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Student discipline has been issue for higher education administrators in the founding of college campuses. Today’s student conduct administrator is faced with complex issues that require an understanding of the legal requirements of due process while supporting the education mission of the institution. However, little research has addressed student conduct administrators as professionals and no research has explored their decision-making process. This qualitative study examined eight student conduct administrators and how they make decisions in their positions through the concepts of justice and care. These individuals were employed at large public research institutions at mid-level, working full time in student conduct. In-depth interviews were utilized to collect data that were categorized and evaluated through the lenses of justice, based on the framework of Kohlberg, and care, based on the framework of Gilligan. The findings indicated that student conduct administrators used both justice and care in their decision making. Justice was seen primarily through the findings phase of the student conduct process, when a student conduct administrator must determine whether the student code of conduct has been violated. Care was seen primarily through the sanctioning phase, when a student conduct administrator must decide what outcome should occur if the student has violated the code of conduct. The findings suggest that gender had no impact on the use of justice and care, as all participants used both concepts.

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This case study of two combined grade 7 and 8 classrooms investigated the qualities of student engagement during a modified Four Blocks (Cunningham, Hall & Defee, 1998) literacy blocks intervention. The teachers’ experiences with implementing and engaging their students in literacy blocks were also examined. Qualities of student engagement were described across four domains: affective, behavioural, cognitive and social. Participant interviews, professional development meetings and classroom observations were analyzed to describe instructional context and teacher experiences during the implementation of literacy blocks. Teacher involvement and opportunities for choice seemed to positively impact student engagement. Findings suggest that student engagement may be increased through the effective use of collaborative learning strategies and the explicit teaching of strategies and skills leading to the gradual release of responsibility. Data provided insight into the teacher experiences of implementing literacy blocks and suggests that further research into teacher professional development to support implementation is needed.

This study investigates the relationship between the practice of Kundalini yoga and the development of interpersonal and intrapersonal awareness in Middle Years students. Secondary aims were to provide reflection time for students in their school day and to find out whether the participants were better able to cope with stress. A qualitative method was applied. Two consent forms were sent to the participants’ parents. One granted permission to participate in the yoga sessions, the other requested permission to use the students’ journals as data. There were 16 yoga sessions over three weeks. After each session, the participants and the instructor/researcher wrote reflective journal entries. Twenty-nine students participated in the yoga sessions, but only 15 student journals were used for data collection. Results included growth in interpersonal and intrapersonal awareness, growth in physical flexibility and awareness, and a desire to have relaxation during the regular school day.

This thesis is a phenomenological, qualitative study of student resistance and seeks to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between community, communication, and resistance by exploring the social contexts that provide meaning to the resistant behaviours of six graduates of an independent Christian school. In doing so, this thesis takes a transactional perspective of resistance – a perspective that recognises students as having multiple and shifting identities, and schools as being complex, social settings which contextualises student resistant behaviours. Integral to this perspective is a communicative potential of resistance that can be used as a means of signalling, generating, and building dialogue among the various groups of people who make up the school community. This study suggest that school need to go beyond seeing resistance as purely an expression of political statements or an engagement in power struggles and consider how resistance can be a potential communicative act. Specifically, resistance signals a need for reflection and dialogue on the ways in which the ideals of that community are both intended and experienced.

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This is an ethnographic study of student politics relating to Palestine-Israel within British universities. Palestine-Israel has been a focal issue within British campuses for over four decades, manifesting in intense, high profile conflicts, which have been subject to competing political and media framings. In this thesis, I identify this as a case of what Nancy Fraser (2008) describes as 'abnormal justice', a situation of incommensurable, spiralling conflicts over the 'what', 'how' and 'who' of political community. I show how students' engagement with Palestine-Israel raises spectres of entangled histories of the Holocaust and colonialism, and tensions over the national versus global boundaries of the polity. Moving beyond abstract portrayals of this as a conflict between discrete ethno-religious groups or autonomous moral actors, I attend to students' complex personal experiences of these political dynamics. My central argument is that PalestineIsrael exerts discomforting, at times irreconcilable, claims over participating students, arising out of violent histories, ongoing racisms, complex transnational attachments and " the rationalism of post-imperial British universities. I trace how unsettling ambiguities and a desire for moral coher.,e nce are enacted within this campus politics, analysing how institutional practices of containment and shaming lead to 'tragic' moments of passionate aggression, which then circulate in the media. Contributing to a cross-disciplinary turn towards affect, aesthetics and ethics in the study of public spheres, I stake a claim for responsive ethnography with ethical ambitions. I do so by drawing our attention beyond spectacular political conflicts, showing how students cultivate reflexive practices and express uncertainty, care and commitment within overlooked, 'ordinary' spaces of the campus. In these ways, I show how attending to intersubjective political experience provides vital insights into the motivations and desires at stake in justice conflicts, and operis up expansive possibilities for reflexivity and creativity within the public institutions of democratic societies.

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.