Pendleton Jimenez, Karleen

This research examines the digital game through the subject of the Apocalypse, both in its literal revelatory form and its colloquial disaster form. To accomplish that, it employs Louis Althusser's concept of structural causality as a springboard for a structure-based interrogation of interlocked systems. Drawing a comparison between Ian Bogost's definition of black-box analysis and Althusser's concept of ideology, I suggest the apocalypse is a valuable subject matter for understanding digital games, and in turn digital games provide media-based insight on complex systems of subjectivations. These positions are accomplished in two ways. First, I focus on five different apocalyptic games - The Last of Us (2012), Tokyo Jungle (2012), Mass Effect (2008), Doki Doki Literature Club (2016), and Persona 4 Arena (2012) – and how they express radically different visions and scopes of apocalypse. More specifically, I focus on the digitality of these games and how their technical construction in light of their suggested themes reveal hidden relations between apocalypse and ideology. Second, I expand on a research-creation project focused on the production and dissemination of a game, specifically as a means of using what has been discussed in previous chapters to attempt to expand on the subject matter of ideology and apocalypse. The aim of this is to discuss the process of expressing a procedural argument following several chapters interpreting them. It is also to expand on additional tensions between human and system which are underplayed or obscured in the playing process. It concludes that apocalypse, in the process of using systems, remains an elusive topic and to produce meaningful texts as commentary on ideology requires different, difficult considerations.

Author Keywords: Althusser, Apocalypse, Bogost, Digital Games, Ideology, Jameson

This study examines the formal, informal, and non-formal learning experiences offeminist-identified counsellors and psychotherapists working within the Violence Against Women (VAW) and Gender-Based Violence (GBV) sector of community- based social services in Ontario, Canada. Using critical, feminist polyethnography and intersectional and feminist theories, this study discusses the participants' and researcher's experiences in the field. The participants' narratives contribute to the understanding of intersectional feminist pedagogies in counselling and psychotherapy practices and spaces. Additionally, the study offers recommendations for post- secondary programs, wise practice approaches to intersectional clinical supervision, and a framework for community of practice models of peer supervision.

Author Keywords: adult learning, feminism, feminist theory, intersectional theory, psychotherapy, social work

Many middle-class families, according to Whiteman (2023) find it challenging to manage unless both parents contribute financially through employment. I chose to become a professional because I'd wanted better employment options. My academic research interests soon had me wondering what working-while-parenting experiences were like for other professionals. The overarching topic of my master's thesis was working-while-parenting. The study broadly explored how working experiences affect the parenting goals and/or family well-being of securely employed Trent faculty and/or staff.Trent working parents shared the experiences that working interferes with parenting; and that parents have specific work-life balance needs; they also shared the perspective that parenting accessibility is a working parent right. Trent working parents indicated that success in fulfilling their parenting goals, needs and responsibilities, requires priority, presence and at times, childcare. It was recommended that specific Trent Working Parent Representation be more broadly interpreted and purposefully approached.

Author Keywords: Family well-being, Parenting accessibility as a right, Parenting goals, Presence and childcare needs, Work-life balance, Working-while-parenting

This paper examines the potential effects of educational background and math anxiety on Teacher Candidates' (TCs') pedagogical beliefs. To investigate this relationship, I conducted a mixed-methods study. Twenty-five TCs were given a quantitative survey consisting of Likert scales to measure their math anxiety levels and their pedagogical beliefs concerning constructivism and traditionalism and an additional question inquiring about their educational experience with mathematics. Six TCs were then selected for follow-up semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed using Values Coding and Focused Coding. The findings suggest that TCs draw upon personal experience when justifying beliefs, adopt flexible approaches to pedagogy, value the highly disputed Theory of Learning styles, and demonstrate that math anxiety is a motivator for constructivist beliefs. This research helps fill a gap in the literature about how educational background and math anxiety affect TCs' pedagogical beliefs and provides further insight into how TCs' beliefs are formed.

Author Keywords: Educational background, Math anxiety, Pedagogical beliefs, Pre-service teachers, Teacher Candidates, Teacher preparation programs

This dissertation focuses on the intersectionality between images posted on social media and social rules in the lives of young people. The findings are based on thirty-four qualitative interviews with young social media users where photo-based methodologies were employed. From these interviews, three key themes emerged: 1) Posting and sharing images are connected to identity exploration and formation, 2) Social rules around embodied emotions affect how youth present their emotions in online photographic material, and 3) The conflation of private and public spaces in the digital sphere complicates how social media users interact with images. While the findings presented are clear, this dissertation aims to take a holistic approach to understanding youth digital culture and avoids coming to conclusions that view social media as "good" or "bad" for youth. This tactic allows the findings to acknowledge the complexities of communicative digital spaces and understand the intricacies of social media in the daily lives of young people (boyd, 2014; Tilleczek & Campbell, 2019). This dissertation discusses both challenges youth face on social media when posting and viewing images, as well as how images can be used to defy social norms.

Author Keywords: Affect, Culture, Image, Social Media, Youth

It is through spending time outside that we develop the ecological literacy and caring attachments to the land that will lead to greater concern and responsibility for the more-than-human world. But intermediate students in the formal education system are taught almost exclusively indoors, especially in winter. If Canadian teachers remain mostly inside when it is cold, they forego many opportunities to connect their students with the land upon which they live and learn. The purpose of this research is to understand the ways intermediate teachers in the formal education system interact with the outdoors in winter during the school day, how they feel about these interactions, and what influences their decisions when it comes to outdoor learning in winter. Understanding the lived experiences of teachers is essential, as it is they who decide whether instruct indoors or out. In the hierarchical education system, teachers' voices are not always considered in policy making. Photovoice is an ideal methodology for this study because it brings the lived experiences of a group who do not have the authority to make policy changes, to those who do. This photovoice study gave eight intermediate teachers the opportunity to document experiences in their own lives, raise their own consciousness about outdoor learning, and to share their voices with policymakers through their photographic art. This study draws four main conclusions: a) teachers need to develop stronger personal relationships with the outdoors in winter; b) schools need to reconsider the traditional recess model as it is often a time of stress for teachers and students; c) the curriculum needs to expect outdoor learning in all seasons; and d) teachers' voices need to be heard in relation to outdoor learning initiatives in schools. The findings are significant because they can influence policymakers to improve outdoor learning in schools which, in turn, will help teachers and students develop more comfortable and caring relationships with the outdoors in winter.

Keywords: winter, outdoor education, environmental education, outdoor learning, photovoice, intermediate teachers, intermediate students, formal education system

Author Keywords: environmental education, formal education system, outdoor education, outdoor learning, winter

This study examines the lived experiences of refugee students in the Canadian education system and how the barriers they face have influenced their learning and identity. This qualitative study employs critical discourse analysis to bring visibility to the educational experiences of five participants who completed high school in Canada and explores their experiences with resettlement and what would have made their lives better at that time. DisAbility Critical Race Theory informs the researcher on deconstructing and dismantling the deeply entrenched discourses in Canadian schools; to make the implied relationships between language, Western norms, power, whiteness, and race clear. This study is motivated by the researcher's own identity as a newcomer with challenges navigating the Canadian education system, positionalities that have led to the question: Are refugees truly welcome here? Information gathered from this study can support Canadian schools to create just, critically informed, and supportive educational environments for refugee students.

Author Keywords: discourses, identity, power, race, refugees, whiteness

Games immerse players. Through immersion, players can see themselves embodied in their avatars. There is space for meaningful experimentation of gender through these avatars as embodied players can blur the lines between their real-life and virtual selves. The player's avatar becomes that person — in terms of personality, feelings, and gender identity/expression. In virtual reality, the player becomes a virtual actor in the world of the game, allowing the player to explore their avatar directly. Through various games, books, and anime, I demonstrate how players can find embodiment and how games can achieve a rigid sense of embodiment. Using an intersectional lens of cultural and gender studies, this paper aims to provide a framework for embodied gender exploration that future games can build upon. This framework is enacted through a look at embodiment and how the player is able to find an authentic self in the virtual world.

Author Keywords: Avatars, Embodiment, Embodiment studies, Gender euphoria, Video games, Virtual Reality

This dissertation traces the emergence of the "transgender predator" discourse on social media. Taking its cue from the 2019 British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal case Yaniv v. Various Waxing Salons, in which a white Canadian trans woman named Jessica Yaniv unsuccessfully filed a series of complaints against a number of racialized cisgender aestheticians claiming that they denied her body and Brazilian waxing services, I examine Canadian socio-legal discussions regarding trans women's access to spaces and services designed for cisgender women. Second, I focus on the realm of YouTube in which Yaniv v. Various Waxing Salons was marketed as the case of a transgender predator by another trans female YouTuber named Blaire White. I locate Yaniv-related content within a larger genre of "predator-hunting" in which self-proclaimed vigilantes lure and "hunt" putative child predators through sting operations and publish their expeditions as online shaming content on YouTube. By analyzing the visual and verbal discursive elements of the genre of predator catching/exposé, I suggest that "transgender predator" functions within the axis of surveillance regimes and monetized humiliation-entertainment, rather than merely being motivated by the goal of protecting cisgender women and children. Lastly, I turn my attention from "transgender predator" to another type of pejorative construction about trans people represented in the stand-up comedy of Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais. I argue that, as opposed to comedy's previous engagement with trans subjectivity in which the comedic element was revealed through the tropes of deception and bodily incongruity, in the works of Chappelle and Gervais, transgender subjectivity is used to make social commentary about the supposed decline of, what are deemed to be, Western values of reason, rationality, and freedom of speech.

Author Keywords: predator, stand-up comedy, surveillance, transgender, vigilantism, YouTube

This dissertation focuses on the intersectionality between images posted on social media and social rules in the lives of young people. The findings are based on thirty-four qualitative interviews with young social media users where photo-based methodologies were employed. From these interviews, three key themes emerged: 1) Posting and sharing images are connected to identity exploration and formation, 2) Social rules around embodied emotions affect how youth present their emotions in online photographic material, and 3) The conflation of private and public spaces in the digital sphere complicates how social media users interact with images. While the findings presented are clear, this dissertation aims to take a holistic approach to understanding youth digital culture and avoids coming to conclusions that view social media as "good" or "bad" for youth. This tactic allows the findings to acknowledge the complexities of communicative digital spaces and understand the intricacies of social media in the daily lives of young people (boyd, 2014; Tilleczek & Campbell, 2019). This dissertation discusses both challenges youth face on social media when posting and viewing images, as well as how images can be used to defy social norms.

Author Keywords: Affect, Culture, Image, Social Media, Youth