LLED PhD student Amanda Wager will defend her doctoral dissertation on Friday, September 26, 2014. All are welcome to attend.

Title: Applied Drama as Engaging Pedagogy: Critical Multimodal Literacies with Street Youth
When:  Friday, September 26, 2014 at 9:00 am
Where: Graduate Student Centre, at 6371 Crescent Road, room 200
Co-Supervisor: Drs. George Belliveau and Theresa Rogers

Doctoral defences are public. Examinations normally take 2–3 hours to complete. Exam room doors are locked once exams are in progress. Late entry is not permitted.

Abstract

This critical ethnography investigates the pedagogical spaces constituted within a youth-led, participatory theatre production, Surviving in the Cracks (Wager, et al., 2009).  The popular theatre production documented the lived experiences of eight street-youth, including their struggles to survive in the face of cuts to public health resources in Vancouver.  As anapplied theatre study, this theatre project is defined as a messy and rich site of pedagogical inquiry that is examined through multiple theoretical and methodological frameworks.  It draws on critical feminist pedagogy, critical youth studies and theatre and literacy research with the purpose of revealing how drama and theatre spaces provide “anomalous” (Ellsworth, 2005) learning places, or out-of-the-ordinary learning spaces, that youth and researchers collectively embodied during the applied drama and theatre process and production.

Analysis of ethnographic data generated before, during, and after the theatrical production of Surviving in the Cracks suggests how drama and theatre with street youth opens up embodied pedagogical spaces.  Two different methods of analysis bring multiple perspectives to this work through exploring how meaning was collectively constructed, how multimodal literacy practices were used in critical ways, how power was negotiated, how desire was manifested through imaginaries, and how safe spaces were generated by this community of youthwithin selected pedagogical moments of resistance during the theatre process.  Specifically, the script is analyzed with a youth participant followed by the analysis of particular moments of resistance during performance creation and production.

This research advances knowledge of how informal learning spaces and youth resistances within education become crucial parts of pedagogy and should be considered as future foundations and expansions of education.  Implications include using multiple methodological lenses in order to work alongside, for and with youth, as well as being able to reach larger audiences of youth, communities, educators, and scholars through different analytical perspectives.  By examining how theatre provides a space for marginalized youth to engage in dialogues about complex social issues this research contributes to the fields of critical and feminist pedagogy, language and literacy education, drama in education, critical youth studies, and methodological studies in qualitative research.

LLED PhD studnet Ji Eun Kim will defend her doctoral dissertation on Wednesday, September 10, 2014. All are welcome to attend.

Title: Parent-Child Shared Reading: The Affordances of Print, Digital and Hand-Held Electronic Storybooks
When: Wednesday, September 10, 2014 at 9:00 am
Where: Graduate Student Centre, at 6371 Crescent Road, room 200
Supervisor: Dr. Jim Anderson

Doctoral defences are public. Examinations normally take 2–3 hours to complete. Exam room doors are locked once exams are in progress. Late entry is not permitted.

LLED’s Laura E. Nimmon will be defending her thesis, Meaning Making within Social Activity Domain of Health Maintenance: Role of Social Networks.

When: Monday, September 22, 2014 9:00 AM
Where: Graduate Student Centre, at 6371 Crescent Road, Room 203
Supervisor: Dr. Victoria Purcell-Gates

All are welcome to attend and support Laura.

The LLED community is welcome to attend the MA Thesis defence for Maga Kijak.

When: Thursday, August 28 from 10:00 to 12:00

Where: LLED Boardroom, room 105, Ponderosa Annex E

Thesis title: THE DIFFICULTIES OF POLISH SCHOLARS TRYING TO PUBLISH IN INTERNATIONAL PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS

Committee: Ling Shi (Supervisor), Patsy Duff, and Ryuko Kubota.

Abstract:
This study set out to consider the factors responsible for the low publication rates of Polish academics in international, peer-reviewed journals, and whether the global dominance of the English language in scholarly publications is a significant contributing factor. The literature suggests it might be but, to date, no in-depth investigation has confirmed this.

Qualitative research methodology was selected as the most effective approach for the study and semi-structured interviews with eight Polish scholars were conducted. According to the data collected in these interviews, the reasons behind the small international publication output of Polish scholars are multifaceted. Polish academics face a number of difficulties which are in line with those described in the literature discussing the challenges facing non-native English speakers attempting to publish internationally. Linguistic difficulties are exacerbated by chronic underfunding of Polish science which results in inadequate resources and low salaries that lead to faculty taking multiple jobs. However, the study also reveals that Polish academia suffers from the lack of publishing culture. In other words, the “publish or perish” imperative, so widespread in the Western academic world, is only just taking root in Poland. Further, the study shows that Polish scholars struggle more with mastering English academic writing structures than they do with English language proficiency in general.
Scientific productivity in Poland could be fostered in a number of ways. Academics should be given more help and incentives to increase their overall publication output, domestically as well as internationally. For example, researchers’ salaries should be improved so that they do not need to hold multiple jobs. At the same time, access to subsidised English editorial services should be made available to scholars to help them prepare their manuscripts for international publications. As well, English academic writing courses should be introduced widely at Polish universities to improve the writing skills of future generations of scholars.

What can be learned about publication obstacles in Poland from this study may be applicable to other non-Anglophone scholarly communities, and may provide answers as to how the global community may “level the publishing playing field” to ensure maximum dissemination of all scholarly ideas.

LLED is happy to welcome Dr. Anthony Paré as Department head. (pictured right to left: Dean Blye Frank, Dr. Anthony Paré, Dr. Wendy Carr)

Photo credit: TEO UBC