Niblett, Blair

This study investigates the potential for a responsive model of professional development in mathematics education which acknowledges how teachers perceive the value of professional learning, and examines how those perceptions are connected to teacher efficacy. Three fields of educational research ground this study: (i) professional development strategies in mathematics education, (ii) teacher efficacy, and (iii) self-determination theory and andragogy. Data collection and analysis involved four detailed case studies and a cross-case analysis of similarities and distinctions among the cases, in an instrumental-multiple-case study design. Results suggest: (1) some characteristics of professional development were consistently designated as high or low value, independent of efficacy ratings, (2) other professional learning experiences were valued relative to the participants' sense of efficacy at different times in their careers, and (3) characteristics of professional development designated as high value during periods of low efficacy were fundamentally teacher-centric, but during periods of high efficacy, they were fundamentally student-centric.

Author Keywords: efficacy, mathematics education, mathematics teachers, professional development, professional learning, teacher efficacy

Through narrative/life story research this study explores the educational experiences of six individuals identified as Deaf or hard-of-hearing. The research presented will be conveyed in the form of an autoethnography, an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and analyze personal experience to understand cultural experience. I will combine the views of participants who have been part of the Ontario Public School System within the last 10-15 years (2004-2019), with my own educational experience, learning with hearing loss. In this study, three interrelated concepts—student engagement, motivation, and resilience—are examined through the lens of "mindsets." Mindsets are "assumptions that we possess about ourselves and others that guide our behaviour" (Brooks, 2012, p. 1). The research reviewed in this paper, shows that students' beliefs about their academic ability can influence their academic tenacity. Academic tenacity refers to the mindsets and skills that enable students to: establish long-term goals and persevere in the face of adversity. I illuminate some of the systemic factors which impact the mindsets of students who are Deaf and hard-of-hearing. The design lies within the qualitative spectrum; data were gathered and analyzed from open-ended interviews conducted with purposively selected participants.

Author Keywords: Academic Tenacity, Autoethnography, Deaf, Education, Hard-of-Hearing, Mindsets

Enhancing interpretive trails with smartphone technology may enrich the visitor's educational experience by stimulating deeper engagement and enjoyment that will improve immediate knowledge and help promote the development of environmental literacy. This connection between technology and environmental education can only be considered successful if enhanced enrichment and educational value is found in the integration. Currently there is a substantial gap in research on the incorporation of technology into an interpretive trail experience. For this study, information on the local fauna and flora was produced and linked to Quick Response Codes (QR codes) installed along an outdoor trail. The QR codes were designed to be read using the participant's personal smartphone. Immediately after completing the trail participants could volunteer to describe their smartphone-led experience through a self-administered cross-sectional questionnaire offered in hard copy at the study site. A non-experimental quantitative research methodology was employed to evaluate the survey data and determine the educational and enjoyment value of the experience. This research is of potential benefit to educators of science, technology and the environment. The research may also assist parks and recreation facilities wishing to offset the costs of building and maintaining traditional interpretive trails by eliminating the need for the printing of booklets, maps and signage.

Author Keywords: education, environment, interpretive trails, science, smartphone technology

This study examines how student activism around the closure of Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School (PCVS), an inner-city school in a medium–sized Ontario town has influenced youths' life experiences, views on power, political engagement, and personal agency. Following a critical narrative methodology, this qualitative study, conducted four to five years after the school closure, focuses on interviews with fourteen participants who were part of the high-school group Raiders in Action and explores both what they learned from their protest and its influence on their lives over the ensuing years. The study identifies the researcher's subjective position as a teacher and an adult in solidarity with the group's work. Critical pedagogy, critical youth studies, and feminist approaches inform the researcher's perspective. This project is inspired by an image of young people as citizens who actively challenge and change educational institutions to create a more participatory democracy in our city, country, continent, planet.

Author Keywords: critical pedagogy, critical youth resistance, neoliberalism, school closure, student activism, youth organizing

In this thesis, I use "Trump's Wall" between Mexico and the US to resist Eurocentrism and the challenges Eurocentric pedagogy poses to the research-practitioner. In my method, I reimagine C. Alejandra Elenes' borderlands theory as a zone of empowerment within a multicultural Canadian classroom, and braid it in a hybrid assemblage with the rhizome.

The "rhizo-borderlands" assemblage uses selected field notes gleaned from my teaching practice to develop themes of a critical pedagogy of globality in personal, local and international dimensions. These are further braided with a "day-in-the-life" narrative of a fictionalized student (Ellie) who navigates her way towards a world literature classroom where the focus is The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

This assemblage affirms my belief that teaching and learning provides a context where students become "border crossers" and navigate points of intersection between their local and global selves, in order to develop intercultural competencies.

Author Keywords: Action Narrative, Critical Pedagogy, Rhizomes