‘This is a competition’: The relationship between examination pressure and gender violence in primary schools in Kenya

This study explores the relationship between gender violence in schools and teaching and learning processes in two case study primary schools in Kirinyaga County, Kenya. For seven months in 2015, the following qualitative methods were used: participant observation, individual teacher interviews, individual art-based student interviews and member-check interviews with teachers and students. Findings indicate that examination pressure can directly and indirectly perpetuate gender violence in schools by using corporal punishment and public humiliation as motivational tools and by diverting resources from efforts to enhance safety and equality to ever more time for exam preparation

Toward a Definition of Transnational Girlhood

In this article, I join a conversation about the definition and value of the term transnational girlhood. After surveying the fields of transnationalism, transnational feminism, and girlhood studies, I reflect on the representation of girls who act or are discussed as transnational figures. I critique the use of the term, analyze movements that connect girls across borders, and close by identifying four features of transnational girlhood: cross-border connections based on girls’ localized lived experiences; intersectional analysis that prioritizes the voices of girls from the Global South who, traditionally, have had fewer opportunities to speak than their Global North counterparts; recognition of girls’ agency and the structural constraints, including global structures such as colonialism, international development, and transnational capitalism, in which they operate; and a global agenda for change

Education about gender-based violence: opportunities and obstacles in the Ontario secondary school curriculum

This article examines the Ontario secondary school curriculum’s inclusion of opportunities to teach about gender-based violence, drawing on analysis of the Social Sciences and Humanities, Canadian and World Issues, and Health and Physical Education curricula and seven teacher interviews. Analysis applies Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis to show that opportunities for teachers to address gender-based violence issues exist, but the use of discourses that emphasize critical engagement with gender-based violence concepts are limited to upper level optional courses. Given their prevalence in Canada, gender-based violence issues should be positioned in the curriculum as essential knowledge, and taught with recognition of the gendered, racialized, and colonial influences that shape both risk and response to gender-based violence

The Centrality of Community in Education about Gender-Based Violence

The Time to Teach about Gender-Based Violence in Canada project asked teacher and student participants how Canadian educators could improve young people’s critical consciousness in relation to gender-based violence. Data collection involved individual interviews with 14 teachers, participatory workshops with three groups of students, and a virtual workshop in which teacher participants validated and expanded upon initial analysis of their interview data and responded to cellphilms produced in the student workshops. Drawing upon feminist and engaged pedagogy and situating gender-based violence as a form of difficult knowledge, analysis identifies community as a central concept for effective teaching about gender-based violence from both teacher and student perspectives. The concept of community is broken down into creating community, teaching in community, and connecting with communities. Teacher participants indicated that their capacity to create and sustain transformative learning communities would be enhanced by further support from the educational communities that they are members of

The Centrality of Participant Voice in Illuminating the Gender Regime in Education Research Using a Human Capabilities Analysis

The human capabilities approach distinguishes between capabilities (a person’s ability to choose what she wants to do/be) and functionings (actually doing/being what she wants). When used to analyze gender equality in education, it draws attention to the nature of education and the extent to which it is equally empowering for girls and boys. This research synthesis examines the use of the human capabilities approach as an analytical framework for gender and education research. The approach’s emphasis on participant voice as a means of articulating what is valued in education highlights contradictions and similarities within a given community and attends to the way that the gender regime of the school characterizes the educational experience. This is particularly meaningful in relation to the views of student participants including children, whose descriptions of their educational values, goals and experiences are critical in understanding the daily operations and experiences of gender regimes in schools

What do you want your teachers to know? Using intergenerational reflections in education research

The Intergenerational Reflections technique was developed to bring together the voices of connected stakeholders of different ages and positions—in this case, students and teachers—to create recommendations that build on both groups’ perspectives. This article describes its use and results as piloted in the Time to Teach about Gender-Based Violence in Canada project. The project gathered 11 teacher participants in a participatory workshop to mobilize teachers’ reflections on student-produced cellphilms responding to the prompt: “What do you want your teachers to know when teaching about gender-based violence?” Framed using hooks’ engaged pedagogy, analysis describes teachers’ identification of potential pedagogical adaptations responding to student recommendations, demonstrating Intergenerational Reflections’ value in getting teachers to actively listen to student messages in educational research and practice. Results identify the need to involve other educational stakeholders in Intergenerational Reflections, particularly in addressing a lack of multi-level institutional support to enhance pedagogy about gender-based violence

Master of Science

thesisThis report presents data and conclusions concerning the role of low-angle faulting in the formation of the Thermo Hot Springs Known Geothermal Resource Area (KGRA) and the effects that such faulting may have on fluid flow and production. The conclusions are that the KGRA is formed by a low-angle normal fault that juxtaposes Mesozoic and upper Paleozoic sedimentary rock in the upper plate over metamorphic rock and granite. The Mesozoic section is in turn overlain by a sequence of Tertiary to Quaternary volcanic and sedimentary deposits. High-angle normal faults offset the sedimentary and volcanic sections, and in some, if not all, cases penetrate and offset the low-angle detachment fault. These high-angle normal faults may hydraulically compartmentalize the reservoir but also provide pathways for fluids to ascend upwards from beneath the detachment fault. The implications of the low-angle normal or detachment fault structure are significant: (1) The Thermo Hot Springs KGRA has striking similarities to the structures and stratigraphy that are exposed in the southern Mineral Mountains, which provide an excellent outcrop analog for studying the nature of the structures and fluid conduits that presumably occur at depth in the KGRA. There is good reason to suspect that the Cave Canyon detachment fault exposed in the southern Mineral Mountains is the same or similar structure as the detachment fault within the Thermo Hot Springs KGRA. The similarities include lower fault plate granitic and metamorphic rocks, hydrothermally altered cataclasite within the detachment fault zone, essentially an identical stratigraphy within the upper plate of the detachment fault, and a mosaic of north and east trending high-angle normal faults, some of which penetrate and offset the detachment fault. (2) The low-angle detachment fault model for KGRA structure has regional implications for geothermal prospecting in the Basin and Range terrain of southwestern Utah. This region is underlain by several known or suspected detachment normal faults of middle to late Tertiary age, which may act to laterally channel hot fluids at depth over large areas with little surface expression, such as springs or tufa mounds, except where the low-angle faults are breached by younger faulting

Quantum optomechanics beyond the quantum coherent oscillation regime

Interaction with a thermal environment decoheres the quantum state of a mechanical oscillator. When the interaction is sufficiently strong, such that more than one thermal phonon is introduced within a period of oscillation, quantum coherent oscillations are prevented. This is generally thought to preclude a wide range of quantum protocols. Here, we introduce a pulsed optomechanical protocol that allows ground state cooling, general linear quantum non-demolition measurements, optomechanical state swaps, and quantum state preparation and tomography without requiring quantum coherent oscillations. Finally we show how the protocol can break the usual thermal limit for sensing of impulse forces.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure