1,720,994 research outputs found
Commitments Counter Publics: The (un)Importance of Romantic Intimacy in the Lives of Gay Emerging Adults
Full text linkThe desire for a monogamous marriage has long been one of the characteristics that has been assigned to emerging adults, despite criticisms regarding a lack of queer representation. In answer to this, Berlant’s notion of the counter public has been utilized. Using grounded theory, interviews with 12 gay men who frequent counter public spaces in urban Toronto have been examined in order to understand how these men conceptualize successful adulthood, with monogamy and marriage as the privileged forms of romantic intimacy. These men generally rejected the notion that marriage and monogamy were necessary for success, articulating that romantic and sexual intimacy were separate and that the existence of extradyadic partners within a romantic relationship was desirable and strengthened the relationship with their romantic partner. Such a finding forces scholars, professionals, and the wider LGBTQ+ community to revisit the way romantic intimacy in the emerging adulthood years is studied and practiced.M.A
Perspectives on the use of Afrocentric Approaches in Non-school settings within Toronto on the Education, Employment and Black Identity of African Canadian Men
Full text linkThis study looks at the experiences of African Canadian young men in a three (3) year Afrocentric program that was run in a non-school setting. It utilizes an intrinsic case study approach, where the researcher conducted interviews with former program participants to see the impact that the program had on their academic achievement, employment opportunities and Black identity.
The results of the study support the view that the use of African centred programming within a non-school program can positively impact how Black young men achieve educational success. The study also offers some support for the use of Afrocentric approaches, specifically the use of the Nguzo Saba principles and Black mentors to highlight and establish Black identity, promote academic achievement and employment/entrepreneurial endeavours among African Canadian youth.M.A
Potentials Limited: Examining the Underrepresentation of Black Students in Gifted Education
No full textM.A
Identity, Subjectivity, and Schooling: Portugueseness and the Educational Deselection of Portuguese-speaking Students in Toronto
No full textThe academic trajectories of Portuguese-speaking students in Toronto, Canada, have been characterized as underachieving and truncated. Concurrently, the voices of Portuguese-speaking students themselves have been relatively absent from reports on their rates of underachievement and school dropout. This critical school ethnography explores Portuguese-speaking students’ school experiences in a Toronto high school to contextualize these statistics and expose how identity and subjectivity inform their school (dis)engagement. While peers and parents inform aspects of said (dis)engagement, thus far these have been the main if not only factors to explain this underachievement phenomenon. This ethnography, however, demonstrates that school personnel and their expectations appear to also play a role in some students’ decisions to deselect schooling.
This dissertation exposes discourses that circulate in classrooms and other school spaces that construct Portuguese-speaking students and their parents in Toronto as working class immigrants. These discourses (inclusive of phrases and actions) draw on language, nationalism and diaspora, and class and labour to construct dominant depictions of what I and others (da Silva, 2012) have termed portugueseness. Portugueseness becomes a subjectivity that marks the Portuguese-speaking student subject for certain experiences in schools.
In addition to reflecting on their experiences to illustrate how portugueseness is constructed, participants’ experiences and narratives revealed that association with portugueseness (or being marked as Portuguese(-speaking)) placed them disproportionately at risk of experiencing certain disciplinary practices in school. These disciplinary practices reference dominant depictions of portugueseness, namely disciplining language, dropout and disability. And, participants recounted both their defiant and compliant responses to these disciplining practices. Finally, disciplinary practices appear to inform educational deselection, a process that sees some students drop out of school and others remain enrolled despite deeply disengaging with school and putting forth a bare minimum of effort to be pushed through, rather than be pushed out of, their high school trajectory.Ph.D
Decolonizing Indigenous Youth Studies: Photography and Hip Hop as Sites of Resilience
Full text linkThis dissertation examines the role an arts-based educational program played in unleashing youth's creativity as they confront various structures of power that become challenges to social identity, belonging, and self, under different local and national circumstances. My research questions considered how Indigenous youth utilized a photography and hip hop based educational program as a resource to explore social identity and relations, indigeneity, place/space, and the legacy of settler colonialism on education. I also considered how the findings from this study informed and contribute to decolonize Indigenous youth studies and how programs such as mine help Indigenous youth comprehend crisis in the urban environment. This critical ethnography found that in some cases cultural and racial identity existed more internally than externally for youth, with the complexities and contradictions the Indigenous Young Adults (IYAs) face when coming to terms with their social identity. The results showed how much youth grapple with the idea of looking Native and the desire to be more phenotypically Indian as defined by dominant society. The stories of the IYAs became vital to learning about the challenges they faced and obstacles they have overcome, including fighting for recognition under the Indian Act, border politics within Canada and the US, not knowing one's traditional land, and barriers to migrating to the city independently of one's family. Regarding the legacy of settler colonialism on education, of particular interest was how schooling upholds settler colonial ideals and what we can do to dismantle these ideals so that our students are represented in truthful ways. The findings indicated how youth learned about Indigenous cultures in schools and how they were represented in the curriculum. Throughout this project the intent was to propose ways to decolonize education through the arts. It also revealed the positive accomplishments that IYAs worked towards and the ways they show extreme resilience in the light of legacies of settler colonialism on their communities.Ph.D
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Beyond the Barriers Black-Led Non-Profits and their Impact on Life Outcomes of Black Youth
Full text linkSystemic racism and racial inequities faced by the Black community cause barriers in individual and communal advancement. Black-led non-profits play a pivotal role in filling these gaps by providing essential needs such as shelter, food, employment and resources. By drawing on articles focused on mentoring and educational programs within the Black non-profit sphere in North America, this master’s thesis reviews literature on Black-led non-profits and their impact on life outcomes of Black youth. Part I draws on the significance of Black non-profits and how they work to resist anti-Black racism. Part II delves into literature and case studies on the unique impact of Black non-profits on Black youth educational and well-being outcomes. This thesis emphasizes the importance of Black-led non-profits in enhancing Black youth outcomes through culturally relevant programming which can be helpful to educators, policymakers and community leaders working within the Black community.M.A
Queering Places and Curricular Spaces: LGBTQ+ Students in the Community, the College, and the Curriculum
Full text linkThis exploratory dissertation addresses a significant gap in Canadian scholarship: the inadequate recognition of LGBTQ+ student experiences in a community college, and the problem of queer presence in the curriculum, college, and community. The research question is: “What are the school experiences of LGBTQ+ students in an Ontario college, and how does campus climate affect experiences such as coming out?” This work introduces campus climate, Queer identity formation, the ‘campus closet’, and the problem of unwelcoming schools with heteronormative curricula and school ethos. Campus climate for LGBTQ+ students is problematic, yet a positive climate is fundamental to students’ feeling welcome, as institutions undertake EDI initiatives.
Literature uses a social justice framework, and introduces major themes: LGBTQ+ identity formation; the lack of recognition of diversity in schools; research and policy which do not serve students equally; and curriculum as heteronormative social control. This project employs qualitative research methods, in particular grounded theory, to situate the experiences of LGBTQ+ college students in Canada. Campus climate should reflect Queer presence in the curriculum, the college, and the wider community.
The findings introduce the research participants, and reflections on homophobia, campus climate, inclusive curriculum, as well as social relationships inside and outside the classroom. Findings also suggest a theory about the school lives of LGBTQ+ students: that for queer students a positive campus climate lies at the intersection of Queer in the curriculum, Queer in the college, and Queer in the community, and further, that a welcoming local community, institution, and curriculum shape the school experiences of LGBTQ+ students, and contribute to their persistence in their studies and successful degree completion, as well as to their determination of a post-secondary education being an experience worth wanting.Ph.D
Young Black Men's Embodied Experiences of Traumatic Gun Violence
Full text linkThis thesis examines the experiences of 10 young Black men who have been impacted by traumatic gun violence either directly through being shot or indirectly by witnessing gun violence in their communities or losing loved ones to gun violence. Few studies have considered the traumatic and embodied impact of gun violence on young Black men. Using trauma theory and embodiment as theoretical frameworks, this research demonstrates how due to the lack of resources and recognition of young Black men’s experiences of traumatic gun violence, young Black men begin to “embody” experiences of traumatic gun violence physically and emotionally. Young Black men’s experiences of gun violence within the city of Toronto continue to be stigmatized, criminalized, and disregarded as a traumatic issue and the main approaches to solving gun violence have focused on criminal justice interventions and policing which do not engage with the actual “embodied trauma” of gun violence. This thesis demonstrates that to understand how young Black men embody traumatic violence we first need to understand how systemic violence and structural oppression, as expressed through racial profiling, over-surveillance, incarceration, police brutality, and experiences of poverty, coincide with the traumatic impact of gun violence, and directly relate to young Black men’s experiences of ongoing exposure to gun violence.Ph.D
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