Andre Mazawi

The full abstract for this thesis is available in the body of the thesis, and will be available when the embargo expires.

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Collaboration is a messy, complicated, and socially constructed (Burr, 2015) practice, involving stakeholders from different organizations to purportedly achieve consensus on mutual aims. It is often presented as a seamless and productive practice of stakeholders negotiating different interests, values, and aims (Gray, 1989). At the same time, it is fraught with tensions and challenges related to varying power and capacities (Gray & Purdy, 2018; Phillips et al., 2000), interacting with the policies and politics in the ecosystem (Weaver-Hightower, 2008), which impacts both the stakeholder experiences and the overall aims of collaboration.This qualitative research study analyzes stakeholders’ experiences from non-profit and government organizations involved in collaboration in a geographically and culturally diverse community in Western Canada. The case, the Young Child project, studied from 2007 to 2011, is bounded (Yin, 2018). Using Gray and Purdy’s (2018) framework for power dynamics within collaboration, I analyze the variations of (a) different forms of power (authority, resources, and discursive power) and (b) power orientations (power over, power to, and power for) taken by stakeholders in their interactions with others.I analyze interview transcriptions, project and policy documents, media articles, and my reflexive journal to examine the multiple dimensions of power in collaboration. I explore three themes: how participants describe their experiences in the Young Child collaboration, what discourses they use to describe positionality, and how participant narratives and project documents reflect the intersection of power and democratic participation in collaboration.Based on my analysis, I argue that concerted time to develop relationships, role clarifications, and emotional connections to the issues at stake during the early stages of collaboration can mitigate abuses of power that can occur in the process. Additionally, I suggest that stakeholder participation defines and constructs collaboration and impacts how dynamics of power are navigated within informal and interactional spaces. I outline the relationship between the politics and policies within the defined collaboration and the surrounding ecosystem. Finally, I conclude that individual stories demonstrate hidden and implicit dynamics in collaboration. And stories also provide opportunities to improve the development of collaborative aims and the experiences of stakeholders involved in this practice.

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Drawing on philosophical inquiry, this manuscript-based dissertation examines the phenomenon of public mass gun violence (PMGV) in the United States—a crime most often committed by White men. While each chapter is an individual piece of academic writing addressing specific research goals, each chapter also builds off of the previous one conceptually and theoretically, allowing microscopic and macroscopic perspectives on PMGV to come into focus concurrently. Chapter 2 provides a present-day overview of gun violence in the United States. It asks: How are mass shootings that take place in public spaces narrated in the US? How do the various means for calculating differing forms of gun violence in the US impact White communities and communities of Color disproportionately? I illustrate how methods for calculating gun violence further pathologize marginalized groups and how this has implications for schools. Chapter 3 investigates the historical mechanisms that foster PMGV in the United States today. Drawing on decolonial theory, and critical theory, among others, I argue that PMGV is an intergenerational consequence that originates from the founding of the country on the violence of colonization, coloniality, and slavery. I situate the PMGV shooter’s identity as connected to the colonial systems of power that were once intended to benefit him. I argue that when the shooter feels he is denied these social privileges, he retaliates via PMGV against those he symbolically perceives to have deprived him. Drawing on the harms of colonial divisions outlined in Chapter 3, Chapter 4 inquires: If PMGV reflects a deep societal wound stemming from colonization and coloniality, what considerations can we engage to prevent violence and promote healing? I offer vistas for stepping into alternative ways of knowing that could lead to mending divisions and thwarting violence. In Chapter 5, I provide implications for teacher education, professional development, and curriculum reform.Collectively, this work disrupts limited narratives about PMGV that otherwise impede investigations into the roles of whiteness, colonization, coloniality, and masculinity in fostering the phenomenon. The work also offers vistas for tending to the violence preventatively.

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Market-oriented education policies (MOEPs) are becoming increasingly prevalent in public education contexts around the world. However, there is a paucity of study on how public education administrators experience and understand MOEPs enacted within these spaces. In this thesis, I examine how administrators experience and navigate increasingly competitive environments and evolving political economies in school districts contexts. I focus on the cultural, political, economic, and administrative contingencies faced by administrators of International Education (IE) programs in the Canadian province of British Columbia (B.C.). These programs, which have proliferated over the past two decades, are viewed as revenue-generating activities that do not seem to fit well within public school districts.In this study I take a policy sociology approach employing the Policy Enactment Analytic from the work of Stephen Ball, Meg Maguire, and Annette Braun to analyze how policies play out in specific educational contexts. I also draw upon Ball’s work, which positions education policy as dynamic and malleable, keyed by individual policy actors operating within complex networks, and Susan Robertson’s research on globalization and education policy. I utilize phenomenology to explore administrators’ experiences with MOEPs. Data is collected through interviews with five administrators from B.C. school districts and independent schools. Administrators identify the emergence of “hybrid policy spaces” in MOEP enactment that opens district policy jurisdictions to market forces from international and global scales. These spaces reveal how the dynamics associated with competing priorities and pressures ultimately reconfigures and reshapes administrators’ roles and professional identities within public education settings. These dynamics also have cultural implications, which were somewhat unexpected. For instance, “interculturalization” was a prominent thread weaving through the administrators’ experiences, regardless of district context or individual background.The emergence of these hybrid policy spaces raises questions regarding the scope and magnitude of the impacts of MOEPs on public education. Additionally, the prominence of cultural implications as a strong theme within these policy enactments suggests that economics should not be the lone consideration in attempting to study and better understand the evolving policy landscape.

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Within the country of Saudi Arabia, all early childhood education (ECE) teachers in both public and private schools are female. Despite this demographic fact, there has been little academic study into their professional journeys, challenges, and ambitions. This study brings the voices of these women forward. Through the methodological technique of “portrait” based narrative inquiry inspired by cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, and building on the framework of Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, this study explores how six female educators working in Saudi Arabia's ECE have entered the field and negotiated their professional journeys throughout the years.In this study I argue that the narratives composed from the six women I interviewed illustrate the complexities and contradictions that underpin Saudi Arabian ECE. The study reveals the overwhelming influence of patriarchal norms, policies, and practices in Saudi Arabia and how they intersect to shape the capacity of women educators to bring about social change, as well as a restating of what it means to be a Saudi Arabian citizen, as daughters, siblings, wives, mothers, and educators. These narratives challenge the perception of Saudi Arabian ECE as an environment filled with apathetic teachers who are completely dominated by patriarchal systems and unable or unwilling to engage productively in discussions of reform. At the same time, these narratives offer a window into the world of subordinated women and the marginalization of their pedagogical thought, particularly in an educational system that is frequently trapped in centralized policies and where professional opportunity and upward mobility for women are often limited. The implications of these findings for our understanding of the prospects and contributions of ECE in Saudi Arabia are subsequently examined.

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An area of research that has had little attention is the experiences of Indigenous doctoral students, told from their perspectives. This study offers an in-depth understanding of Indigenous doctoral students’ experiences related to admission and all program milestones during their enrollment in a Canadian research-intensive university. In this research 13 Indigenous doctoral students, most of whom were enrolled in the Faculty of Education doctoral programs at the University of British Columbia, shared their life experience stories about (a) how their web of relationships with family, community, peers, mentors, program structures, and university structures combined to support, guide, and assist them prior to and during their studies; (b) how they created community spaces to remain connected to their programs academically and socially; and (c) how they viewed tensions between their programmatic experiences and their community affiliations. For many Indigenous students, the doctoral journey does not occur in isolation, which is theorized through the lens of Kirkness and Barnhardts’ 4Rs, of Respect, Relevance, Reciprocity, and Responsibility (1991). The participants’ life experience stories were situated within Archibald’s (2008b) Indigenous Storywork methodology to safeguard the integrity of the stories’ meanings. I discovered that some Indigenous students found the higher education experience isolating and challenging, if not alienating, and did not feel that the university was a place for them. However, they also experienced success through creating community, maintaining their family and cultural connections, engaging in Indigenous peer-support and mentoring programs, and receiving respectful mentoring from faculty. University services and programs that provided a safe, culturally responsive environment for Indigenous doctoral students to flourish included the First Nations Longhouse; Supporting Aboriginal Graduate Enhancement, which is a peer support program; and an annual Indigenous Graduate Student Symposium. A contribution of this study is the extension of Kirkness and Barnhardt’s 4Rs to include Recognition, Reclamation, Redress, and Reconciliation. These additional 4Rs stem from the findings and emphasize the importance of doctoral studies for Indigenous students’ future leadership, policy, and self-determination contributions to their own communities and to Canadian society.

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This mixed methods study examined the teaching perspectives of 14 teachers and how they constructed their understanding of teaching. During the 2012-2013 school year interviews and an online survey were administered to these 14 teachers employed in two school districts and one private school in British Columbia. The teachers varied in terms of gender, years of experience and levels of grades taught. The study was conducted in two phases: a Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) survey was followed by interviews. The TPI results described the dominant teaching perspectives of each teacher as transmission, apprenticeship, developmental, nurturing or social reform. The interview data then helped explore teachers' personal, educational and teaching experiences and the way they shaped those dominant teaching perspectives. The research was conceptualized and guided by a constructivist approach. Social reality is created by individuals to explain their experiences and is influenced by what an individual brings to such experiences. Conceptual lenses interpret what you see. The study was framed by the dimensions of examining teaching as a process of expertise, of interdependence, judgment and the self-expression needs of teachers. Study findings highlighted the multifaceted problem solving contextual nature of teaching in shaping understanding as an improvisational experience towards ideals that may change over time. Such experiences ultimately favored collegially centered relationships with co-constructed learning support opportunities with other trusted educators. The identity or understanding of what is good teaching is not fixed over time and developing awareness is a matter of reflexive practice and accumulating experience. Teaching is not simple acts of productivity but productive acts of thinking to celebrate both emotional and intellectual ends.

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The scholarly literature has emphasized the strong humanistic tradition thatcharacterizes the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO). This study, which draws on archival research and interviews, traces theorigins, features and shifts of UNESCO’s educational humanism from the creation of theorganization in 1945 to the present day, with a particular focus on the concept of lifelonglearning. I argue that the tensions between the humanistic worldview and the pressuresplaced on the organization by multifaceted changes in the political economy and thelandscape of global governance in education have forced UNESCO to depart from itscomprehensive lifelong learning approach, while still maintaining a claim of continuity.Employing Gadamer’s (1975) concept of tradition and Bevir’s (1999; 2003)concepts of tradition and dilemma and neo-institutional theories that emphasize the roleof ideology and social meanings in explaining changes in organizations, the studyexamines the shifts that UNESCO’s educational concepts and programs have undergoneas changing actors continually renegotiated and reclaimed its humanistic tradition as areaction to the dilemmas they faced. I argue that UNESCO’s humanistic tradition hasbeen challenged by competing ideas, in particular the concept of human capital, whichpresented a dilemma for the organization, contributing to internal and external tensions.Each of the symbolic documents that are at the centre of this study – UNESCO’sconstitution, Learning to be (aka the Faure report, 1972) and Learning: The treasurewithin (aka the Delors report, 1996) – are windows into the ideological struggles carriedout at their time. They tell us a great deal not only about the beliefs and ideologies of theactors involved, but also about the “competing” ideologies with which they interacted.They further shed light on the shifting position of UNESCO in the system of internationalorganizations and multilateral development.At a time when the humanistic perspective of education has been crowded out bythe increasing marketization of education and UNESCO faces a severe existential crisis,this study contributes to the understanding not only of the intellectual history of lifelonglearning, but more broadly of the changes in educational multilateralism over the past 70years.

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The point of origin for my research is my birth: I was born in the Coqualeetza Indian Hospital. I was denied contact with my mother because she had tuberculosis and was deemed contagious. Indian Hospitals were established to house Indigenous peoples to control contamination. In my mind, I was born into legislated interference. My research puzzle emerges from my encounters with what I call a lost “sense of belonging”. Through exploration, I educated myself, my community, and the public about what happens to an Indigenous person when they are removed from critical aspects of their cultural identities. As part of the journey, I weave together two methodologies that support and protect the intense emotional work that accompanies my inquiry. These are Indigenous Storywork and Narrative Inquiry. Indigenous Storywork allows me to employ important protocols that align with community-based ethics while conducting research with Indigenous communities; Narrative Inquiry, particularly autobiographical Narrative Inquiry, allows me to engage safely and relationally in deep personal reflection. I examine what it means to be Secwepemc from my and my community’s perspective as I engage with the lived-experience stories of a Secwepemc youth and Elder. I tell of my own lived experiences and share my participants’ narratives; this story-sharing highlights the importance of knowing oneself and will assist other Indigenous peoples to define their own identities. I ascertain that Indigenous Knowledge is anchored in our identities and connections to our cultural rootedness, often inspired by the cultural teachings of grandparents. My autobiographical narrative, along with the participants’ stories, identifies the importance of intergenerational knowledge transmission, familial relationships, and land-based/culture-based learnings in my Secwepemc identity study. The Secwepemc hand drum theoretically and metaphorically epitomizes Indigenous Knowledge; it ensures that my research project remains balanced in terms of upholding community protocols while honouring the Elders’/grandparents’ teachings. Rather than allow the influx of external influences to hold Indigenous peoples in a subjugated position, I propose that narrative-based research increases our advancement in research, academia, and healing. This dissertation offers an alternative way to tell our truths and to remove Indigenous histories from the periphery of mainstream society.

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In the discourse on how to improve British Columbia’s secondary schools two prevailing epistemological tensions exist between two competing rationalities: (1) an instrumental rationality that privileges sense-making born out of data-gathering, and (2) a values-rationality that is discernibly more context-dependent. The seeds for public discord are sown when a particular kind of logic for capturing the complexity of any problematic is privileged over a competing (counter) logic attempting to do the same thing. The Fraser Institute proposes to the public a particular vision on how to improve secondary schools by manufacturing annual school report cards that are published in newspapers and online. Proponents of school report cards believe that school improvement is predicated on measurement, competition, market-driven reform initiatives, and choice. They support the strategies and techniques used by the Fraser Institute to demarcate the limits and boundaries of exemplary educational practice. Critics of school report cards object to the way ranking rubrics highlight and amplify differences that exist between schools. They believe that the rankings devised by the Fraser Institute rewards certain kinds of schools while statistically sanctioning others. Drawing principally on published media accounts and the Fraser Institute’s own documents this project shows how the Fraser Institute has mounted an effective public critique on the state of public secondary schools. It describes how statistical revisions made to the ranking matrix from 1998-2010 resulted in a marked redistribution of top-ranked schools in British Columbia that privileged certain kinds of private schools over public schools. School rankings designed to locate and fix their respective subjects in this way call on agents to compete for, acquire, and leverage different kinds of symbolic capital on the field of power, which they use to promote their respective political agendas. When the kinds of stories that can be told about schools become narrated through a statistical régime of truth they may negate capital disparities that exist between schools and the population of students they serve. At stake is the emancipatory belief that different kinds of schools operate to serve the diverse educational needs of different kinds of students in different kinds of ways.

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This is a case study which seeks to understand how individuals achieve consensus within heterogeneous groups. The Federation of Independent School Associations in British Columbia was formed in 1966 to lobby government for recognition and funding for independent schools. FISA consists of five separate associations with different ideological and pedagogical priorities that might make achieving consensus difficult. Yet over the past forty years, unanimity on policy has been achieved on all but one occasion.This case study draws on Bourdieu's (1985) analysis of how groups develop strategies of collaboration within a social space. Jarvis (1998) also provides a paradigm on group knowledge that has been adapted to analyze the interviews that constitute part of the qualitative data in this research. Data sources included archival records, press reports, Board meeting attendance, meeting minutes, internal FISA memos, and interviews with Directors and senior government officials.The study's purpose was to determine what strategies FISA used to achieve consensus on issues relating to legislation which provided partial public funding for independent schools in BC. The conclusions suggest five organizational facets that impact FISA's consensus strategies: beliefs and values, group knowledge, external variables, personal identities and tacit learning. Foundational principles of FISA include the right to `disassociate' on specific issues. Consensus is achieved through consciously limiting the issues addressed by the organization. The diversity of FISA is considered its strength and members respect one another despite differing belief systems through conscious misunderstanding. Finally, each association has an equal voice in shaping policy.The common threat of losing public funding is a major motivator towards collaboration. Building relationships with senior government officials and elected representatives has been found effective to garner support for independent schools.This research is based on a study of one non government organization, and therefore, the results cannot be generalized to other diverse organizations, though the findings may be transferable. Further research would be warranted to determine if political or community groups function in a similar manner. The ability to deal with group diversity is important in the context of a multi-cultural society.

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This study engages in a critical analysis of the lived experiences of non-Indigenous educational leaders working in Indigenous communities in the Yukon Territory, Canada. It sheds light on the epistemic and cross-cultural tensions underpinning much of the literature on educational leadership, and aims to address Walker and Dimmock’s (2000) concern that studies of comparative education have been generally absent from educational leadership and management, thereby limiting the available body of knowledge specific to culture and leadership. The study focuses on five questions: How do non-Indigenous Yukon principals construct their professional identity and their role as educational leaders? How do they construct their notions of educational leadership and practice? Given the Yukon’s distinct governance and policy contexts, how do they construct understandings of ‘indigeneity’ in relation to local Indigenous culture? How do they address the tensions arising at the juncture of policies imported from outside the Yukon and the Yukon Education Act (1990)?A critical ethnographic research approach is used to shed light upon these questions. Extensive semi-structured interviews with two male and two female participants in four Yukon schools are conducted. Detailed observations create unique ‘portraits’ of each school and their principals. Pertinent documents are also examined to provide further information and context.This examination suggests that non-Indigenous Yukon principals are caught at the center of micro (school), meso (community), and macro (government) operational and policy levels that powerfully shape their professional identities and their perceptions of their roles as principals. While referred to as ‘educational leaders’ by the extant body of literature and governments, they do not use this term in their identity constructions. Trapped betwixt and between their schools, communities, and government policies in a fragmented Yukon educational field, instead they refer to themselves in managerial and administrative ways as they juggle educational ends mandated by distinct, and somewhat competing, jurisdictions. This study presents another lens through which to examine educational leadership, and offers insights into the use of ethnographic methods as a powerful research tool. Based on these contributions, this study should be informative to current and future practitioners and scholars of education and educational leadership.

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This study interrogates whose knowledge about the self and the other is represented to Iranian students in the 2004 and in selected pre-2004 editions of elementary and guidance school textbooks by analyzing how issues of identity politics, diversity, “citizenship” and development inform the construction of Iranian national identity since the introduction of various curriculum reforms (i.e.: global education) after the Revolution of 1978-79. I draw upon antiracism and transnationalism as discourses of analysis through which the West-East dichotomy is (re)evaluated and interrogated within the context of Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism and Boroujerdi’s (1996) conceptualization of “Orientalism in reverse”. I utilize deconstruction, discourse and qualitative interpretative content analyses as methods of investigating how “race”, ethnicity, social class and gender are configured in representations of sameness and difference. I “look at style, figures of speech, settings, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances, not the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original” (Said, 1978, p. 28). I argue that the ideal citizen and Iranian national identity are constructed by references to conflicting discourses of mustāżafīn (the oppressed), jīhād-i sūzandagī (the Reconstruction Jīhād), ‘ashayir (nomadic tribes), Ummat-i Islamī (Islamic Nation/Community), Īrān-dūstī (loving Iran), the Aryan migration, velayat-e-faqih and colonialism. In their discursive formations, nationalist, anti-imperialist, Islamic, middle-class and Orientalist narratives construct a homogenized Iranian citizenry who has always been active in regional/global relations of power. The ideal citizen is represented through the invocation of two types/sets of “shifting collectivities” that identify it as “white”, male, Shi’a, Aryan-Pars, progressive, independent, pious and a leader in the Islamic world. The first set divides between Shi’a-Persians and non-Shi’a and non-Persians. The second set of binary oppositions represents the ideal citizen in relation and in opposition to the West and the East in their multiple and historical forms. These textbooks are assimilationist texts that act as “border patrolling” and “stignatizing” discourses. They are also forms of “textual genocide” that exclude the voices and histories of national and global minorities and acts of discrimination committed by Iranians against women and minority religious and ethnic groups as official knowledge about friendly/enemy insiders and outsiders.

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