<p> Within the field of K&ndash;12 education, collaborative partnerships between research institutions, state and local school systems, and intermediary actors are becoming more prevalent, especially in some of the largest urban school districts in the United States. Despite their growth, very little is understood about the internal working dynamics of these partnerships and the discursive processes explaining how these institutions, with very different cultures, histories and missions are coming together to bridge professional knowledge. The purpose of this study was to understand the similarities and differences between the researchers, developers, and practitioners in one such partnership, The National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools (NCSU). Drawing from key documents, six months of design team meetings, field notes, participant feedback and reflection forms, debrief meeting notes, progress reports, meeting agendas and notes, and participant cognitive interviews, I used Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and positioning theory to understand the partners&rsquo; interacting &lsquo;activity systems&rsquo; and how they positioned themselves and one another in the evolving context of the NCSU&rsquo;s design work as they worked as a District Innovation Design Team (DIDT). This also helped me understand the contradictions that led to the tensions that unraveled within the partnership. Positioning provided key insight about the cultural and historical contexts of the partners. It also informed how the partners gradually evolved into community, despite the variety of boundary spanning strategies used somewhat prematurely by the developers in an effort to accelerate their formation into a collective identity. Evidence suggests that once the design team engaged in school and district-level data collection and analysis to inform the similarities of their school contexts, they were able to see themselves as a collective. During design team meetings the researchers and developers functioned successfully as boundary spanners. However, outside of the meetings they tended to struggle much more to find a &lsquo;lingua franca.&rsquo; This relates to the first tension that emerged within the partnership over time &ndash; attaining the object with adequate expertise. Each partner had a specific area of expertise that served as a critical tool in the design of the prototype. The real expertise however, was in how different individuals positioned themselves to access this valuable expertise. All three of the partner institutions held fast to their original role designations, assumptions and expectations about the obligations of themselves and one another, which was in conflict with the fluid nature of the design work in which they were engaged that necessitated an openness to evolving roles. The second tension that emerged was attaining the object with adequate resources, including: time, human resources, and district support. The concepts of boundary spanning and boundary objects were central to understanding my findings related to how the different partners crossed institutional and hierarchical lines. The long-term nature of many partnerships in education provides the opportunity for participants from diverse institutional backgrounds to establish a shared knowledge base and range of shared experiences to draw from; thus &ldquo;leveling the playing field&rdquo; of expertise over time. As a result, this encourages a more egalitarian mindset, and decreases the potential for an imbalance of power. This expertise became a vital cultural tool for the new community of the School Innovation Design Teams (SIDTs) to draw from as they then took the prototype design and used it as their key tool and rule for development and refinement. How the partners positioned themselves, given their institutional role served as either a tool for boundary crossing or hindered it with &lsquo;boundary blocking.&rsquo; Intermediaries bring a new dimension to partnerships for education researchers to explore in the context of school improvement. This dissertation is one of the first of its kind to look at intermediaries in this way and provides timely insight into how education partnerships function when harnessing the expertise of these less understood organizations.</p>

<p> Words are a human medium for relaying any and all psychic states, from mundane to profound, and as a medium of description language also is considered an archetype. In the practice of psychotherapy the practitioner and client must find common linguistic ground in order to collaborate effectively and facilitate the therapeutic process. This thesis utilizes hermeneutic, alchemical hermeneutic, and heuristic methodologies&mdash; interweaving mythology, philosophy, psychology, and literature&mdash;as a means of emphasizing the poetic nature of the soul and a multifaceted approach to what James Hillman referred to as "soul-making." The research is guided by the principal question: How does language shift the imaginative landscape and deepen experience? Hermes is present in this work as a mythological figure as well as the archetypal representation of shape-shifting, uncertainty, and the ability to move in and out of literal and nonliteral realms, emphasizing the importance of metaphor in the therapeutic encounter.</p><p>

The purpose of this study is to investigate historical and linguistic forces that interact to undermine school achievement in Haiti. From a sociocultural perspective, this study explores the social, political, and historical forces that mediate language ideology and practices in Haitian schools and how such ideology and practices influence students' academic achievement. This study analyzes the role of French and Creole in schools and investigates the linguistic tensions in the Haitian society where Creole, the home language of both students and teachers and the only language broadly used in the country, is relegated to secondary importance in education and other institutional settings. The study relies on ethnographic data collected in a third grade, a fourth grade, a fifth grade, and a sixth grade classroom in a private and a public school in a semi-urban area around the capital city of Haiti as well as data collected in different sectors of the society (e.g. state and private institutions). Building upon the literature regarding classroom discourses and the literature on sociocultural theory, coloniality, language ideology, and symbolic domination, this study problematizes language and educational practices in Haiti and offers recommendations for rebuilding Haiti's educational system in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake of January 12th 2010. Given the role of students' home language in their instruction, this study argues that any effort aiming the revitalization of the school system in Haiti needs to take into consideration issues related to language in the education system.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 52-57). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Equality and diversity legislation across the UK and Australia has stimulated the health profession sector to make workplace equality and diversity policies transparent to service users (Wadham et al.2010; RCN 2016; GMC 2016; WGEA 2012). However, research literature has identified inequalities within the healthcare workplace as reported by health professions students. Specifically, research has identified issues concerning identities (gender, age, sexuality etc.) adversely interplaying with students' workplace learning experiences (Rees & Monrouxe 2011; Illing et al. 2013;Monrouxe, Rees, et al. 2014). Such negative learning experiences (i.e.discrimination, abuse) have been found to affect students' retention and success (Northall et al. 2016). Despite research shedding light on these issues, studies have typically explored individual identities and demographics and neglected how students' intersecting identities shape their learning experiences, retention and success. Furthermore, research has only offered recommendations for enhancing retention and success of students, rather than exploring the issues affecting retention and success in health professions education. This thesis explicitly explores what and how multiple intersecting personal and professional identities shape healthcare students' learning, retention and success in the context of gendered environments and professions (i.e. male- and female-dominated contexts). Underpinned by social constructionist, narrative and feminist methodologies (Kitzinger 1995; Hunting 2014), I conducted a large secondary analysis on 2255 workplace learning experiences from across the UK and Australia as well as multiple health professions. To follow on from the secondary analysis, I led a multi-site longitudinal audio diary study across two sites in the UK, to explore health professional students' workplace learning experiences in the context of male- and female-dominated environments. Multiple cross-sectional and longitudinal qualitative approaches were employed to explore the data, including thematic, narrative, positioning, and case-study analytic methods. Novel findings from my thesis highlight how participants narrated their intersecting personal and professional identities within male- and female-dominated contexts. I found how recurrent tensions and power imbalances between intersecting identities, learning experiences and environments across time led to an adverse impact on healthcare participants' thoughts and reflections about their learning, retention and success in the health professions. Sensitising the participants to tensions concerning how they negotiate their intersecting personal and professional identities are valuable for understanding and influencing their retention and success. Furthermore, findings from my thesis provide critical recommendations to enhancing healthcare students' workplace learning, retention and success in the health professions, through incorporating intersectionality into healthcare education curricula. The recommendations made in this thesis contribute to helping understand and support a diversifying healthcare workforce and shed light on potential issues around healthcare workforce shortages, which can be addressed through enhancing health professions' educational policies and practice.