MacEwan Open Journals (MacEwan University)
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The Reliability and Validity of Youth Crime Statistics
No full textWithin Canada, the youth population are perceived as violent, unpredictable members of society. This paper will challenge these common misconceptions and beliefs by exploring how the belief of violent youth arose; how these beliefs have influenced the over policing of youth; how systemic racism has impacted racialized youth groups; how these statistics are obtained and whether the data reliable and valid.
Faculty Mentor: Kalyani Thurairajah
Department: Sociology (Criminology
Examining the Risk for Sexual Violence Protocol (RSVP) and its Association with Recidivism Risk
No full textThe present study serves to examine association between items from the Risk for Sexual Violence Protocol (RSVP) and general, violent, and sexual recidivism risk. Police-reported sexual assaults were reviewed and retroactively coded, and the resulting sample included 201 male sex-offenders. Given the sparseness of the available information from police files, a modified 5-item version of the RSVP was used and the items were summed. We found significant results for all three outcomes (i.e., charges for any new offense, any new violent offense, and any new sexually violent offense). We also examined the individual 5 items, and significant results were found across all three recidivism outcomes, with only one item demonstrating significance in general, violent, and sexually violent recidivism. Furthermore, items related to Sexual Violence History significantly predicted new sexually violent charges. The study validates only a portion of the measure, and caution should remain regarding overall utility. Further research is required in this area due to the lack of published data regarding the instrument’s predictive validity.
Faculty Mentor: Sandy Jung
Department: Psycholog
Self-Reward Strategies Associated With Academic Effectiveness
No full textMost people have struggled with studying at some point in their lives.
A tactic that has been used to alleviate this issue is to reward oneself for studying. MacEwan University students (N = 353) were asked to complete an online survey that included the following questions: (1) To what extent do you reward yourself in some way when you complete a study session? (2) To what extent do you deliberately plan some type of reward following a study session? (3) To what extent do you reward yourself following a study session, but only if you successfully complete the study session as planned? Students’ ratings on these items were correlated with their ratings of whether they also successfully completed their study plans. The results showed that while all the self-reward strategies were significantly correlated with study plan completion, the regression analysis indicated that rewarding oneself only after the study session was successfully completed (contingent self-reward) was most predictive of study plan completion. These results have implications for the kinds of advice offered to students to improve their study behaviour. Limitations of these findings include the correlational nature of the study and the use of self-report measures only.
Faculty Mentor: Russ Powell
Department: Psychology (Honours
Gender Studies Intersectional Quilt
No full textTruth and Crenshaw Intersectional Quilt
Faculty Mentor: Kathryn Holland
Department: Gender Studies
 
Nature Of Album
No full textAlbum cover for a local band called Nature of
Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pacher
Department: Design Studie
Beauty and Threat: The Effect of the Icelandic Landscape on the Works of Icelandic Landscape Painters
No full textThis research paper explores the subject of topophilia – a strong sense of place – as it relates to the effects of geography, environment and social influences on the works of Icelandic painters. Regarding Iceland specifically, I was interested in how the striking duality of beauty and threat affects the artist’s psyche and vision as it relates to a painted landscape. Certainly, artists world-wide are inspired by their surroundings, either beautiful or terrible, but few people have a more intimate relationship with their surroundings than Icelanders. Few countries are as homogenic as Iceland – most of the population is related to one another within eight generations and most are distantly related to the handful of settlers who arrived in 874 AD. Historically, Iceland has been socially and geographically cut off from the rest of the world, viewed as little more than a tax base by Denmark until WWII, followed by its subsequence independence in 1944. Because of its isolation, Iceland’s history of fine art is a short one – less than 200 years. These factors, along with its history of volcanic activity make Iceland a compelling study. My purpose was to explore how experience, place, geography and landscape drill into peoples’ psyches and percolates, to later emerge from the subconscious as imagery. It is my hypothesis that deep connections to this strange and beautiful landscape – this juxtaposition between beauty and threat – would emerge and that it would relate to the fine art that Icelandic artists produce.
Faculty Mentor: Annetta Latham
Department: Arts and Cultural Managemen
(De)colonizing two spirit identities
No full textOur digital story explores the concept of two-spirit among Indigenous peoples in North America. Following a review of different two spirit identities amongst a variety of First Nations, we highlight the violence against two-spirit peoples as a result of colonization and contemporary movements to reclaim two-spirit identities within the broader contexts of healing and decolonization.
Faculty Mentor: Leslie Dawson
Department: Interdisciplinary Dialogue Projec
Positive versus Completely Positive Bilinear Maps
No full textIn this talk C*-algebras, the Gelfand - Naimark theorem and positive maps will be discussed. In particular, we shall discuss the importance of positive maps as they relate to the classification programme of C*-algebras. For accessibility, we shall focus on matrices, a concept that most undergraduates in the sciences should be familiar with. Important examples will be examined as well as a short discussion on the nuclear dimension of C*-algebras and ongoing research.
Faculty Mentor: Cristian Ivanescu and Adi Tcaciuc
Department: Mathematic
In Flight; Feminist Escape in James Joyce’s Dubliners and Alice Munro’s Runaway
No full textThe quest to “ascend through the roof and fly away to another country” (Joyce 43), in which a character can escape the entrapments of social constraints and craft a deeper sense of self, becomes a frequent narrative within James Joyce’s Dubliners and Alice Munro’s Runaway. Both short story collections represent female characters’ escapes and failed escapes. I compare the feminist quests portrayed in Joyce’s short story “Eveline” and Alice Munro’s stories “Runaway” and “Passion”, focusing on depictions of ‘escape’ and ‘quest narratives’ the various and dynamic ways in which female characters attempt to depart from crippling social expectations in search for self-knowledge and authentic identity. Escapes within Dubliners and Runaway vary, though both collections contribute to the advancement of the feminist quest narrative with focalization through female characters and representations of the imposing patriarchal restrictions that women inevitably face throughout their quests. While Dubliners offers significant representations of female escape, these narratives consistently end in paralysis, and characters fail to become emancipated from their oppressive environments. This paper will demonstrate how Munro’s collection takes the feminist quest narrative to new heights, as while not all characters have successful escapes, they attain knowledge and acquire agency through their quests.
Faculty Mentor: Sarah Copland
Department: Gender Studie
Teachers and Care: A Relational Narrative Inquiry of the Power of Education
No full textOur human process of becoming – identity formation and emerging sense of self – begins at a very young age and reaches critical points through youth’s educational life course (Grosz, 1999). Through the process of becoming, the ways through which youth deal with the challenges in their lives is potentially supported or thwarted, depending on the presence of caring adults who may act as guides, adult mentors or what can be referred to as “champions.” According to Rita Pierson (2012), a champion for youth is “an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists they become the best they can possibly be.” During adolescence, the transition from elementary school to junior high can result in “heightened levels of mistrust between teachers and students, student perceptions that teachers no longer care about them, and a decrease in opportunities for students to establish meaningful relationships with teachers” (Wentzel, 1997, p.411). Therefore, the position that teachers occupy at such an integral time for youth empowerment gives these adult authorities a unique opportunity to connect with youth and to establish a relationship that can serve as a role model and a support system for these youths as they learn who they are. This project is an exploration into the relational process of teacher-student connections from the vantage point of junior high educators to better understand why and how teachers form these significant relationships with students.
Faculty Mentor: Joanne Minaker
Department: Sociology (Honours)