Identification as Process in Participatory Design

In this workshop we invite participants to discuss and map techniques, approaches and principles to address processes of identification in Participatory Design endeavors. The key objective of the workshop is to present identification as process as a concept to think with, and to explore how different lenses can engage workshop participants in thinking about participatory design endeavors in connection to this concept. As the outcome the workshop participants produce set of principles for identification as process for PD work

Neocolonialism, First Nations Governance and Identity: Community Perspectives from Battleford Agency Tribal Chiefs (BATC) First Nations

This thesis presents a secondary analysis of findings from a larger community-based participatory research (CBPR) project with the Battleford Agency Tribal Chiefs (BATC) First Nations reserves in Northern Saskatchewan. Initiated at the request of BATC, a three year CBPR project, entitled: “Resilience to Offending: Listening to Youth On-Reserve,” aimed to identify, analyze and disseminate local knowledge about on-reserve youth resilience. This larger project intended to capture the perspectives of First Nations youth, Elders and community stakeholders who work with youth at risk of offending, by identifying culturally specific aspects of resilience. Using arts-based and mixed methods, the focus of this larger study was on personal, relational and environmental risks faced by the youth and the impact of formal and informal services on reserve on youth resilience. Guided by a postcolonial and anti-oppressive framework, this thesis provides a secondary analysis of the in-depth qualitative interviews with the fourteen stakeholders and Elders who work with youth. Using a constructivist grounded theory, this thesis explores the stakeholder’s and Elders’ perceptions of formal and informal services in First Nations communities as well as issues related to First Nations governance. The emerging framework brought to light the continued impact of the colonization process on the federal government’s interactions with First Nations’ members, communities, Aboriginal leadership and governance structures. The research questions for this thesis were: How is the colonization process at play in the federal government’s interactions with First Nations’ members, communities, Aboriginal leadership, and governance structures?”, “What are the impacts of the colonization process in terms of the lived experience of individual First Nation members?”, and “What are the impacts of the colonization process in terms of community life on reserve?”. With these questions in mind, interpretation of the stakeholder interviews resulted in three general themes including: the continued impact of historical and systemic issues on the wellbeing of youth, adults and entire communities; colonized identities, which stakeholders referred to as the internalization of colonization through experiences of othering, and the resulting loss of self-esteem, lack of sense of belonging, and disconnection from traditional culture; and continued oppression through contemporary institutional means, most notably the relationship of control that exists between First Nations communities and the federal government. This thesis concludes that colonialism and neocolonialism, or the processes of domination and control by one group over another, and the continued control of colonized groups, respectively, are still very prevalent within the lives of Aboriginal people, coming to effect their social environments, their lived realities, and the policies and discourses pertaining to them. The institutionalized racism that constituted the colonial process, and continuing neocolonialism, influences the policies, programming and relations regarding Aboriginal people. This control is solidified through the contriving of Aboriginal identity and governance: the federal government still has the ultimate control over legal Aboriginal identity through delegation of titles (such as status Indian or non-status Indian), and the rights and disadvantages associated with each title. Despite the establishment of Aboriginal self-government, community stakeholders and Elders shed light on ways First Nations people on BATC reserves are still answerable to the federal government while they continue to suffer marginality related to housing, employment, socioeconomics and racialization

Choral Music Educator Pedagogies for Multilingual Learner Inclusion: A Critical Multiple Case Study

Multilingual learners are the fastest growing student population in US public schools. The purpose of this critical multiple case study was to discover three music teachers’ and one Multilingual Learner resource teacher’s perspectives on the strengths and areas of growth in pedagogies for teaching Multilingual Learners in choral music ensembles. Common areas of strength included: student-centered learning, culturally responsive teaching, and positive classroom environment. Common areas of growth were: multilingual teaching strategies, knowledge of diverse repertoire, community and culture, and multilingual learner empowerment

Teacher Perceptions of Ability in Implementing a Culturally Responsive Educational Practice for Culturally Linguistically Diverse Students with Dis/Abilities

All children in the United States have the right to an equitable education, regardless of gender, religion, class, race, culture, language, or dis/ability. The literature demonstrates that financial, educational, and legal outcomes are disproportionately negative for those students falling outside of white able-bodied norms and that educational institutions often perpetuate exclusive policies and practices that disproportionately impact culturally linguistically diverse students with dis/abilities. A critical examination of the sociopolitical and contextual factors that fortify the barriers faced by marginalized groups highlights the need for a culturally responsive approach to educating students with multidimensional identities. To serve the needs resulting from the shifting demographics of today’s classroom, educators are tasked with implementing educational practices that are responsive to the unique constellation of diverse learners in their classrooms. Unfortunately, the practice of cultural responsivity is not actualized by simply following a prescribed list of strategies or implementing a specific curriculum, rather, implementation is predicated on building a critical consciousness willing to examine the cultural discord and power differential reproduced and maintained by educational and societal institutions. This study employs the theoretical framework of Dis/Ability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit) to examine how teachers perceive their ability to implement culturally responsive educational practices (CREP) for their Culturally Linguistically Diverse (CLD) students with dis/abilities, (e.g. Emotional Disturbances, Intellectual Disabilities, and Learning Disabilities). The focus of this research is not only the experiences that inform teachers’ perceptions of preparedness to implement CREP and the actions taken by teachers to implement CREP in their classrooms, but also on the described understandings and meanings of dis/ability, race, culture and language as examined through DisCrit theory. Using qualitative research methods, interviews of twelve teachers of culturally linguistically diverse students with dis/abilities were conducted and analyzed, producing a total of eleven themes addressing the influence of life experiences, formal educational and training experiences, created meanings and understanding, and actions taken toward implementing a culturally responsive educational practice for their culturally linguistically diverse students with dis/abilities

The virtual reality of Russian prisons : the impact of social media on prisoner agency and prison structure in Russian prisons

Prison agencies around the world are reporting a rise in the use of illicit communication devices in prison. Nevertheless, there is very little prison sociological research into how prisoners themselves communicate online. Using Russia as a case study, this paper reports findings from new research on how prisoners are engaging with the internet and the effects of this on prisoner agency and prison structure. Our main finding is that Russian penality sits at the nexus of two processes. First, it is de-institutionalised in that the prison, discursively speaking, is no longer fixed to a built form. Second, it is reflexively re-territorialised in that it places prisoner agency onto a third space. The paper presents a new conceptual framework of ‘prisoners as absent’, which reflects penality in Russia as culturally contingent and politically resilient. The interplay between de-institutionalisation and re-territorialisation has produced on a new penal imaginary - a carceral motif for the twenty first century - in the form of a virtual world

Governance Through Participation: An Inquiry into the Social Relations of Community-Based Research

Community-based research (CBR) is consistently held up as a benchmark for socially just knowledge production. Calls for the intensification of and further institutionalization of CBR indicate the discursive value of community-engaged research, but its material effects are unclear. CBRs claims to egalitarian, emancipatory research relations and outcomes remain largely uninterrogated and the participative practices and collaborative relations under documented and theorized. This study of the social relations of CBR theorizes participatory research as a site of governance. Specifically, I inquire into how the social relations of CBR are governed through affect, participatory practices, colonial processes of subjectification, institutional arrangements, as well as resisted as counter governmental practices. I draw on poststructural, postcolonial and affect theories in dialogue with the critical reflections of twenty-nine academic, community-based professionals, and peer CBR collaborators to bring forth the complexity of governmental practices. I develop a methodology of Dialogic Theoretical Pluralism to produce five distinct strands of theoretical analyses, which trouble the discursive and material practices of collaborative research, while not foreclosing on its possibilities. I argue that conversants desires to do socially transformative research are unmet and reconfigure CBR as a site of scaffolding community collaborators toward social mobility. These desires activate participative practices of access to and appropriation of community knowledges and labour to produce a tertiary, low cost and precarious knowledge work force. Colonial subject-making practices of CBR, which are raced, gendered and classed, secure the benevolence and expertise of academe against community subjects Othered as lacking beneficiaries in need of capacity building. Institutional arrangements coordinate time, authorize who is a legitimate knower, and consign community collaborators and community benefit to the margins. These governmental practices are not total and institutionalized norms of CBR are resisted through unsettling affect, strategic subjectivities, dissent and distance, and revitalized commitments to social and epistemic transformation. Despite these transgressive practices, the reconfiguration of CBR as an individual intervention in a context of eroding support to social programming and social change warrants sustained attention to the ways in which participation colludes with the very neoliberal/colonial projects it aims to contest

Gay-Straight Alliances and Student Activism in Ontario Public Secular and Catholic High Schools

This study provides an in-depth examination of the educative and activist function of GSAs in two public secular and two public Catholic Ontario secondary schools. Queer theory, as elaborated by Foucault (1978), Sedgwick (1990/2008), Butler (1990, 1993a/b/c), Warner (1991), and Britzman (1995), provides a foundation for critiquing the heteronormative underpinnings of schooling, and the trans-informed insights of Namaste (2000), Stryker (2006), Serano (2007/2016, 2013), Malatino (2015), and Connell (2009) offers a lens to scrutinize cisnormative infrastructure, pedagogy, and practice as they pertain to the role and educative function of GSAs in selected Ontario schools. To generate knowledge on the particularities of the four GSAs (Patton, 2002), a multi-sited case study approach was undertaken (Patton, 2002; Stake, 2005). Data were gathered by completing semi-structured interviews with 14 youth and five educators across the school sites, observing and participating in GSA meetings, collecting semi-structured diaries from 13 youth, and analyzing club-related visual materials - all of which were made sense of by employing queer and trans-informed theoretical perspectives. There was a concerted effort to speak with trans and gender diverse GSA members in order to (de)subjugate their embodied knowledges and understandings (Stryker, 2006), authorize their voices (Cook-Sather, 2002, 2006), and document their agency in schooling by way of their club-inspired education and activism (see Elliott, 2015, Schindel, 2005, 2008). Three prominent themes emerged within the data: 1: each GSA was a student-driven democratizing space that enabled youth to explore and circulate anti-hetero/cisnormative discourses (Fraser, 1990); 2) all GSAs served as a proxy in the absence of an ongoing systemic commitment to queer and trans-informed education; and 3) pastoral care and its regulatory moral authority within Catholic education impeded GSA development and functioning (Martino, 2014). The implications of the study are outlined in terms of the need for systemic support for anti-heteronormative and anti-cisnormative education so that the burden and responsibility for this education does not just fall on the shoulders of GSA members and gender and sexual minority youth in particular

Exploring Diverse Adolescents & Youth Education Across the Displacement Linear: Education in Emergencies (EiE) Experiences and Colonial Entanglements

This thesis explores diverse, forcibly displaced youths'experiences of education in emergencies (EiE) responses in South Sudan, the UK and Jordan and how colonial legacies continue to permeate the types and modes of education programmes that are designed, funded, and implemented. This thesis draws on the Black radical tradition (BRT) as a conceptual and methodological framing. In addition, connecting EiE and BRT scholarship enables new discourses that counter hegemonic and ahistorical narratives of aid to surface and instead illustrate power asymmetries, coloniality, and conflict-affected communities' cultural wealth in challenging limited educational opportunities. This study intends to contribute to critical EiE scholarship, highlighting the heterogeneity of forcibly displaced youth and challenging universalising discourses that erase the EiE experiences of racialised and othered identities. To explore the research inquiry, I use a multi-sited, multi-scalar research approach to co- design a digital storytelling action research praxis with 60 young people in South Sudan, Jordan and the UK, alongside 26 key informant interviews with EiE practitioners to address the research areas. The key findings highlighted that intersectionality matters in EIE, in that forcibly displaced young people's educational experiences are intimately connected to their situated positions, often shaped by colonialism. Similarly, these dynamics profoundly impact and shape the EiE sector. Notwithstanding, some young people resist limited education trajectories, in myriad ways, from leveraging family and community networks to exercising personal agency, seeking out, and setting up learning opportunities. A secondary objective of this study is to challenge the dominant modes of knowledge production and ways of working in the EiE field and to interrogate its conceptual framings by bringing to the fore the issues that young people want to highlight in their educational experiences when enabled to do so through using the digital storytelling research praxis

Contributions from diversity objectives and realities in a large international project

Diese Studie untersucht die ‘Contributions from diversity’ in einem Grossprojekt im Fachbereich Management development in der aegyptischen Telekommunikations-industrie. Gleichzeitig manifestiert die Arbeit, wie Diversitaet einen Beitrag zu anderen Disziplinen traegt, in diesem Fall die Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie zu Wirtschaft. Besonderer Augenmerk liegt auf der Interaktion dreier Gruppen, naemlich die Interaktion unter den Projektmitgliedern, die Interaktion zwischen den Projektmitgliedern und den Teilnehmern des Telekommunikations¬unternehmens, und die Interaktion mit Individuen, die nur peripher am Projekt beteiligt waren. Die wissenschaftliche Leistung ist in der Widersprüchlichkeit zwischen dem eigentlichen Projektziel begruendet, dem Unternehmenswachstum, welches jeden Anspruch an Diversitaet ignoriert und dem Prozess dieses Ziel zu erreichen, die aus den Interaktionen gewachsene Diversitaet, welche letztendlich wesentlich zum Projekterfolg beitrug. Methodisch praesentiert die Arbeit einen 2-stufigen Prozess: a) die hauptsaechlich qualitative teils auch quantitative Datenanalyse beinhaltet das Identifizieren von Mustern, Kodieren von bedeutungstragenden Wiederholungen, sowie die Benennung signifikanter Iterationen. Das Ergebnis der mehrfachen Wiederholung dieses Prozesses fuehrte zur Entwicklung des Models ‘The three lenses of diversity’, bestehend aus der ‘Lens of multiple identity’, der ‘Lens of perception’, und der ‘Environmental lens’; b) die Anwendung dieses Models, The three lenses of diversity auf die in dichter Beschreibung praesentierten Interaktionen der genannten drei Gruppen, um die ‘Contributions from diversity’ zu analysieren. Die Ergebnisse der Arbeit sind: Diversitaet exisitiert nicht per se, sie ist ein in einer Interaktion entstehender Prozess. Diversitaet entsteht aus der dialogischen Beziehung von ‘multiple affiliations’ mit ‘belonging’ und ‘othering’, welche wiederum unter der Auswirkung externer Einfluesse steht. Dieser Prozess entscheidet ueber Erfolg oder Misserfolg im Beziehungsaufbau im Rahmen von internationalen Grossprojekten.This study explores the contributions from diversity to a large and complex manage-ment development project in the Egyptian telecommunication industry. At the same time it makes manifest how diversity in the form of different disciplines can contribute to others, in this case the fields of cultural anthropology and business. Specifically, the research concentrates on the interaction of three stakeholder groups involved in this project, which are the interaction among project team members, the interaction between team members and programme participants and finally, the inter-action with individuals external to the project. The contribution this study makes to knowledge lies in the gap between the actual pro-ject objective, namely growing the business across the globe, which largely ignored any aspect of diversity, and the process of achieving this result, that is, the presence of diversity as elicited in interactions, which were one of the key contributors for the suc-cess of the project. The methodology comprises a 2-step process, which is a) mainly a qualitative but also quantitative data analysis which included identifying patterns, coding meaningful repeti-tions, and labelling significant iterations. Completing this process several times led to the development of the new framework ‘Three lenses of diversity’, which consists of the lens of multiple identity; the lens of perception; and the environmental lens; and b) the application of the framework onto the interaction of the three stakeholder groups, cap-tured in thick descriptions in order to identify the contributions from diversity. Findings are that diversity is not just there; it is a process, which is created from interaction. Diversity is generated from the dialogical relationship of multiple affiliations with belonging and othering under the influences from the external environment, and can so shape the success or failure in building relationship on complex projects