tasks and the understanding that to grieve is to do work. I argue that for many youth, this discourse is heightened because the stakes are high: their lives are surveilled by police and child protective services. Sometimes shunned by family of the deceased, or without private spaces to mourn, their expressions of grief are exposed and sometimes criminalized. Second, I argue that throughout their narratives, youth position themselves as moral beings and actors talking about and making sense of death through hierarchies of values and decisions, and framing the death as an opportunity to explore how they want to be in the world or how the world should be. This vision of street-involved youth actively experimenting in the moral laboratory (Mattingly, 2013) of the street and the moral predicaments they faced when grieving challenges the social stereotypes of street-involved youth as delinquent, loners, dysfunctional, refusing to ‘grow up’ and ‘be responsible.’ Third, youth spoke about negotiating and managing relationships both in person and within the affordances of social networking sites (boyd 2009) such as the visibility and persistence of online discussions. My findings demonstrate that these affordances have implications after a death. For example, youth were wrestling with the performances of grief online, trying to make sense “to what extent these declarations of grief are public posturing and to what extent they are genuine, personal expressions of deep feeling” (Dobler, 2006, p.180). Youth caution about posting too quickly about the death online, so that family or close friends would not have to find out online. They value communication that is private, face-to-face, or by phone that is intentional and acknowledges the importance of relationship with the deceased. Their thoughtful expertise can help all of us as we try to navigate the experiences of grieving online. Although they shared a great deal of ambivalence for the place of social media in their lives, for many it is a powerful tool to tell themselves and others about who they are and how they want to be remembered. / Graduate

The newly revised 2017-2018 British Columbian high school curriculum, as a prevention education response to a growing concern around children and youths’ mental health, indicates that students will learn the signs and symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression and be able to explain strategies to promote mental well-being (Province of British Columbia, 2016). Youth voices may help in shaping this curriculum objective. This study explores the meaning that five high school students, who were trained to facilitate an anxiety-prevention program, make of the problem of anxiety and prevention through their narratives, applying a narrative methodology and analysis. These youth narratives do not provide a singular explanation, truth or understanding of anxiety; like all narratives, they hold multiple truths. The youth narratives are drawn from the participants’ local experiential knowledge as well as prevailing discourses that shape their understanding. The types of narratives in this inquiry include: i) the quest for problem-free childhoods; ii) the genesis of knowledge; and iii) overcoming giant stigma by connecting. There are implications and considerations pulled from the narratives, including how a prevailing psychologized discourse may obscure contextual factors in making sense of anxiety and prevention. This inquiry may help educators and other professionals to imagine what else could be possible in conceptualizing the problem of anxiety and implementing prevention programs. It is hoped that this study will add to the current dialogue around prevention and support strategies in British Columbian schools and beyond. / Graduate / 0525 / 0680 / 0519 / 0533 / 0347 / arfelix3@gmail.com

Made available in DSpace on 2014-08-20T13:48:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Carmen_Lucia_Abadie_Biasoli_Tese.pdf: 4759134 bytes, checksum: 371ada12e75d9c53aab56618d287e593 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-09-17 / The present research discusses the problematic of the teaching career in Visual Arts based on the study of professional life cycle, that is, the vital cycle through which the teachers face. Thus, it aimed at investigating the continuities and discontinuities in the (re) construction of teachers professional careers in Visual Arts, defending the idea that significant aspects of both personal and professional life and the teaching moment lived by the teachers interfere both in the construction of this career as well as in a better understanding of the role of the teacher and, consequently, his / her teaching performance. In the field of Visual Arts teaching, this thesis equally reconstructs the history of institutions responsible for the teaching of Arts in our country, focusing more specifically the present situation of the Instituto de Artes e Design (Arts and Design Institute) from the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), which was opened back in 1949. The thesis is based in different researches about biographical data, including the ones which concern the different teacher s career phases (centered in the years of professional experience), and the life cycles, indicating the personal dimension as fundamental in the process by which the teachers build their careers and make their work dynamic, making it clear that the professional improvement is associated to the personal improvement, or is also part of it. Besides this, there are contributions from authors who investigate the teaching activity, specially the ones involved with the professionalization, the professional development and the teacher s knowledge, as well as investigators who analyze the school as a culture producer. The methodological approach is biographic-narrative, which enables the teachers to talk about what they know and do, what they did or what they could or should do, that is, it makes possible to make explicit the past dimensions which have an influence on the present situations and its projection into expected action forms. The teachers who participated in the research teach in city public schools in Pelotas in the area of Visual Arts, all having graduated at IAD. The study takes a quanti-qualitative character, as it combines the questionnaire with interviews. The questionnaire involved 40 teachers and enabled to know characteristics and expectations common to the people as a whole. The interviewed was made with 7 teachers, graduated in different phases of the teaching course (according to changes in the educational legislation) and with distinct teaching experience, permitting to understand aspects related to school history; the choice of the career with their determinant factors and expectations; academic history and their influences; remembrances and teaching practical education; teaching career, within its initial years; whether the fact of being a man / woman affected his / her career; the teaching experience, previous and present. For a better understanding of the teaching career, biographical paths were created based on the analysis of the interviews, here so-called biopaths. Another element used to complement the interviews and the analysis of the biographical data were Travelling Images of Art pieces asked by the teachers, chosen by them in order to express the present moment which they have been facing. For the elaboration of phases, the starting point was the principle that the years of career are meaningful to define the beginning of the first phase, called impact (1-6 years), but they were not standards for its end, because the events faced by the teachers, both at schools as well as in their personal lives, were significant for a change of phase. The closeness to the second phase, the personalization one (7-12 years), was justified because the teachers defined a personal teaching style to teach Visual Arts for groups of different levels and schools with different realities, which demands time and maturity, without discharging a faster change provoked by one or another type of event, a critical moment faced by the teacher. The phase of alternation (13-18 years) corresponded to a period in which the teaching experience enabled the teacher to better understand the educational and the teaching system, what he / she can or cannot do, what he / she wants to do or not, the teacher gave him /herself the chance to choose. Finally the fact of being close to the end of the career determined the so-called individualization phase (19-25 years), responsible for the distance between the teacher and the educational problems and the search for personal satisfaction. Therefore, the teaching years are considered meaningful in the professional career, but they are not the ones which define the phases, as the narratives from the teachers prove that the phases constantly mix - or not and one does not place away nor eliminates the possibility of another. Finally, the modifications in the life phases of teachers are caused by the conditions of determined time and places, having occurred due to the opportunities and limitations dealt by each one of them; the crisscrossing of personal histories and the professional careers in these different moments and places configure a singularity in the teaching practice of these teachers. Although all have gone through, in a general way, similar phases in their teaching careers, it was evident that each one have their own and unique life experience and professional career, each with a specific subjective experience, each one of them is unique. To end, it can be said that the understanding of the life cycles, through the phases of the teaching career, crisscrossing personal histories and professional careers in different places and moments of the teaching practice, enables thinking about alternatives and motivating innovation proposals for the initial and continuing teacher s education. / Esta pesquisa discute a problemática da profissão docente em Artes Visuais a partir do estudo do ciclo de vida profissional, ou seja, do ciclo vital pelo qual passam os professores. Assim, teve como objetivo investigar as continuidades e escontinuidades na (re) construção da trajetória profissional de docentes de Artes Visuais, defendendo a idéia de que aspectos significativos da vida pessoal e profissional e o momento docente em que se encontram os professores interferem tanto na construção dessa trajetória quanto para uma melhor compreensão da pessoa do professor e, como conseqüência, da sua atuação docente. No campo do ensino das Artes Visuais, esta tese igualmente reconstrói a história das instituições responsáveis pelo ensino da Arte em nosso país, enfocando mais precisamente o caso do atual Instituto de Artes e Design (IAD) da Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel), cuja criação remonta a 1949. A tese está assentada em diferentes pesquisas sobre trajetórias biográficas, incluindo as que abordam as fases da carreira do professor (centradas nos anos de experiência profissional), e os ciclos de vida, indicando a dimensão pessoal como fundamental no processo pelos quais os professores se constroem e dinamizam seu trabalho, deixando claro que o aperfeiçoamento profissional está associado ao desenvolvimento pessoal, ou faz parte dele. Ademais, são trazidas contribuições de autores que investigam o trabalho docente, especialmente os que tratam da profissionalização, do desenvolvimento profissional e dos saberes docentes, bem como de investigadores que analisam a escola como produtora de cultura. A abordagem metodológica é a biográfico-narrativa, que possibilita aos professores falarem sobre o que conhecem e fazem, o que faziam ou o que poderiam ou deveriam fazer, ou seja, permite a explicitação das dimensões do passado que pesam sobre as situações atuais e sua projeção em formas desejáveis de ação. Os professores que participaram da pesquisa exercem a docência na rede municipal de Pelotas e atuam na área de Artes Visuais, todos formados pelo IAD. O estudo assume um caráter quantiqualitativo, ao combinar questionário com entrevista. O questionário envolveu 40 professores e possibilitou conhecer características e expectativas formativas comuns no coletivo. A entrevista foi realizada com 7 professores, formados em diferentes etapas do curso de formação docente (conforme as mudanças da legislação educacional) e com distintos tempos de atuação no magistério, permitindo compreender aspectos relativos à escolarização; escolha da profissão com seus fatores determinantes e expectativas; trajetória acadêmica com suas influências; lembranças e formação prática de ensino; carreira docente, com seus primeiros anos; se o fato de ser mulher/homem afetou a carreira; exercício da docência, anterior e atual. Para melhor compreensão da trajetória docente, a partir da análise das entrevistas foram criados os caminhos biográficos, aqui denominados de biovias. Outro elemento usado para complementar as entrevistas e análise de dados biográficos foram Imagens Viajantes de obras de Arte solicitadas aos professores, escolhidas por eles para significar o momento atual em que estão vivendo. Para a elaboração das fases partiu-se do princípio de que os anos de carreira são significativos para definir o início da primeira fase, denominada de impacto (1-6 anos), mas não foram balizadores do seu término, porque os acontecimentos vividos pelos professores, tanto na escola quanto na vida pessoal, foram determinantes para uma mudança de fase. Já a aproximação da segunda fase, a de personalização (7-12 anos), justificou se porque os professores definiram um estilo pessoal de ensinar Artes Visuais para turmas de níveis diversificados e escolas com realidades diferentes, o que requer tempo e maturidade, sem descartar uma mudança mais rápida provocada por um ou outro tipo de acontecimento, um momento crítico enfrentado pelo professor. A fase de alternância (13-18 anos) correspondeu a um período no qual o tempo de atuação possibilitou ao professor uma maior compreensão do sistema educacional e da docência, do que pode ou não, do que quer ou não fazer, o professor permitiu-se optar. Já a proximidade com o final da carreira determinou a fase de individualização (19-25 anos), responsável pelo distanciamento do professor dos problemas educacionais e pela busca de satisfação pessoal. Deste modo, os anos de docência são considerados significativos na trajetória profissional, mas não são definidores das fases, pois as narrativas dos professores comprovam que as fases se mesclam constantemente - ou não - e uma não afasta nem elimina a possibilidade de outra. Portanto, as modificações nas fases da vida dos professores são ocasionadas pelas condições de tempo e lugar determinados, ocorreram pelas oportunidades e limitações vividas por cada um deles; o entrecruzamento das histórias pessoais e das trajetórias profissionais nesses diferentes espaços e tempos configuram uma singularidade na prática docente desses professores. Embora todos tenham passado, de um modo geral, por fases similares da carreira docente, ficou evidente que cada um tem uma história de vida e trajetória profissional singular, cada um tem uma trajetória subjetiva específica, cada um deles é único. Por fim, pode-se dizer que a compreensão dos ciclos de vida, através das fases da carreira docente, entrecruzando histórias pessoais e trajetórias profissionais em diferentes espaços e tempos da prática docente, possibilita pensar alternativas e incentivar propostas de inovação para a formação docente inicial e continuada.

Literary theory widely attests to the powerful role of characters as vehicles in producing meaning. Yet current narrative models focus almost exclusively on primary characters, neglecting supporting characters, who are capable of reshaping narrative emphases or revealing layers of story within the story. This project demonstrates the significance of supporting characters in biblical narratives by applying a narrative methodology drawn from cognitive narratology to the Jephthah story (Judg 10:6 12:7) in order to illuminate the distinct perspectives of each secondary character within its storyworld. The first chapter outlines a cognitive narrative methodology, which asserts that the purpose of narrative is not merely to convey a meaning, but for readers to experience and engage the story. Therefore, it focuses not on determining the meaning of the text, but embracing the power of stories to become transformative and meaningful experiences for the reader with multiple points of engagement (characters). Chapter two introduces the timecourse (causally related sequence of events) of the Jephthah cycle and then analyzes the initiating event perspective. This chapter establishes the situations and expectations between Yhwh and his people that echo in unique ways into the scenes that follow. Each chapter that follows re-reads the story of Jephthah (Judg 10:17 12:7) through the lens of a supporting character king, the daughter of Jephthah, and the Ephraimites person and perspective through their social role (social and historical expectations built into social models), mode of conduct (character assessment based on biblical and social norms), and disposition (the personality of that character determined through speech, action, or direct narration). Each chapter also assesses the tellability of the story (establishing their viable perspective within the text) and concludes by summarizing the perspective and engaging with it from my own subjective awareness. Using the Jephthah account, I demonstrate the complexity and depth of the many unnamed characters who engage with this morally ambiguous judge, suggesting that they are part of a pattern of outside, or other, voices in biblical narrative that have the power to transform readers.