Browsing by Author "Simmons, Marlon"
Now showing 1 - 20 of 41
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- ItemOpen AccessA Social Ecological Approach to Leading Student Resilience: A Qualitative Multiple Case Study in Alberta Charter Schools(2017) Hooper, Christopher, Charles; Brandon, Jim; Handford, Victoria; Mendaglio, Salvatore; Simmons, Marlon; Brown, BarbaraThe phenomenon of how school leaders understand and foster the development of resilience in students is important yet there is limited research in this area. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore this phenomenon in Alberta Charter Schools (ACS) using a qualitative, multiple case study approach (Stake, 2006; Merriam, 1998). A purposeful sample composed of 20 ACS leaders from five different schools participated in the study during the 2016-17 school year. The data collection methods included semi-structured principal interviews, focus groups of school leaders, document reviews, and field notes/observations. The cross-case analysis was guided by the quintain, how school leadership bolsters resilience in students, and the study’s conceptual and theoretical frameworks. The cross-case analysis revealed five key cross-case themes. ACS leaders: (a) understood student resilience was shaped by internal and external protective factors, (b) understood resilience in terms of understanding the concept of risk, (c) fostered the development of resilience through distributed leadership, (d) fostered the development of resilience through an emphasis upon teacher learning and development, and (e) fostered the development of resilience through strategic resourcing. The transferability of this study’s findings is discussed and implications for policy, leadership practice, and educational leadership research are presented. Key words: School leadership, student resilience, multiple case study, Alberta Charter Schools
- ItemOpen AccessAction research for graduate program improvements: A response to curriculum mapping and review(Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education, 2018) Jacobsen, Michele; Eaton, Sarah Elaine; Brown, Barb; Simmons, Marlon; McDermott, MairiThere is a global trend toward improving programs and student experiences in higher education through curriculum review and mapping of degree programs. This paper describes an action research approach to program improvement for a course-based MEd degree. The driver for continual program improvement came from actions and recommendations that arose from an institutionally mandated, year-long, faculty led curriculum review of professional graduate programs in education. Study findings reveal instructors’ perceptions about how they enacted the recommendations for program improvement, including (1) developing a visual conceptualization of the program; (2) improved connections between the courses; (3) articulation of coherence in goals and expectations for students and instructors; (4) an increased focus on action research; (5) increased ethics support and scaffolding for students; and (6) the fostering of communities of practice. Study findings highlight strengths of the current program and course designs, action items, and research needed for continual program improvement.
- ItemOpen AccessAdult Immigrants Seeking Entry into the Trades in Rural Alberta: Navigating the Processes of Credentialing and Re-credentialing(2018-07-05) Ross, Douglas Robert; Jubas, Kaela; Roy, Sylvie; Simmons, Marlon; Sewell, H. Douglas; Sawchuk, Peter H.; Lock, JenniferThe purpose of this case study is to explore a sample of international power engineering students' experiences and perceptions to get a better understanding of the individual and collective strategies adopted to navigate the post-migration transition to the Canadian labour market. Along with document analysis, this thesis analyzes data gained through personal interviews and a focus group with 14 international power engineering students, with the intention of gathering input from their experiences and perceptions of (re-)credentialing to realize successful labour market entry. This thesis offers an analysis of (re-)credentialing as a contested space amidst a process of negotiating an arbitrarily imposed re-training regime. With a sociocultural framework that considers the earlier writings of Lev Vygotsky in support of the contemporary concepts of Pierre Bourdieu, the findings suggest the need for more support of mediated learning experiences to promote abilities to process new and complicated symbolic representations linked to labour market entry requirements. The findings also indicate the profound influence of a field-habitus clash on successful entry to occupations of choice.
- ItemOpen AccessCareer Change of Skilled Immigrants in Canada: A Qualitative Case Study of Immigrants Career Change and Self-Directed Learning(2022-02) Barjesteh, Vida; Guo, Shibao; Simmons, Marlon; Domene, JoseThis qualitative case study explores the learning experience of skilled immigrants whose careers were negatively impacted by uncertainty or unprecedented changes associated with their careers. While career change is a new norm in the age of digital transformation, individuals must utilize skills that help them adapt to a new environment and pivot their careers once needed. Skilled immigrants are significant contributors to the Canadian economy; therefore, it is essential to understand how they navigate their careers during an economic crisis in Canada. While most literature focuses on the career change of skilled immigrants for the first job in Canada, few studies explore a career change of skilled immigrants who have already established a career but still struggle to pivot their career once needed. This study was done from the lens of adult learning by applying two theoretical frameworks of self-directed learning and transformative learning. By applying a qualitative case study, this study explores the learning experience of twelve skilled immigrants that occurred during the transition period of a career change in Canada. The finding of this study confirms that participants self-designed their learning while they acquired new knowledge and skills for a new career. Additionally, these skilled immigrants illustrated that during the period of a career change, they developed positive characteristics that are attributed to self-directed learners. Moreover, exploration of these participants’ stories demonstrates that their perspective toward the notion of career development has transformed significantly.
- ItemOpen AccessChoice Factors Impacting Black Canadian Students’ Decisions to Attend University in Ontario(2018-10-10) Chavannes, Vidal Alexander; Gereluk, Dianne; Simmons, Marlon; Steinberg, Shirley R.; Larsen, Marianne A.; Groen, Janet Elizabeth; Spencer, BrendaThe purpose of this study was to explore, with a sample of fifteen (15) Black undergraduate students in Ontario, their considerations of the various factors that influenced their university choice process, including the decision to attend university, and to attend a particular institution. This research employed a qualitative case study methodology to understand the lived experiences of participants. Two data-collection methods were utilized, including a survey questionnaire and individual interviews. A review of the literature was conducted to devise a conceptual framework for the design and analysis of the study. The data from individual interviews, surveys and the researcher’s field notes, revealed participants' perceptions and experiences during the university application and enrolment processes, and was reviewed against the literature as well as emergent themes. Having analyzed the findings, it became clear that as Black communities in Canada have historically struggled for physical access to educational spaces, then control over the apparatus of education within those spaces, then for the development of independent Black alternatives; the lived experiences of the participants in this study, all Black undergraduate students, mirrors this trajectory. Participants, through their interview responses, told a story that would be familiar to students of educational histories pertaining to Black communities and those with the lived experience of interacting with educational spaces as Black people.
- ItemOpen AccessCommunity College Instructors and Race: Learning about Teaching a Dimension of Diversity(2016) Cooper, John Edward Charles; Jubas, Kaela; Guo, Shibao; Lund, Darren; Simmons, Marlon; Brigham, Susan MaryThe purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine community college teachers’ perceptions of racial diversity through their day-to-day interactions with students, other faculty, and the school administration. As the researcher and a part-time faculty member of a community college, I conducted interviews with seven participants from the college where I am employed, and also asked participants to engage in six weeks of journaling. Additional research included a document review of more than 550 course outlines, researching them for inclusion of racial diversity components, as well as keeping my own personal journal. My research questions focused on defining and understanding racial diversity, challenges within the classroom, addressing issues of racial diversity in a learning environment and the development and delivery of diversity-focused curriculum. Based on my data analysis, four key findings emerged: racial diversity in the classroom is difficult to define and embrace; addressing racial diversity issues is challenging for educators; faculty need administrative support to embrace diversity; and the development and delivery of a more diversity-focused curriculum is necessary. I concluded that educators are challenged by racial diversity in the classroom environment, resources to understand and embrace racial diversity are not always present or accessible, and more action must be taken to support faculty in the development and delivery of diversity-focused curriculum.
- ItemOpen AccessCrossing Borders in Schools: Racialized Experiences and Inclusive Education(2020-12-22) Aujla-Bhullar, Sonia Kaur; Lund, Darren E.; DePass, Cecille; Simmons, MarlonMy doctoral research seeks to examine and reveal the ways in which schools engage with multicultural and racially diverse communities as a means of achieving inclusive education. This research is actively intended to inform both contemporary multicultural policies and practice by exploring the experiences of visible minority families and students in their school locations. Using critical ethnography as the guiding methodology with a theoretical framework informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT) as practiced through anti-racism discourse, this research seeks to bring forward the perspectives and voices of racially minoritized populations to increase the understanding of diversity and address inclusive practices within the institution of education.
- ItemOpen AccessDesigning for Student Engagement in an Online Doctoral Research Method Course(University of Calgary, 2016-05) Simmons, Marlon; Parchoma, Gale; Jacobsen, Michele; Nelson, Dorothea; Bhola, Shaily; Werklund School of EducationThis paper is a report on preliminary findings of a scholarship of teaching and learning inquiry into a redesign of an online doctoral research course to include purposefully designed cycles of less formal auditory synchronous discussions with more formal text-based asynchronous discussions. The research design includes thematic analyses of archived auditory and text-based student engagements with learning resources, and with peers and the instructor, as well as student feedback via focus groups and individual interviews. The research design, data collection and data analysis procedures are explained and preliminary findings discussed. Recommendations for practice are shared.
- ItemOpen AccessDesigning for the Processes of Ideological Expansion and Convergence: A Multiple Case Study of Pre-Service Teachers Engaged in Intertextual Integrations Around Bullying(2022-01) DiPasquale, Joshua; Clark, Douglas; Simmons, Marlon; Scott, DavidIdeology plays a ubiquitous role in all educational settings, but it is often not conceptualized through lenses that are productive for learning. Typically, ideology is viewed as sets of conscious beliefs that can impede learning and must be overcome in educational settings. Novel research, however, has reinvigorated the concept of ideology, reconceptualizing its relationship to learning by illuminating the cognitive and social processes through which ideologies are learned and unlearned (Philip, 2011; Philip et al., 2018). In this research, I seek to advance recent theorizations about ideology and learning by viewing ideology through a lens of mediated action. I explore this conceptualization through the use of intertextual integration activities (e.g., Barzilai et al., 2018) designed to promote pre-service teachers' engagement in the processes of ideological expansion and convergence around bullying in school, which is a complex and persistent educational issue across Canada (Wilkinson, 2017). Using a qualitative multiple case study methodology (viz., Yin, 2018; Merriam, 1990) and a critical constructivist paradigmatic framing (Kincheloe, 2005), I observed three small groups of pre-service teachers participating in intertextual integration activities designed to disrupt the reproduction of dominant discourses on bullying. The results suggest that viewing ideology through a lens of mediated action enhances the mapping of ideological fields and elucidates the nuances of ideological expansion and convergence by revealing a number of additional processes that might occur in parallel to, within, or in opposition to them, namely assimilation and enhancement, attenuation, obfuscation, and regression. Accounting for these nuances can facilitate our ability to design learning environments that scaffold productive ideological expansion and convergence. Overall, this research (a) contributes theoretical and practical insights to our understanding of the relationship between ideology and learning, (b) demonstrates the affordances of intertextual integration activities as mediums for promoting engagement in ideological expansion and convergence, and (c) refines our understanding of how pre-service teachers may be supported in transforming how they are positioned as social actors in relation to bullying in schools.
- ItemOpen AccessExperiences of Black Evangelicals in Predominantly White Evangelical Churches in Calgary(2021-08) Ofori-Atta, Eric; Simmons, Marlon; Spencer, Brenda; Zaidi, RahatIn Canada, there is a dearth of research on Black experiences in the Christian evangelical church. Using a narrative qualitative methodology and undergirded by a critical race theory (CRT) theoretical framework, I explored the experiences of 5 Black evangelicals in predominantly White evangelical churches (PWECs). I focused on the challenging experiences they go through in PWECs, how they have responded to these challenging experiences and the factors that contributed to the choice of attending PWECs. Participants had to identify as Black and had to have been members of a PWEC in Calgary for at least a year. Through semi-structured interviews, I explored their experiences with them and the themes that emerged suggest that Black evangelicals go through a host of challenging experiences such as racism and racial microaggressions, and the lack of meaningful relationships in PWECs. As a result of these experiences, Black evangelicals have devised a host of strategies in response to these challenging experiences. Further, in spite of these experiences, it emerged that all the participants preferred attending PWECs for various reasons, one of the most important being the problems they perceived within the Black churches. These generally align with what is found in the broader literature, and the experiences of these Black evangelicals provide one instance of how Black people in Canada navigate life in a racialized society.
- ItemOpen AccessThe Experiences of Racialized Faculty within Independent Schools: A Narrative Inquiry(2023-03-16) Panjwani, Suhail; Simmons, Marlon; Alonso Yáñez, Gabriela; Fields, Jim; Gill, Hartej; Kawalilak, ColleenIn this research, I explored the lived experiences of racialized faculty within Canadian independent schools. The genesis of this study was the profound lack of information available about the experiences of racialized peoples within the independent school context. This poses significant issues for me, both professionally and personally. Without any insight into or understanding of the lived experiences of racialized communities within the contexts of independent schools, there is little hope for making meaningful changes towards more equitable and inclusive educational experiences for these groups. This study is important, if we as Canadians, believe that the ideals of equity should be extended to all demographics who attend and teach within independent schools. The overarching research question used to guide my inquiry was: How have the professional experiences of racialized teachers within independent schools contributed to the understanding of race? Using Narrative Inquiry as a methodological framework, I positioned each narrative within the context of a three-dimensional narrative inquiry space and then analyzed through an integrative theoretical framework which draws on Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) as a decolonial practice. Using a CSP approach would foreground alternative cultural epistemologies to meet the pedagogical needs of racialized students and faculty within the independent school system. The findings from this study support the recommendation that independent schools be open to pausing, acknowledging the harm that has been caused, and to listen and learn from racialized communities in the process towards decolonization. In undertaking this process, this study hopes that independent schools can work towards a stronger relational ethic with the racialized faculty and students that live and learn within their school systems.
- ItemOpen AccessExperiences with Indigenous Education in College: Stories from the Early Childhood Education Classroom(2018-09-05) Kinzel, Cheryl A.; Poitras Pratt, Yvonne; Kawalilak, Colleen; Simmons, MarlonDrawing from socio-constructivism, I work from the qualitative methodological approach of narrative inquiry through storytelling, oriented by critical pedagogy and informed by Indigenous methodology, in order to understand non-Indigenous adult learner perspectives in how Indigenous ways of being, knowing, and doing were experienced in the early childhood education (ECE) program at an urban post-secondary college in western Canada. Exploration and analysis of these stories through the lens of critical pedagogy and within a storytelling approach helped identify the participants’ initial transformative learning experiences with Indigenous knowledges and Reconciliation. Critical reflection on these themes led to the identification of several key findings: 1) the promise of transformative learning may be found in the students’ initial reflections en route to, 2) understanding reconciliation as an acceptance of the truths and realities of Canadian history, and 3) the necessity of experiencing Indigenous knowledges. Through the metaphor of building a nest, I see the promise of transformative learning as the foundation, or the sticks and twigs of this nest. The work of Reconciliation provides the string and the mud that, although messy, with perseverance can bind this nest together. Finally, Indigenous knowledges, or Indigenous ways of being, knowing, and doing, represent the contextual feathers that line this nest and provide a place of comfort.
- ItemOpen AccessExperiencing Transition and Mental Distress: Narratives of First-Year University Students(2021-06-10) Pethrick, Helen; Groen, Janet Elizabeth; Simmons, Marlon; Russell-Mayhew, ShellyStudent mental health and well-being has become an area of increased attention and relevance within Canadian higher education. More university students every year report mental health problems and universities have developed strategies to promote student mental health. Direct-entry first-year university students are in need of unique support for their mental well-being because they are in a critical developmental time in emerging adulthood. The purpose of this inquiry was to explore the narratives of students who experienced mental distress during their first year of university. This inquiry asked: How do direct-entry university students, who identify as having undergone mental distress in their first year, experience the transition from high school to university? I engaged in a qualitative narrative inquiry methodology. I conducted narrative interviews with eight current undergraduate students who had entered university directly from high school and had experienced mental distress during their first year of university. In my analysis, I elucidated individual and collective narratives from these students’ experiences. The participants’ experiences were divided in two subsets of narrative portraits: current first-year students and current upper-year students. The subsets were distinguished by the participants’ temporal positioning to their first-year university experience. Two collective narratives emerged: entangled transitions and waves of mental distress. Through this inquiry, the participants engaged in narrative learning to restory their experience of transition and mental distress. To support the transitional experiences of direct-entry students, universities should implement holistic approaches that frame first-year university students as whole people and emerging adult learners.
- ItemOpen AccessExploring the Role of a Learner-Centered Assessment Approach in Developing Undergraduate Business Students’ Entrepreneurial Knowledge, Skills, and Mindset(2022-01) Khan, Sharaz; Koh, Kim; Chu, Man-Wai; Lock, Jennifer; Simmons, Marlon; Kelly, Robert; Li, QingUnlike the traditional teacher/instructor-centered approach, Learner-Centered Assessment (LCA) promotes students’ active learning that occurs according to the needs of the 21st-century society. The process of creating LCA is not a ready-made solution, making it possible to develop a unique, inclusive model that could be implemented with the same success in different education settings. Research has shown that LCA makes student learning more meaningful by being applied through discovery, creative, and inductive approaches. It enables independent work of learners to be more apparent and better represented and focused on individualization and individual gains. Using LCA, students in undergraduate business programs are expected to develop the following entrepreneurial skills: dynamic strategies, research, creativity, and an entrepreneurial mindset (e.g., the ability to recognize an entrepreneurial culture and effectively manage a team). The characteristics of LCA have been recognized to go above the definition and conceptual delimitation of standardized testing and rote learning. Using LCA, a balanced approach to teaching and learning the necessary 21st-century entrepreneurial skills and recognizing the responsibility of being the mediator of the LCA approach can be manifested through innovative instructional strategies involving the use of technology. In my study of the role of LCA in the development of undergraduate students’ entrepreneurship through the redesign of learning tasks in a course, the mixed methods research design guided my data collection using pre- and post-LCA questionnaires, one-on-on interviews, and observations. The data enabled me to answer research questions pertaining to undergraduate business students’ perceptions of the value of LCA on developing their entrepreneurial knowledge, skills, and mindset, as well as their learning experiences of LCA in the course and the affordances and challenges of incorporating the use of technology into LCA.
- ItemOpen AccessForegrounding the Voice of Prospective Host Community Stakeholders in International Service Learning(2019-01-14) George, Merlene A.; Kawalilak, Colleen; Andreotti, Vanessa; Lund, Darren E.; Simmons, Marlon; Tweedie, M. GregoryWhile there is a growing body of research within the area of International Service Learning (ISL), research is skewed towards an interest in Western concerns and representation. Service learning that involves stakeholders from host countries in the global South is often predicated on relationships between stakeholders that are inherently inequitable. While there is ample research on ISL, most has been concerned with the stakeholders from the global North, with little critical insight coming from the host communities. This lack of community voice only serves to uphold a cultural hegemony, negating claims by proponents of service learning of mutual benefit and reciprocity. Therefore, this collective case study sought out the perspectives of six community leaders in St. Vincent and the Grenadines to determine how they might envision a meaningful ISL initiative. The research participants’ concerns with the unequal distribution of wealth, the moral condescension exhibited by foreigners, and the lack of community voice within the global arena, made embracing ISL ventures a tenuous proposition. Evident from the findings was a Western hegemonic ethnocentrism that impacted how the participants perceived service, reciprocity, and partnership within ISL.
- ItemOpen AccessGraduate students' research-based learning experiences in an online Master of Education program(University of Wollongong, 2018) Jacobsen, Michele; McDermott, Mairi; Brown, Barbara; Eaton, Sarah Elaine; Simmons, MarlonThe purpose of this research was to better understand graduate students' learning experiences in a researchintensive, online Master of Education (MEd) program. In alignment with the program goal for graduate scholars of the profession, this course-based program adopted an inquiry-based signature pedagogy grounded in the innovative practice of research-based learning. As part of this study, we explored broader program structures, including the cohort-based model, course sequencing and research ethics approval processes, which situate the research-based learning experiences. Several research questions framed our investigation into the experiences of online students who are engaged in a research-active MEd program. Analysis of survey and focus group information contributes to this mixed-methods case study and provides insights into implications for research-based learning in online course-based graduate programs.
- ItemOpen AccessHow are Counsellors Transformed Through Engaging in Action Research? A Narrative Analysis.(2019-07-24) Assoiants, Artem; Strong, Tom; Mendaglio, Sal; Simmons, MarlonWhile many researchers (i.e., inquirers) create knowledge products for potential uptake in practice, others in practical-critical, future-forming communities (e.g., action research [AR]) seek to cocreate social change as an inherent part of their inquiry. Specifically, counsellor-inquirers who enact AR are in an unusual situation because professionally, their work overlaps with AR (i.e., both are a relational process of cocreating social change). However, they have not been asked at length about how they are transformed through engaging in AR. I held a semi-structured conversation with eight counsellor-inquirers who had finished a thesis or dissertation using AR or published a manuscript on AR. I transcribed the interviews, using narrative segments of transcripts that were in answer to my research question as narrative data. Through Riessman’s (2008) thematic narrative analysis (NA), I created within-transcript (i.e., for individual coinquirers) and across-transcript research narratives (i.e., common findings between coinquirers) as answers to my inquiry. As regards the latter, by engaging in AR, counsellor-inquirers seem to be transformed in terms of broadening their change efforts, shifting their counselling practice, refining their critical practice, engaging in the process of identity construction, pivoting their relational practice, and augmenting their research practice. This inquiry holds relevance for neophyte narrative analysts, counsellor education, future-forming research, and action researchers.
- ItemOpen AccessImmigrants as Settlement Workers: An Inquiry into their Experiences of Work and Workplace Learning at Immigrant Service Agencies in Canada(2020-04-22) Liu, Jingzhou; Guo, Shibao; Groen, Janet Elizabeth; Simmons, MarlonMy research investigates the transition to work and workplace learning experiences of immigrant settlement workers (ISWs) at immigrant service agencies (ISAs) in Canada. Informed by intersectionality and institutional ethnography (IE), I investigate how ISWs’ labour market integration and learning at work are constructed in institutional relations, organizing and shaping the coordination of individuals’ standpoint at local sites. In examining ISWs’ transition to work, I first trace the trajectory of immigrants becoming ISWs and then analyze how race, gender, and class intersect and shape their experiences of seeking employment in institutional complexes between governmental organizations, employment institutions, and ISAs. In exploring ISWs’ workplace learning in ISAs, I analyze ISWs’ emerging learning opportunities in formal and non-formal settings and how their learning can be situated in cultural and relational contexts. More importantly, my research scrutinizes how textual ruling power is translocally developed and distributed to mould ISWs’ daily practices in the workplace. Eighteen ISWs were interviewed from three different ISAs in Western Canada. Based on findings from life history interviews and analysis of various governmental and organizational documents, my investigation reveals three major components of ISWs’ transition to work and workplace learning experiences. First, in deconstructing the institutional complexes, I found that credential assessment organizations deny and devalue immigrants’ qualifications and work skills as irrelevant, filterable, and neglectable. Moreover, labour market hiring acts as a second filtering mechanism that strains immigrant’s previous credentials and professional skills as different, deficient, or dubious. These institutional complexes are perpetuated by the intersectional identities of race, gender, and class and hooked into translocal social relations that coordinate and shape immigrant’s daily practices of labour market integration in the local setting. Second, in adopting the concept of workplace subjectivity, I identified three kinds of ISW subjectivity in the workplace. First, constructive subjectivity emphasizes how immigrants’ life histories and their prior learning and working are deemed to be social assets that enrich and enhance ISAs’ services to newcomers. Professional subjectivity integrates ISWs’ subjective knowledge from formal, non-formal, and informal learning into their personal histories with objective knowledge, constructing individualized knowledge acquisition and creation. And Cultural subjectivity is the negotiated sense of self that emerges through ISWs’ workplace interactions with colleagues and clients from different cultural backgrounds. My analysis of cultural subjectivity reveals the importance of power relations in the ISA workplace and the effect of those relations on ISWs in terms of their yielding aspects of their own self-culture in order to assume Canadian normative workplace values, on the one hand, and imposing cultural discrimination against certain social groups, on the other. Third, by unpacking the idea of outcomes measurement in the ISA workplace—with a focus on the key concepts of IE and Foucault’s governmentality—I find that outcomes measurement has become a technology of power, an essential workplace knowledge that produces ideal ISWs, who are self-caring, self-regulated, self-accountable, adaptable, and productive. This production process manifests textual ruling relations in workers’ pedagogical learning, textual-mediated learning, and relational learning, thus establishing in them certain ways of thinking, doing, and acting. Participating in, interacting with, and practicing the textual objectives of outcomes measurement legitimizes ISAs as an apparatus for the reinforcement of governmental ruling power, neglecting ISWs’ learning intentionality and autonomy in the workplace.
- ItemOpen AccessIndigenous Experiences of Reconnecting with Culture and Community(2023-09-18) Friedland, Asher James; Fellner, Karlee; Fellner, Karlee; Domene, José; Simmons, MarlonIndigenous culture and community is interconnected to Indigenous relationality and essential to understanding an Indigenous worldview. Nevertheless, a history of colonialism marked by enduring acts of cultural dislocation, such as the trauma of residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, the Millennium Scoop, and various acts of legislation and relocation, has led to many Indigenous individuals being raised without connection to their Indigenous cultures or communities. This thesis utilizes an Indigenous Storywork methodology in conjunction with Research as Ceremony, Desire-based research, and a conversational approach to address a central question: How do Indigenous individuals raised without integrated connection to their cultures and communities experience reconnecting with their Indigenous cultures and communities? In relational collaboration with three storytellers who were separated from their Indigenous cultures and communities during their upbringing, this thesis places their stories of reconnection into relationship with each other and three additional publicly shared stories of Indigenous reconnection journeys. This relational approach yields profound insights into the unique experience of reconnection with four overarching themes: Displacement, Confusion, Longing, and Reconnection. These themes intricately detail the multifaceted experiences, obstacles, and strengths encountered on Indigenous reconnection journeys, providing the opportunity to listen, learn, and understand. This research carries potential implications for future research and practice concerning journey-informed work with Indigenous Peoples who have experienced separation from their cultures and communities, deepening understanding of the intricate relationalities and dynamics they may be navigating along their journeys of reconnection.
- ItemOpen AccessIntellectual Emancipation and Embodiment in Early Mathematics Learning(2020-09-15) Liu, Shimeng; Takeuchi, Miwa A.; Sengupta, Pratim; Simmons, MarlonWhen mathematics language is defined narrowly, emergent bilinguals in classrooms could be systematically positioned as “learners of deficiency.” Recent scholarships in the field of learning sciences call for expanding the notion of mathematics language and scrutinising learning opportunities of emergent bilinguals in relation to the history and institutional spaces. Taking a holistic and critical perspective, this study draws from Rancière’s notion of intellectual emancipation as the leverage for emergent bilinguals’ agency in mathematics learning. My study was situated in a larger project conducted in a linguistically and racially diverse school in Western Canada. Together with a teacher, the research team altered temporal-spatial structure of the mathematics classroom that can mobilize learners’ bodies in an intellectually emancipatory manner. My analysis focused on classroom discourses and emergent bilinguals’ agency in different configurations of learning environment. My findings show, in the routine session, the teacher’s intelligence and will prevailed over that of students, thus the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) or Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) sequences were quickly completed and the discourses alternative to the pre-set plan were discouraged. The narrow space that configured the routine session also constrained the mathematics thinking mediated by bodies to a minimal level. The teacher’s monitoring of students’ physical movements further tightened the control over learner bodies. In this learning environment, the mathematical thinking and learning tended to be compressed to unidirectional acquirement. Conversely, in the designed session, the teacher’s will and students’ intelligence took the lead. Temporal structure of classroom discourse was thinned out to the expanded intervals between teacher utterance and student utterances, and even with the absence of “evaluation” in the sequence of IRE/F. The previously restrictive area in the school was transformed to a place that augments the embodied mathematics learning. Temporally and spatially, the designed sessions were expanded and offered more uncertainty and spontaneity due to the decreased control of the teacher as an explicator. In this context, mathematics pedagogy offered a complex system of iterative adaptation and decentralized learning. Based on these findings, I discuss how integrating embodied learning and the perspective of intellectual emancipation can address equity issues in early mathematics education.
- «
- 1 (current)
- 2
- 3
- »