A narrative journey of teacher reflexivity and authenticity in technological environments /

This qualitative narrative inquiry was driven by my desire to further explore my personal discovery that my utilization of educational technologies in teaching and learning environments seemed to heighten a sense of creativity, which in turn increased reflective practice and authenticity in my teaching. A narrative inquiry approach was used as it offered the opportunity to uncover the deeper meanings of authenticity and reflection as participants' personal experiences were coconstructed and reconstructed in relationship with me and in relationship to a social milieu. To gain further insight into this potential phenomenon, I engaged in 2 conversational interviews with 2 other teachers from an Ontario College in a large urban centre who have utilized educational technologies in their teaching and learning communities and I maintained a research journal, constructed during the interview process, to record my own emerging narrative accounts, reflections, insights and further questions. The field texts consisted of transcriptions of the interviews and my reflective journal. Research texts were developed as field texts were listened to multiple times and texts were examined for meanings and themes. The educational technologies that both women focused on in the interview were digital video of children as they play, learn and develop and the use of an audible teacher voice in online courses. The invitation given to students to explore and discover meaning in videos of children as they watched them with the teacher seemed to be a catalyst for authenticity and a sense of synergy in the classroom. The power of the audible teacher voice came through as an essential component in online learning environments to offer students a sense of humanness and connection with the teacher. Relationships in both online and face to face classrooms emerged as a necessary and central component to all teaching and learning communities. The theme of paradox also emerged as participants recognized that educational technologies can be used in ways that enhance creativity, authenticity, reflection and relationships or in ways that hinder these qualities in the teaching and learning community. Knowledge of the common experiences of college educators who utilize educational technologies, specifically digital video of children to educate early childhood educators, might give meaning and insight to inform the practice of other teachers who seek authentic, reflexive practice in the classroom and in on line environments.

An investigation of the nature and role of historicality in the thought of Dilthey and Heidegger

Introduction The question of the meaning, methods and philosophical manifestations of history is currently rife with contention. The problem that I will address in an exposition of the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey and Martin Heidegger, centers around the intersubjectivity of an historical world. Specifically, there are two interconnected issues. First, since all knowledge occurs to a person from within his or her historical age how can any person in any age make truth claims? In order to answer this concern we must understand the essence and role of history. Yet how can we come to an individual understanding ofwhat history is when the meanings that we use are themselves historically enveloped? But can we, we who are well aware of the knowledge that archaeology has dredged up from old texts or even from 'living' monuments of past ages, really neglect to notice these artifacts that exist within and enrich our world? Charges of wilful blindness would arise if any attempt were made to suggest that certain things of our world did not come down to us from the past. Thus it appears more important 2 to determine what this 'past' is and therefore how history operates than to simply derail the possibility for historical understanding. Wilhelm Dilthey, the great German historicist from the 19th century, did not question the existence of historical artifacts as from the past, but in treating knowledge as one such artifact placed the onus on knowledge to show itself as true, or meaningful, in light ofthe fact that other historical periods relied on different facts and generated different truths or meanings. The problem for him was not just determining what the role of history is, but moreover to discover how knowledge could make any claim as true knowledge. As he stated, there is a problem of "historical anarchy"!' Martin Heidegger picked up these two strands of Dilthey's thought and wanted to answer the problem of truth and meaning in order to solve the problem of historicism. This problem underscored, perhaps for the first time, that societal presuppositions about the past and present oftheir era are not immutable. Penetrating to the core of the raison d'etre of the age was an historical reflection about the past which was now conceived as separated both temporally and attitudinally from the present. But further than this, Heidegger's focus on asking the question of the meaning of Being meant that history must be ontologically explicated not merely ontically treated. Heidegger hopes to remove barriers to a genuine ontology by II 1 3 including history into an assessment ofprevious philosophical systems. He does this in order that the question of Being be more fully explicated, which necessarily for him includes the question of the Being of history. One approach to the question ofwhat history is, given the information that we get from historical knowledge, is whether such knowledge can be formalized into a science. Additionally, we can approach the question of what the essence and role of history is by revealing its underlying characteristics, that is, by focussing on historicality. Thus we will begin with an expository look at Dilthey's conception of history and historicality. We will then explore these issues first in Heidegger's Being and Time, then in the third chapter his middle and later works. Finally, we shall examine how Heidegger's conception may reflect a development in the conception of historicality over Dilthey's historicism, and what such a conception means for a contemporary historical understanding. The problem of existing in a common world which is perceived only individually has been philosophically addressed in many forms. Escaping a pure subjectivist interpretation of 'reality' has occupied Western thinkers not only in order to discover metaphysical truths, but also to provide a foundation for politics and ethics. Many thinkers accept a solipsistic view as inevitable and reject attempts at justifying truth in an intersubjective world. The problem ofhistoricality raises similar problems. We 4 -. - - - - exist in a common historical age, presumably, yet are only aware ofthe historicity of the age through our own individual thoughts. Thus the question arises, do we actually exist within a common history or do we merely individually interpret this as communal? What is the reality of history, individual or communal? Dilthey answers this question by asserting a 'reality' to the historical age thus overcoming solipsism by encasing individual human experience within the historical horizon of the age. This however does nothing to address the epistemological concern over the discoverablity of truth. Heidegger, on the other hand, rejects a metaphysical construel of history and seeks to ground history first within the ontology ofDasein, and second, within the so called "sending" of Being. Thus there can be no solipsism for Heidegger because Dasein's Being is necessarily "cohistorical", Being-with-Others, and furthermore, this historical-Being-in-the-worldwith- Others is the horizon of Being over which truth can appear. Heidegger's solution to the problem of solipsism appears to satisfy that the world is not just a subjective idealist creation and also that one need not appeal to any universal measures of truth or presumed eternal verities. Thus in elucidating Heidegger's notion of history I will also confront the issues ofDasein's Being-alongside-things as well as the Being of Dasein as Being-in-the-world so that Dasein's historicality is explicated vis-a-vis the "sending of Being" (die Schicken des S eins).

Educators' attitudes to philosophies of music education

This study used Q methodology to measure the extent to which individuals with five educational roles (student teacher, elementary music teacher, principal, high school music teacher, and music consultant) held five proposed philosophies of music education (hedonic, utilitarian, aesthetic cognitivism, aesthetic formalist, and praxial). Twenty-seven sUbjects participated in the Q study. These subjects were a convenience sample based on their educational role, accessibility, and willingness to participate. Participants completed a background sheet which indicated their background in music, and their responsibility for teaching music. The sUbjects in this Q study rank-ordered a set of 60 Q sort items (each item representing a proposed philosophical position) twice: Sort P to reflect current practice, and Sort I to reflect the ideal situation. The results of the sorting procedures were recorded by the participant on the response page which organized the rankings according to an approximated normal distribution as required by Q methodology. The analysis of the data suggested that the comparison across philosophical positions was significant and that the results of the interaction between philosophical position and educational role were significant, although educational role alone was not significant. Post-hoc analysis of the data was used to determine the significant differences between the levels of the, independent variables used in the model: philosophical position, educational role, and music background. A model of the association of the five philosophical positions was presented and discussed in relation to the Q study results. Further research could refine the Q sort items to better reflect each philosophical position.

The effect of context on the acquisition of vocabulary in good and poor readers

This study examined the effectiveness of context on the acquisition of new vocabulary for good and poor readers. Twentyeight Grade Three children, fourteen good readers and fourteen poor readers, took part in a word-learning task within three conditions: (1) strong sentence context, (2) weak sentence context, and (3) list condition. The primary hypothesis was that poor readers would show less learning in the list condition than good readers and that there would be no difference in the amount of learning in the sentence conditions. Results revealed that: (a) Words are read faster in sentence contexts than in 1 ist contexts; (b) more learning or greater improvement in performance occurs in list contexts and weak sentence contexts as opposed to strong sentence contexts; and (c) that most of these differences can be attributed to the build-up of meaning in sentences. Results indicated that good and poor readers learned more about words in all three condi tions. More learning and greater performance occurred in the list condition as opposed to the two sentence conditions for both subject groups. However, the poor readers learned significantly more about words in both the list condition and the weak sentence condition than the good readers.

Bringing Zombies Back to Life: An Autoethnographical Exploration of Alienation and Political Dis/Engagement in Emerging Adulthood Within Late-Stage Capitalism

In this thesis, by employing an autoethnographic methodology, I am exploring why certain understandings, or assemblages, of political engagement come to have greater meaning in my life and why other assemblages may be more hidden and thus fail to contribute substantially to the meaning of political in my life. Using immanent, Marxist and post-Marxist theories, as well as a zombie narrative, the study will contextualize the movement of assemblages in my life within late-stage capitalism which is juxtaposed with the zombie apocalypse. The placement and displacement of certain understandings of the political within my life will be theorized within the crisis of constituent power that is revealed in an immanent framework. Furthermore, the crisis of the constituent in late-stage capitalism creates new forms of radical alienation which will also be examined. By exploring my own struggles in becoming political I will theorize why political disengagement in emerging adulthood appears to be increasing, as well as possibilities for new forms of political engagement in a late-stage capitalist context.

Revisiting girlhood : defining a postmodern/popular feminist culture /

It has bee1l said that feminism is dead, but in fact feminism is alive in popular cultural fonlls that offer pleasure, style, fUll and advice, as well as political messages that are internalized alld continuously enacted in the lives of North American female youth. This thesis discusses popular feminism with respect to mainstream girls' cultural discourses in music alld magazine reading. Specifically this thesis examines the importance of Madonna, Gwen Stefani, and the Spice Girls, in addition to the numerous girl magazines available on the market today, such as Seventeen and YM. Focusing on the issue of the feminine versus feminist polarity and its importance to girls' culture, this thesis attempts to demonstrate how popular feminism can be used as a mode of empowerment and illustrates the mode of consumption of popular feminist texts that frames female selfimage, attitude, behaviour and speech. Through the employment of popular feminist theories and a discourse alld semiotic analysis of musical lyrics, performance and style, in addition to magazine reading and advertisements, this thesis highlights the use of active media reading and being by girls to gaill an understanding with regards to social positioning and postmodern political identity. More fundamentally, this thesis questions how popular feminism disables, questions and critiques popular ideologies ill a patriarchal society.

Niagara Symphony Orchestra fonds, 1926, 1948-1998, n.d.

In 1948, The St. Catharines Civic Orchestra was founded by Jan Wolanek who was also the first conductor. Initially, this was a community orchestra and in 1963 its governing body assumed the name St. Catharines Symphony Association. In 1978 the name was again changed to The Niagara Symphony Association to reflect regional responsibilities. Wally Laughton was named Assistant Conductor in 1952/53. R.C. Clarke took over the orchestra for an interim period after Wolanek left in 1957. In 1958 Leonard Pearlman became the Music Director. It was under his direction that the Niagara Symphony Chorus came into existence in 1963. Milton Barnes succeeded Pearlman in 1964 and he was responsible for directing the symphony’s first opera production. He also made a concerted effort to attract younger people to symphonic music. In 1972 Leonard Atherton became the Music Director. He started the Cantata Choir and the Madrigal Singers. It was under his tenure that the orchestra became professional. When Atherton left in 1980, there were three seasons of guest conductors, the most notable of these conductors was Uri Mayer. In 1981 James Vincent Fusco was appointed as composer in residence and in 1983 Ermanno Florio became the Music Director. He retained this position until 1995 when Michael Reason took over. Daniel Swift was appointed as Music Director and Conductor in 1999 and the Niagara Symphony Orchestra became the orchestr in residence at Brock University. Laura Thomas was appointed as Associate Conductor 1n 2004. Daniel Swift’s resignation in 2008 began a search for a new Music Director. Bradley Thachuck was appointed as Music Director Designate and Principal Conductor in 2010. The orchestra is a fully professional, charitable institution with 52 members.The orchestra has also been led by Victor Feldbrill and Howard Cable. A junior symphony was first formed under Leonard Pearlman in 1960/61, but it wasn’t until 1965 that The St. Catharines Youth Orchestra was founded. The orchestra has consistently been an award winner in music festivals. The musicians range in age from 12 to 18 years. The highlight of the 1973-74 season was the orchestra’s participation in the first Canadian Festival of Youth Orchestras at The Banff School of Fine Arts. The St. Catharines Youth Orchestra has evolved from the St. Catharines School String and Brass Ensembles to a full scale symphony under the direction of conductor Paul van Dongen. In 1974 the Symphony House music program came into existence. It was 1976 when Richard Grymonpre was hired as the principal violinist of the St. Catharines Symphony Orchestra and conductor of the St. Catharines Youth Orchestra. Tak Ng Lai took over the position as conductor in 1978. Laura Thomas is currently the Music Director of The Niagara Youth Orchestra. Source: Niagara Symphony, Orchestra in Residence, Brock University website and notes from Niagara Symphony files

Using Poetry, Story, and Reflection to Understand Professional Self After Personal Loss

This research investigated professional identity transformation after personal loss. Through autoethnographic methods, I explore how my personal experience of my sister’s breast cancer and death affected my identity as a diabetes educator in the health culture. I discover a transformation of a professional who focuses on evidence-based medicine to a professional who values connection, therapeutic alliance, and mindfulness with patients and self in the diabetes education encounter. Using a holistic perspective on transformational learning, I integrate the poem “Wild Geese” to a collection of written narratives to connect my personal loss experience to my professional life. By unpacking the generated stories and using poetry, I conduct a process of critical and self-reflection to discover how my identity as a health professional has transformed and what makes meaning in my role as a diabetes educator in the health culture. I consider concepts of a conscious self, social relations and language and discover themes of knowledge exchange, food, and empathy as forms of language expression. These language expressions are not present in my professional life as I focus on rational, logical facts of evidence-based medicine and standardized education methods. Through this reflexive process, I hope to understand how my professional practice has changed, where I place an importance on connection, therapeutic alliance, and mindfulness. I move away from always “doing” in my professional life to focus on my state of “being” in my professional world. Rather than knowledge acquisition as the only factor in professional development, this study contributes to an understanding of additional qualities health professionals may consider that focus on the patient education encounter.