Education

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Open Access
A [Re]membered Place: Missed Opportunities of the "Educational" for Incarcerated Youth and the Ongoing Effects of York Detention Centre's Closure
(2016-11-25) Davey, Natalie Joy; DiPaolantonio, Mario G.
This dissertation investigates the question of what is educational in the education of incarcerated youth? Biesta (2012) writes that one goal of education is or should be subjectification, pointing to educations orientation towardsstudents as subjects of action and responsibility (2012). If educations aim, then, is for students to become subjects in their own right, what happens when objectification dictates how incarcerated youth are taught? Can that objectification be disrupted from the inside out? Prefaced by a philosophical consideration of concatenated concepts such as the wasted lives (Bauman, 2003) of the incarcerated and the sporadic identity of the teacher (Biesta, 2013) in such spaces, my research focuses on the continued impact of the educational site that was York Detention Centre in Toronto. YDC was formerly the central booking facility for young offenders in Ontario, closed in 2009, and this dissertation is a metaphorical return to what I suggest was an unlikely and, therefore, missed educational site for incarcerated youth to become. The ongoing educational impact of the former detention centre emerges through a narrative analysis of remembered stories shared by participant interviewees of both the teaching and learning they experienced within its walls. By compiling the narratives of four former staff and residents, and adding to them my own memories of teaching in that space, this place-based (Till, 2004, 2011) project culminates in an aesthetic narrative curation of missed educational happenings. This new educational story of YDC works to disrupt the limited discourse that exists around incarcerated youth and education in the present day.
Open Access
A Psychosocial Study of the Professional Recourse to the Adolescent Body in Education
(2018-11-21) Guzel, Aziz; Britzman, Deborah P.
A Psychosocial Study of The Professional Recourse to The Adolescent Body in Education examines formulations of the adolescent body in the major social establishments of education, psychiatry, politics, and law. The dissertation shows how the discontentments of adolescent subjectivity are linked to biological irregularities understood as objective realities. Despite the growing challenges posed by this visions and the difficulties it presents which remain unsolved, the non-dynamic view of the adolescent body survives as a chief organizing medium for relations of care in social establishments. This imaginary of experience maintains a belief system wherein adolescent subjectivity is premised upon being explained with accuracy and legitimacy, largely without question, despite the actuality that this vision is not supported by relevant evidence. These messages provide a paradox that frames the central inquiry in this dissertation: The stresses and sorrows that express the spectrum of ordinary and exceptional adolescent subjectivity show the striking ways in which the adolescent body is the site for the enactment of confusion, conflict and pain. The following intervention involves a concurrent analysis that explores the tensions between five approachesthe educational, legal, medical, psychosocial and popular genesis of the dynamic of adolescent subjectivity. I characterize the significant difficulties that arise when the genesis of adolescent subjectivity is taken to be determined by the gesture of a non-dynamic adolescent body that internalizes causes in the body and externalizes the work of care and its provision. The tensions in these approaches are taken up through a series of case studies drawn from medical, legal, and literary sources. Starting from a critique of the limitations that are inherent to the vision of the adolescent body as non-dynamic, throughout this dissertation I develop an alternative approach: Using case reasoning, I respond to these discourses, which still hinge on the phantasies embedded and persistent within institutional frameworks, by looking to the account of the adolescent body in psychosocial constructions that suggest that the difficulty of working with and responding to the disturbance in adolescence requires a shift in thinking about transition, transformation, and development.
Open Access
A View from the Classroom: An Inquiry into How Educators of Ontario's Literacy Basic Skills Program Conceptualize Adult Literacy Learning
(2019-03-05) Yasin, Farra; Ippolito, John
The Ontario Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities (MTCU) uses the human capital framework advocated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to structure its Literacy Basic Skills (LBS) programs as an employment strategy (MTCU, 2016 pp. 1, 4-6). These policies embody understandings and values of adult literacy education that diverge from the frameworks used in the scholarly literature (Compton-Lilly & Nayan, 2016; Black & Yasukawa; 2014). Given the divergence, this dissertation presents the findings of an inquiry into how LBS educators conceptualize literacy and how these understandings of adult literacy learning are applied to their practice. LBS educators are the frontline workers of adult education programming in Ontario: they are responsible for delivering the program in ways that are in line with the directives of the MTCU while also being sensitive to the unique contexts and socio-cultural experiences of learners. The data for this research includes 14 audio-recorded interviews of LBS educators and field note observations of practice. The data has been analyzed using a grounded theory 3-part coding system (Glasner & Strauss, 1999, pp. 101-112; Glesne, 2010, p. 21; Lichtman, 2013, pp. 78-80, 257-258). From the data, it is evident that educators believe that literacy is a cognitive process and a social practice that is shaped by learners experiences, and these understandings of literacy directly inform their practice. To conclude the project, I present a critical holistic pedagogical framework that crystalizes information from research and policy with the data collected from the inquiry to offer insights into how literacy education can be advanced to support policy, practice and future directions for research on adult literacy education in Ontario.
Open Access
Accidents in Reading: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry into the Reader's Emotional Life
(2019-07-02) Labove, Alecia Lynn; Tarc, Aparna Mishra
In this dissertation, I examine the emotional landscape of literacy and its breakdowns to suggest that difficulties in reading have something to teach us about literacy and education. Engaging psychoanalytic theories of development, language, and literacy I situate reading as a psycho social practice that at once leans on the reader's emotional life and can be felt to undo the reader from the inside out. To do so, I investigate fictional representations of readers who find themselves exorbitantly affected in the act of reading. Attending to the ways in which reading difficulties telegraph back to the infant's earliest conflicts as depicted by child psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, I analyze accidents in reading that represent three different emotional situations: greed, trauma, and reparation. My engagement with these accidents in reading contributes to conversations about the significance of the unconscious in personality development, educational life, and our dependence on others in the social world. With this study I do not seek to "fix" reading difficulties but rather, to better recognize reading as an existential "fix" that can renew our stories of self and of what it means to inhabit a world with others.
Open Access
Addressing Sexism and Associated Gender Injustices Through Social Justice Mathematics Curricula
(2021-07-06) Gunthrope, Gerrenne Eustasia; Barrett, Sarah
Patriarchal and sexist discourses have limiting and negative influences on ideologies about sex and gender, personal and social identities, social practices, power relations, interpersonal relationships, and other aspects of being human, in Western democracies like Canada and the United States of America. Using different types of mathematics as interpretive tools has the potential to deepen adolescents' understanding of social injustices that are informed by patriarchal and sexist discourses. Two social justice mathematics (SJM) curricula for middle school students, and one SJM curriculum for Grade 9 students, were analyzed in this study using Michelle Lazar's (2005) principles for conducting feminist critical discourse analysis, as well as an analytical method that was adapted from James Gee's (2011) method for carrying out discourse analysis. The findings of this project give insight into what should be considered by SJM educators who would like to design SJM curricula that can specifically support students' development of a revolutionary feminist consciousness regarding sexism and associated gender injustices. Based on the findings common to all three SJM curricula, several implications related to SJM curriculum development, as well as research about it, emerged.
Open Access
Aging in Digital Worlds: What Is the Experience of Seniors Using Accessible Government Websites?
(2016-09-20) Anderson, Kenneth Howard; Owston, Ronald D.
Previous research has shown that seniors often face barriers to internet website accessibility due to age-related physical disabilities and memory loss issues. Web content accessibility guidelines (W3C WCAG 2.0, 2008) have been employed by government legislation to assist in making websites accessible to people with disabilities, including seniors suffering from age-related ability changes. This study examined how usable seniors found these technically accessible websites, adopting a mixed methods approach to gather data on the user experience of seniors while accessing technically accessible websites. The study provided evidence as to whether technical accessibility standards met the needs of seniors while accessing government services on the internet, while documenting the reported experiences of seniors using those websites.
Open Access
American Sign Language (ASL) Literacy and ASL Literature: A Critical Appraisal
(2014-07-09) Byrne, Andrew Patrick Joseph; Mayer, Connie
While there has been widespread acceptance of American Sign Language (ASL) as the language of instruction in residential schools for native/non-native ASL students and in colleges and universities as a foreign language, there has been little research on defining ASL literacy and ASL literature. In addition, while there has been academic debate on the existence or nonexistence of ASL literacy, there have been no studies that have defined and have described the characteristics of ASL literacy and ASL literature. To fill this void, this study answered the following research questions: (a) At a time when there is increasing recognition of ASL literacy, how would ASL literature be defined? (b) What are the features that characterize ASL literature? (c) What would such a literature comprise (e.g., genres)? To what extent is there a comprehensive taxonomy of genres captured in VHS and DVD publications? (d) What are examples of ASL literary works included in this taxonomy? A qualitative research design is used (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). The methodology utilized was a cross-case analysis of five interviews (four individual interviews and one focus group interview) using the constant comparison method where the information is categorized into responses (Hewitt-Taylor, 2001). Eight native ASL respondents in the field of ASL and Deaf Studies who are knowledgeable and have expertise with ASL literature were contacted and interviewed. The rationale for this study was that such an investigation of ASL literacy and ASL literature will provide research in the field on this neglected topic. Such a study would have value and importance to the ASL culture and ASL community, who cherish the values embedded in ASL literature, as well as accomplish education goals to instruct native/non-native ASL students with quality ASL literature.
Open Access
An Aesthetic Education: Conceptualizing Education through Contemporary Artists and their Work
(2015-01-26) Bourke, Melanie Michelle; Britzman, Deborah P.
This dissertation inquires into a theory of learning through an examination of the intersection of art and education. With the work of educational theorists who explore how art may call our attention to the conflicts and contradictions that reside in education, the dissertation asks how we might understand an education that requires intervention. Drawing upon Adorno’s philosophical theories of negativity and aesthetics and psychoanalytic theories, I suggest that an analysis of the relationship between art and education can be furthered through the study of contemporary artists and their works. The focus is on the visual and written works of Kara Walker, Christian Boltanski, and Roee Rosen. Three tensions are explored: 1) that education resides in the realm of both social discourse and psychical life; 2) that education is composed from its limitations and possibilities; and, 3) disruption in a theory of learning is both a necessity and a new problem. The dissertation argues that the relationship between art and education constitutes a theory of learning that is also a delicate balance between the disruption of conflicted conditions and the re-construction of new ideas. Further, it is a theory where learning cannot be anticipated, but instead only reported on in retrospect. Learning therefore involves the paradox that a possibility for new understandings comes at the risk of a failure to understand.
Open Access
An Interdisciplinary Study of the Rule of Trauma and Early Host-Foreign Language Immersions in Significant Language Learning and Translingual Identity Formations
(2015-08-28) Salsberg, Maria Fernanda; Britzman, Deborah
Through the reading of various self-narratives that focus on adults looking back at their memories of host/foreign language learning during the periods of childhood and adolescence, this interdisciplinary dissertation studies language as a collective and individual transformational phenomenon. Drawing from my own experiences as a foreign language learner and second language educator, and from discussions of psychoanalytic views on migration and language learning, my thesis looks at language beginnings as influencing the initial and ongoing development of the speaking subject. I research the manner in which translingual narratives, as literary discursive constructs, testify to writers’ attempts at symbolizing their realities within the continuum of constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed identities. By examining writers’ primary processes through descriptions of dreams, narrated breaks in language, slips of pen and excesses in discourse, my work studies the ego’s attachment to language and focuses on the manner in which host-foreign language immersions, as socio-emotional occurrences may interact with and respond to individuals’ known and seemingly forgotten experiences. Aside from paying close attention to the affective and social authority that resides within all internalized languages, my work zeros in on the concept of early forced versus chosen socio-cultural and linguistic relocations. I look at how host/foreign immersions and significant language learning equate to emotional trauma, and into the manner in which such trauma often becomes synthesized as a benign occurrence, enabling individuals to transform and redefine their lives within the natural dynamics of aggression that exist within subjects’ third space.
Open Access
Archaeology Education in Ontario: A Relational Inquiry of Indigenous Museums and Artifacts
(2023-03-28) Martinello, Christopher Stefan; Farley, Lisa H. E.
Many sectors of society, such as justice, health care, and education, are moving towards a relationship of Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. Ontario’s secondary school History curriculum, however, especially that which concerns the deep history of Turtle Island, is still almost exclusively based on the findings of Western scientific archaeology and methods of artifact interpretation generated by colonially-trained archaeologists. Writers of this curriculum have traditionally not included Indigenous worldviews, ways of knowing, and relationships with artifacts in course content, even as professional archaeologists, historians, and curators are moving to more collaborative research frameworks with Indigenous communities. This research project investigates what Indigenous archaeologies entail, and how Indigenous approaches to understanding archaeological artifacts in museum contexts (re)centre, (re)member, (re)cognize, and (re)present Indigenous ways of knowing to decolonize my teaching of the history curriculum. Since I am not an Indigenous person, the research method and paradigm of my research is a Western qualitative approach based on critical and decolonizing methodologies that is affected by and respectful of Indigenous methodologies. Specifically, I conduct fieldwork in a selection of museums organized by Indigenous archaeologists/educators to learn how Indigenous experts are using artifacts to narrate history. One goal of the fieldwork is to identify themes, concepts, and approaches that Indigenous educators have selected to represent Indigenous histories to diverse public audiences. My dissertation applies that learning to consider what it means to change how I teach the history curriculum that spans the time before colonization. Drawing on concepts of multivocality, storytelling, fencing, and Métissage, the study interprets museum galleries as research data and recommends new directions in teaching the history curriculum of the time before colonization that align with the mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its Calls to Action.
Open Access
Archaic Echoes, the word and the transference in texts: A psychobiographical study of Franoise Dolto
(2016-11-25) Saint-Onge, Kathleen; Britzman, Deborah P.
The famous French psychoanalyst, Franoise Dolto (1908-1988), proposes a remarkable narrative of life between conception and weaning. Thoroughly original while loyally Freudian, Dolto discovers that precocious audition in a fluid blur of subject and object impacts psychical structuration, as phonmes inform nascent symbolization. Doltos oeuvre derives from the assumption that life is sourced in the unconscious, thus she delivers a powerful attestation of the primary processes. Following Freud, this study elaborates Doltos particularly salient theory-by-testimony of the transference as an inter-relational libidinal dialecticthe wild circulation of unconscious affects. Dolto is the foremost theorist of the archaic stage of psychical development, wherein originates the transference as securitizing continuity with our idiosyncratic libidinal histories. And Doltos unusual body of work, equal parts personal and professional, permits an exceptional demonstration of the passive movement of the autobiographical in the theoretical, as her own archaic echoes reverberate in homonymic repetitions and weighty silences. Finding such tracesa notion I source in Derridasuggests that the transport of dream-work through words produces in writing (thus enabling in reading) what I advance as the transference in texts. Doltos exploration of our unspeakable time before thought is supported by a half-century of clinical practice, and engaging Doltos complex material, I venture into six overlapping fields of words as objets mdiateurs: filiation, transmission, listening, reading, speaking and writing. Dolto proffers convincing evidence that primitive audition destines language to elude grammars, rooting it instead in filiation symbolique: a paradoxical ontology of melancholy and play, as dreams offer consolations for our difficult coming to reality, and we only advance on confirmations of archaic securitywitnessing. Thus bridging a compelling French corpus with English audiences, this dissertation unsettles biography, linguistics, literacy and pedagogy, as the investment of enigmatic phonemes with indelible significance troubles the word with a phantastic prehistory.
Open Access
Are you looking at my madness? Examining Canadian-Caribbean youth's intergenerational stories of mental health
(2020-11-13) Naidoo, Karen; Dlamini, Nombuso
This study investigated resources used by Canadian-Caribbean youth to define and respond to mental health and mental illness; as well, the study examined the effects that culture, history, and intergenerational knowledge have on the mental health definitions of the participants. The study used Narrative Inquiry as the methodological approach to investigate the stories of 12 young people between 18-25 years old who are grandchildren of Caribbean women who migrated to Canada under the West Indian Domestic Workers Scheme. This generation of participants was important to focus on because it allowed the researcher to collaborate or dispute the well-documented notions of strength associated with the former domestic workers. The study examined the interconnection between notions of strength and mental health in the experiences of these young people; as well, it looked at the tools that these young people use to negotiate mental health and mental health care. Data from the study indicates that there are multiple factors that shape the definition and experiences of mental health among youth of Caribbean heritage. Participants narratives indicate that the language used to talk about and address mental health or madness draws from the history of indentured labour, slavery, colonialism, and the West Indian Domestic Workers Scheme. Similarly, participants narratives show that this history has been passed on from one generation to another. Some narratives highlight what it means to demonstrate strength and to rely on the migration survival story and prayer in order to deal with mental health issues. Other narratives show how Black masculine identities are simultaneously reinforced while being redesigned through the use of the mad gaze. These narratives contribute to a wider discussion surrounding mental health and mental healthcare in Canada.
Open Access
Ask Again: A Novel Experiment in Early Childhood Knowledge Relations through a Phenomenological Study of Claims on the Thinking Child's Words and Development
(2020-11-13) Angus, Lucille Kathleen; Britzman, Deborah P.
Early childhood, and the wild and tender moments of its care and education, has been depicted by those who love it. Thus, in a profession inscribed by the throngs of love surrounding the work of care and education, early childhood presents an urgent problem for knowledge. The significance of the inquiries explored through my dissertation project are posited on the idea that at the core of debates about how best to care for, educate and respond to young children participating in institutional life, is a constantly communicating child. Communicationas that which both transforms and describes the worldis treated as a horizon for experimental explorations between body and language. This dissertation draws upon phenomenological description as a method that addresses the ways the study of the child has contributed to the humanizing of the child and goes beyond to speculate new methodological possibilities. The dissertations central question, which asks how to undertake a description of the child from the childs perspective, is explored through three scenes animated by the questions of communication between children and adults. The first delves into the lectures of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2010) through debates on the nature of knowledge, research, teaching, and learning that shape the history of approaches to the world of childhood. The second turns to the artistry of childrens literature to think with Maurice Sendaks methods for animating the depths and vicissitudes of childrens experiences. The third explores relations of meaning in interviews with children and how the researcher can attend to structures of symbolization that open beyond words. The dissertation contends with the problematic of how caring for thinking has been handled in the fields of early childhood education, phenomenology, psychoanalysis and in the craft and study of childrens literature.
Open Access
Be(coming) the Change You Want to See in the World: Social Justice Teacher Education as Affective Craft
(2015-01-26) Airton, Lee James Elizabeth; Brushwood-Rose, Chloe
This dissertation begins from the difficulty faced by the field of social justice teacher education (SJTE) in setting itself apart from other aspects of teacher education. SJTE’s history of internal and external evidence pressures has distracted the field from reckoning with ‘social justice’ as a moving horizon and not a static outcome against which it can be found effective. If ‘social justice’ cannot be the outcome holding SJTE together and apart from other kinds of teacher education, how does SJTE work? To answer this question, I use Deleuzo-Guattarian and affect theories to position SJTE as an assemblage: an ever-becoming whole composed of the relations among its non-sovereign yet affecting/affected components. In the first analytical chapter, I assemble what SJTE is, does and wants by analyzing 58 field-defining texts. Regardless of what SJTE may say about itself, the field is characterized by an affective capacity to inhabit irresolvable tensions; this capacity expresses assemblage becoming and, therefore, an incremental conception of social change. The second and third analytical chapters analyze the SJTE-assemblage at the level of everyday life. Through multi-sensory fieldwork at education conferences and experimental conversations with practitioners, I tracked moments of intensity bordering on rupture. These were frequently events unthinkable among ‘equity experts’ yet recalling familiar forms of student resistance. In the second chapter, I investigate what happens at these thresholds where SJTE threatens to come apart. In the third chapter, I assemble an emergent theory of resistance that challenges prevailing conceptions of SJTE practice ‘gone wrong.’ My findings reveal the implicit ways in which SJTE reckons with ‘social justice’ as a moving horizon. Although SJTE tends toward political and conceptual rigidity, I identified its enacted and unspoken flexibility in how e.g., race or sexuality can emerge otherwise in everyday life. This capacity of openness to the surprises of social difference or difference-to-come is a pivotal yet unnamed contribution of the field that is expressed in its craft. I conclude by envisioning how SJTE might explicitly attend to depth – the sovereign political will of teachers as agents of social change – and surface: what is affective, implicit and pre-personal.
Open Access
Biblical Text Through Art: An Exploration of Secondary School Students' Bible-Based Artwork and it's Representations of Jewishness
(2015-08-28) Reingold, Matthew Aaron; Brushwood-Rose, Chloe
I conducted a practitioner research study at a Jewish high school in Toronto in order to understand how teaching and learning through arts can help facilitate more meaningful understandings of and connections to the Bible. I wanted to better understand why students’ best recollections of learned material at the end of the year were arts-based projects, especially given the existing research in arts-based Jewish education, which suggests that the arts are not emphasized in high school curricula. Students worked in groups of two or three and created arts-based interpretations of Numbers Chapter 12, and wrote explanatory paragraphs of their work. Following the completion of their projects, I interviewed students. In the interviews, students explained what they created, what motivated their work, and what they thought about learning through the arts. Drawing upon the projects and the interviews, three distinct themes emerged about what the arts offered students that conventional forms of teaching and assignments did not. The first theme that emerged was that the arts offered students the opportunity to take on the persona of a biblical commentator, and through this opportunity, students formed their own opinions and insights into the text, which resulted in the text becoming more meaningful. The second theme that emerged was that through the creative process students formed personal associations and connections with the narrative and its characters. As a result of these associations, students began to see the text as directly relevant to their lives, and therefore the text itself became more valuable to them. The third theme that emerged was that students felt that the arts offered them valuable educational experiences, including the opportunity to express creativity and to experience genuine collaboration. Considering the three themes as a collective grouping, it is evident that the arts offer students specific and tangible benefits in relation to textual knowledge, meaning-making, personal connections to text, and abilities to think critically and passionately about text. The study demonstrated that the arts offer teachers a powerful tool to help students develop their love of Jewish texts and deepen their relationship with their Jewishness.
Open Access
Black Girls Clap Back: Intersectionality, Black Girlhood, and Inequity in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA)
(2020-05-11) McPherson, Kisha Nicole; Jenson, Jennifer, Dr.
The diverse lives of Black girls within North America are deeply rooted in various histories of marginalization. They continue to face forms of oppression as a result of their intersectional identities, which produces consequences for their lived experiences. Literature focused on the lives of Black girls in the United States highlights and demonstrates the consistent resilience of Black girls as they struggle to resist the impacts of racism, sexism, and other barriers in their lives. Less available in scholarship, however, is data outlining and describing the circumstances that impact the social and educational realities of Black girls within a Canadian context. This qualitative study focuses on the school and social experiences of fourteen Black teenage girls living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Through the analysis of narratives collected from focus groups and interviews, the study draws connections between medias controlling images and the situations the study participants encounter at school. Using theories that centre Black girlhood, intersectionality, and Black feminist pedagogy, this research examines the thoughts and opinions of the participants as they illustrate the impact of academic streaming, differing academic expectations for Black girls, teacher microaggressions, and media stereotypes, on their experiences in school. In addition, using analyses of representation, this study assists in explaining how normalized readings of historical and contemporary representations of Black female identity construct meaning for Black girls. The goal of this study is to highlight the voices of Black girls as they speak on their own experiences and to illuminate the need for practices such as safer spaces and pedagogical approaches focused on purposeful inclusion to support the development and well-being of Black girls in the GTA.
Open Access
Black Students and the Education System - The Pursuit of Success
(2020-11-13) Thomas-Reynolds, Korina; Dlamini, Nombuso
Through in-depth qualitative interviews, I examined the contributors to the success of seven Black university alumni to discover how we can increase Black students university attendance in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). When the participants were asked which factors contributed to their success, they attributed it to their resilience, upbringing, positive role model(s), enriching learning experiences, and academic aptitude. Acknowledging the importance and significance of these factors, the thesis elucidates systemic factors, in both the participants home and school life, that either hindered or propelled them in their pursuit of a university education.
Open Access
Blended Learning in Higher Education: Exploring Students' Perceptions of Course Design, Pedagogical Approaches, and Use of Technology in an Undergraduate Visual Arts Course
(2019-03-05) Finkel-Freyger, Janna; Owston, Ronald D
Arts educators have been experiencing the pressures of current and emerging technologies and technological tools that are transforming the teaching and learning process in visual and performing arts fields in higher education. Literature demonstrates that more studies are needed on the experiences of instructors and students, and the course design choices, implementation, and uses of blended learning in higher education in the creative disciplines. Existing research on blended learning indicates that more studies on student perceptions of blended learning are needed. This qualitative case study investigated an introductory course in art history offered in the blended format to students not majoring in visual arts. I explored three research questions on the types of pedagogical and technological choices the instructor made when designing and teaching the course and the ways in which students responded to these decisions, as well as what aspects of the course were associated with student engagement. In order to investigate these research questions, I interviewed 24 students enrolled in the course, three teaching-assistants (TAs), and the course instructor, I observed face-to-face tutorials, and reviewed the course and tutorial sites in learning management system (LMS). I argue that although students prefer the flexibility that blended course design offers, interaction with the instructor is a significant aspect to maintain student engagement. Innovative means of assessment that is using the social media microblog, Twitter, for one of the assignments engaged students in writing about art and added to their satisfaction in the course. Recommendations and areas for future research are discussed.
Open Access
Border Crossings: How Academic, Social and Cultural Experiences Converge to Shape the International Education of German and Canadian Students on the Ontario-Baden-Wuerttemberg Exchange Program
(2016-09-20) Jung, Amy Magdalena; Trilokekar, Roopa Desai
Study abroad programs contribute significantly to a students academic, personal, and professional development; however, students are often unable to articulate how their international experiences translate into specific learning outcomes and demonstrate connections between their academic and nonacademic environments and experiences. This study drew on two strands of literature study abroad and student learning and retention in higher education - and interviewed 12 Canadian and German participants in the Ontario-Baden-Wrttemberg student exchange program. The study found that while reinforcing the importance of study abroad to students learning and development, students (I) distinguished between their academic, social, and cultural experiences; (II) recognized the interconnection of these experiences while abroad and at home; and (III) highlighted the importance of the classroom and academic institution as key sites to develop friendships, social networks, and a sense of belonging that ultimately enhanced students learning outcomes and experiences in the academic, social, and cultural contexts.
Open Access
Campus Mental Health: Implications for Instructors Supporting Students
(2015-12-16) Di Placito-De Rango, Maria Lucia; Gaetz, Stephen A.
The recent escalation in student suicides due to mental health problems has encouraged higher education institutions to not only modify their overall support structures, but to also (re)define the role of faculty and staff. Despite the increased attention given to student mental health in Canadian higher education institutions, little is known and understood about how instructors view their role as supporters or promoters of student mental health. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of college instructors in supporting students with mental health problems or illnesses. Participants were 42 instructors between the ages of 25 to 64 from Molize College in Toronto, Ontario. Qualitative ethnography was employed to gather data from participants, specifically through a survey questionnaire and interviews. A constructivist framework was adopted to analyze and understand the values, perceptions, meanings, and practices post-secondary instructors carry around notions of student mental health and intervention. Findings revealed that instructors were generally aware of student mental health concerns in post-secondary institutions, but that greater awareness was still warranted, namely in the areas of instructor mental health and location of support services. Findings also demonstrated that most instructors evaluated their knowledge and confidence in relation to student mental health as poor, which was often credited to limited relevant professional development and training. Additionally, data indicated that instructors carried skepticism towards the role of some student support services departments, as well as towards their own role when supporting the mental health and well-being of students. On a final note, findings revealed that instructors commonly employed four practices to support the mental health and well-being of students: conversation, referral, accommodations, and curricular inclusion and instruction. Future studies are encouraged to acknowledge the narratives of instructors through ethnographic inquiry, to allow for greater insights into their awareness, knowledge/confidence, responsibilities, and practices when it comes to supporting the mental health and well-being of students in higher education settings. Incorporating the instructor may not be a panacea for the shortcomings of current mental health policies and practices in higher education settings, but it can certainly represent a colossal step in that direction. KEYWORDS: student mental health, higher education, instructors