Mexican immigrant women are a vulnerable population group in the U.S., and face challenges as a result of the nation’s anti-immigrant landscape. To help Mexican immigrant women cope with these realities, scholars have proposed the implementation of social support interventions. Yet only two studies have executed social support interventions for immigrant women. Those tailored specifically for Mexican immigrant women are nonexistent. To address this gap, this Master's thesis piloted the first social support intervention for Mexican immigrant women in the U.S. The purpose was to assess the impact of a social support intervention on the perceived social support for Mexican immigrant women. The study (1) surveyed Mexican immigrant women's current perceived social support, (2) investigated whether engaging in a social support intervention could improve Mexican immigrant women's perceived social support, and (3) explored (through the use of a foto novela) the elements (e.g., persons, places) Mexican immigrant women consider to be most important sources of social support in their lives. Surveys were administered pre- and post-intervention assessing perceived social support using three Likert-type scales. At pre-intervention, perceived social support was moderately high. A difference in perceived social support at post-intervention was observed, but without significance. This work adds to the small body of literature on social support interventions for Mexican immigrant women, and has important implications for future interventions and research. This work also documents the use of foto novelas – an innovative tool to engage with (and give a voice to) Mexican immigrant women. Future work should consider the use of foto novelas, as these amplify new understandings of social support, and capture (through the use of photographs) Mexican immigrant women’s own interpretation of social support.

There has been much debate over many years in the Australian Federal Parliament on the implementation of a national curriculum in mathematics. In 2004, the Government, under the direction of the then Minister for Education Brendon Nelson, initiated a national mathematics program for students in lower secondary high schools and primary schools. The Australian International Centre for Excellence was commissioned to implement a pilot program and called for expressions of interest to participate from high schools across the nation. At that time I was working as the Acting Head of the Mathematics Department at a senior high school in a large Western Australian country centre. I was concerned with the content and level of difficulty in many of the textbooks that were available for our students and also the processes used in these textbooks (or by teachers) to assist students to gain mastery of the basic mathematical concepts in the Outcome Number. I decided to apply to participate in the pilot program on behalf of my school, and my application was accepted. In the first stage of the program two classes of both Year 8 and Year 9 students were selected. One of my cooperative colleagues and I found out very early that the Year 8 ICE-EM textbook was too difficult for many of these students as they lacked the skills to do much of the work in the Outcome Number. These students had very different learning experiences in their primary school mathematics, with schools and teachers placing different emphases on each of the Outcomes in mathematics. The opportunity to modify our school's Year 8 program and to implement change in the high schools' feeder primary schools occurred with the second stage of the pilot program's Transition Phases 1 and 2, due for implementation in 2007. / Twelve teachers and 329 students from the high school and feeder primary schools became involved at the second state of the pilot program. All students were provided with a textbook, and teachers were free to choose how or when these books would be used with their students. Surveys were administered to teachers and students at the beginning of the year and end of the first semester. Tests were designed and administered throughout the study and comparisons were made with the student's WAMSE (Western Australian Monitoring Standards in Education) score. WALNA (Western Australian Literacy and Numeracy Assessment) and the Department of Education and the University of Western Australia's WAMSE scores were used to investigate changes in students' achievement and progress. Interviews with teachers and students were conducted to review the pilot program and investigate anomalies in students' results. The study found differences in students' Achievement and Progress based on WAMSE scores. Most teachers who adopted the program believed that it led to improved student learning and understanding of Number concepts in mathematics. All teachers at the high school and its feeder primary schools have continued to use the ICE-EM textbooks as part of their teaching and learning program. Increased uniformity among the primary schools was beneficial for the high school's Year 8 mathematics program. The results also indicated the need for caution when using State and National testing to report on student progress and achievement.

The development of affirmative action strategies designed to achieve equal employment opportunity has been studied along six dimensions of functioning within four separate organisations. Three of these organisations were participants in the Federal Government's Affirmative Action Pilot Program in 1984/5, and one was not. It has been shown that change occurred in a continuous developmental sequence, here called an "Affirmative Action Continuum", within each of these six dimensions over the period of study, with each organisation following a similar sequence of movement. Exceptions occurred where an organisation made no movement at all, or where one or more of the sequential processes was omitted or displaced, in a dimension. The reasons for some of these exceptions, and some of their consequences for later action, have been explored. It has been shown that simultaneous activity occurred across several, dimensions, so that no organisation acted upon only one dimension in isolation from all others. There was some chronological sequencing between dimensions. The indicators of movement along the Affirmative Action Continuum within each dimension were used to describe the change process in each organisation. These indicators proved to be useful both in this regard, and in placing each organisation an the Affirmative Action Continuum in each dimension at two different points in time. In this way, the indicators' usefulness was shown to generalise to four very different institutions, thus suggesting applicability beyond the bounds of this particular study. It is intended that the results of this dissertation, and in particular the model of the Affirmative Action Continuum and the indicators described in Chapter Two, be used by Equal Employment Opportunity practitioners to facilitate their decision making about sequencing of activities designed to achieve equal employment oppportunity.

Most people agree that the internationalization of RMB follows a three-step strategy, i.e. turn RMB into a settlement currency, investment currency, and reserve currency. The promulgation of the ¡§Administrative Rules on Pilot Program of RMB Settlement of Cross-border Trade Transactions¡¨ on July 2, 2009 demonstrated that China has officially begun to facilitate the use of currency in trade settlement. The start of RMB cross-border trade settlement not only stands for new function of RMB but also brings new opportunities. Therefore, a fundamental motivation for this research is to explore how will it influence correspondent banking business and what business opportunities it offer to correspondent banking business? This thesis takes the case of W Bank, a world leading correspondent banking service provider for example. By discussing value chain of the correspondent banking business and studying the business model of W Bank, we depict how W Bank can exploit the new business opportunity and conclude that W Bank, a U.S.-based bank, remains in a good position to offer RMB-denominated services.

In 2006, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) accepted an industry proposal called the Commercial Groundfish Integration Pilot Program (CGIPP), which integrated each of the seven commercial groundfish fisheries in British Columbia. The industry proposal, developed by the Commercial Industry Caucus (CIC), was the result of guiding principles developed by DFO that focused on the conservation of certain rockfish species on the Pacific Coast. If industry had not developed a plan, DFO would have developed an alternative fishing plan (AFP). This thesis evaluates whether DFO's conservation objectives were met under the CGIPP and if there were any social and economic impacts. These same impacts are compared to what may have occurred under the AFP. The results of this thesis indicate that the CGIPP is a sustainable template for multi-species commercial fisheries--a first step in achieving an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management.

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