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The Covid-19 pandemic forced significant educational process changes, shifting the emphasis from traditional in-person instruction to online learning. This study analyzes the impact of the Khan Academy Kids learning application on elementary students' anxiety and problem-solving skills in the aftermath of the pandemic. The study explores the efficacy of digital games, essential crisis-related knowledge and skills, as well as the usefulness of various digital learning strategies for elementary school students. A mixed-method research approach was used to answer the research questions. The Constructivist Learning Theory and Scaffolding Theory of Learning were used as conceptual frameworks in the research. The study found the Khan Academy Kid app enhances students' engagement, teamwork, and problem-solving abilities. Results imply that adaptability, problem-solving skills, resilience, and emotional stability are vital in a crisis. Although the platform may reduce anxiety and positively impact student engagement, it struggles to address complex forms of anxiety, underscoring a need for enhanced anxiety management solutions.

Small joint range of motion (ROM) in the hand, traditionally measured in-person using a goniometer, is essential for diagnosis and monitoring of hand pathology. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the potential of remote care in mitigating geographic and socio-economic barriers to care. There is, however, an unmet need for validated and practical remote small joint ROM measurement techniques. This thesis aimed to validate the reliability and concurrent validity of two remote measurement techniques: firstly, on-screen ROM measurement using a goniometer held up to a computer screen; secondly, a novel augmented reality (AR) web-application (DIGITS). Both techniques demonstrated high reliability and reasonable concurrent validity relative to in-person goniometry, the gold standard. Their high reliability makes these techniques amenable to use in virtual clinics, particularly for monitoring of changes in digit ROM over time. Additionally, this work lays a foundation for further software development of AR-based measurement tools and validation in clinical populations.

Over the past two decades, necessity entrepreneurs—those who engage in entrepreneurship because of a belief that decent or desirable livelihood alternatives do not exist for them—have become increasingly visible in the entrepreneurship literature. During this time, however, necessity entrepreneurship—both the phenomenon and the theoretical construct—has acquired something of a bad name. As a phenomenon, necessity entrepreneurship is widely associated with capital constraints, marginal profits, and limited economic impact. As a theoretical construct, it is often seen as a crude and pejorative classification device. In this article, we take stock of this emerging body of research, providing an integrative account of extant research and a focused analysis of the main areas of discord within this literature. We set out specific pathways aimed at remediating incongruity between, on the one hand, how necessity entrepreneurship is defined and conceptualized and, on the other, how it manifests across the diverse array of real-world contexts that feature in this literature. We use these reflections to foreground an agenda for future research which is sensitized to the main concerns and critiques that have surfaced in this literature in recent years and to key shifts in the conceptual approach to which they have given rise. Entrepreneurship has been an ever-present feature of human society at least since the time of the first agricultural revolution, when the dominant form of social organization began to shift from small, nomadic bands of hunter–gatherers to larger and more complex societies characterized by increasing specialization and division of labor (Baumol, 1996; Carlen, 2016). Economic historians have documented how, in the roughly 10,000 years since, the enduring prosperity of nations and civilizations has flowed in large part from the cultivation of a spirit of enterprise, where entrepreneurs are incentivized by the certainty that transformational ideas and technologies will be embraced and rewarded (Landes, 1999). Accordingly, entrepreneurs are heralded as cultural icons in much of the modern world, where they are at the visible forefront of humanity’s efforts to address many of our so-called grand challenges, such as the transition to sustainable energy, the strengthening of democracy, and universal access to food, education, health care, and other basic services. Much less prominent across both academic and popular discourse is the fact that, throughout history and into the present day, entrepreneurship has been, and still is, oriented broadly toward the much more mundane objective of economic self-reliance. Even in developed nations like France, Japan, and Spain—and even before the COVID-19 pandemic precipitated widespread labor market upheaval—upwards of one-fifth of those entering self-employment were doing so primarily because they did not believe that better alternatives for work were available to them (Bosma & Kelley, 2019). In developing countries, where social safety nets are less comprehensive and where the pace of urbanization has drastically outstripped that of job creation in recent years, it is common for this number to be significantly larger (Margolis, 2014; Poschke, 2013). Entrepreneurship of this kind is often referred to as “necessity entrepreneurship” (NE), which we formally define as market-based trading activities that are performed outside the scope of salaried employment and that are undertaken primarily because of a lack of decent or desirable livelihood alternatives. Over the past 20 years or so, scholarly interest in NE has begun to catch up somewhat with the prevalence of the phenomenon itself. Arguably, though, the theoretical construct of NE is as contentious as it is popular; alongside an ever-growing accumulation of empirical insights, critiques routinely surface which challenge the construct’s descriptive and analytical value. In some cases, these critiques are used to foreground subsequent efforts at theoretical advancement (e.g., Dencker, Bacq, Gruber, & Haas, 2021); in others, they represent conclusions in and of themselves, leaving open the question of whether the construct of NE has impaired, rather than advanced, our efforts to understand the phenomenon that it is intended to represent (Sarkar, Rufín, & Haughton, 2018; Williams & Williams, 2012). Indeed, given the immense diversity in the “where,” “how,” and even the “why” of NE, some scholars have questioned whether it is appropriate or helpful to conceptualize it as a singular, universal practice at all, suggesting that, in our efforts to do so, one of two outcomes is inevitable: either we are left with a construct that is overstretched and lacking any real representational substance (Puente, González-Espitia, & Cevilla, 2019; Williams & Gurtoo, 2013), or we conceal much of this diversity beneath stylized or stereotyped representations of necessity entrepreneurs (e.g., informal microentrepreneurs in the developing world), which serves to render other groups invisible (e.g., parents whose domestic responsibilities preclude them from taking on jobs that are commensurate with their skills and experience) (Foley, Baird, Cooper, & Williamson, 2018). That the propagation of these concerns has failed to curb the momentum that this literature has generated could be viewed either as an encouraging sign or a troubling one. On the one hand, it might indicate that these concerns are being progressively edged out by a gradual accumulation of affirmative findings; on the other hand, it might give us reason to be cautious when drawing inferences from the continuous stream of affirmative findings that is emerging. In this article, we review the findings that underpin each of these possibilities with a view to determining if (and how) the inherent tensions in this literature might be reconciled. Our review contributes to the achievement of this end goal in three main ways. First, we provide a comprehensive and integrative review of extant research on NE. In doing so, we connect the tensions that have come to the fore in this literature to the duality between the empirical and the conceptual merits of NE, or between NE as a form of economic action and NE as a theoretical construct. Second, we reflect on how these tensions, and the key conceptual developments to which they have given rise, shape future prospects for this field of research. Third, we outline a set of general and specific avenues for future research which reflect not only the areas of this literature that remain systematically underdeveloped but also the areas in which NE research is well positioned to deliver insights that are of broader relevance to the field of entrepreneurship and beyond. The remainder of this article proceeds as follows. In the next section, we foreground our review with a short overview of the conceptual roots of the NE construct, its status in contemporary entrepreneurship literature, and its place in the global labor economy. We then detail our review methodology. Following that is our integrative review of the literature, from which we proceed to a broader discussion of the problems—and solutions—that exist in how we conceptualize NE. In this section, we build toward what we believe to be the most promising avenues of future inquiry based on the observations that we made in the course of our review.

Food hospitality and food retail businesses underwent considerable transformations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These alterations have the potential to affect how individuals in these industries engaged with their workplaces. This thesis identifies how COVID-19 transformed food hospitality and food retail businesses in Ontario and investigates how these changes altered employee wellbeing. The experiences of 39 staff members across these two industries were collected via semi-structured interviews that took place between June 2020 and May 2021. Grounded theory analysis was used to explore this dataset and a distinct theoretical frame emerged for the food retail and food hospitality industries respectively. Results demonstrate that for food hospitality employees their workplaces provided a combination of benefits and threats to wellbeing. In contrast, food retail employees emphasized the imbalance that existed between their perceived efforts and rewards. Future studies should consider investigating how these workplaces might be adapted to better support employee wellbeing.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the mental health of children and families. As a result of the relationship between children’s mental health, parents and service use, this study sought to explore the impacts of the pandemic, age and sex on children’s mental health outcomes, parenting quality, and service complexity. Data consisted of interRAI Child and Youth Mental Health Assessments from 5,067 children and youth between the age of 4-18-years-old. Surprisingly, our findings revealed no changes in parenting quality and children’s mental health during the pandemic. Findings revealed a significant decrease in service complexity during the first few months of the pandemic. Compared to younger males, older female children were more likely to experience internalizing symptoms and less likely to display externalizing symptoms. Older children (vs. younger children) were more likely to receive low parenting quality and experience service complexity. Implications for clinicians, parents, and schools are discussed.

In this concluding article of the special issue, we examine lessons learned from hospitals’ resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, and Mali. A quality lesson learned (QLL) results from a systematic process of collecting, compiling, and analyzing data derived ideally from sustained effort over the life of a research project and reflecting both positive and negative experiences. To produce QLLs as part of this research project, a guide to their development was drafted. The systematic approach we adopted to formulate quality lessons, while certainly complex, took into account the challenges faced by the different stakeholders involved in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we present a comparative analysis of the lessons learned by hospitals and their staff with regard to four common themes that were the subject of empirical analyses: 1) infrastructure reorganization; 2) human resources management; 3) prevention and control of infection risk; and 4) logistics and supply. The lessons learned from the resilience of the hospitals included in this research indicate several factors to consider in preparing for a health crisis: 1) strengthening the coordination and leadership capacities of hospital managers and health authorities; 2) improving communication strategies; 3) strengthening organizational capacity; and 4) adapting resources and strategies, including for procurement and infection risk management.

In a country that long failed to accept, include, and institutionalize R&B music as part of Canadian culture, musical artists Justin Bieber, Drake, and Jessie Reyez have successfully broken-down barriers by having successful careers as racially diverse Canadian R&B artists. This qualitative study surveys the literature on classifications of the R&B genre and of Canadian identities in popular media. The theoretical framework of discourse analysis is used to conduct a brief episodic history of Canadian R&B and to evaluate how the music genre “R&B,” is traditionally associated with people who have "Black" and "American" identities, and how a “Canadian” identity is traditionally associated with “white” and “folk” musical artists. I conclude that the ascription of racialized and nationalized identities is found to play a role in each artist's respective inclusion, exclusion, and/or authentication vis a vis R&B. I evaluate how Bieber, Drake, and Reyez each articulate “R&B-ness” and “Canadian-ness” to represent multiple, yet equally Canadian national narratives through their Canadian R&B artist lifestyle brands. In exploring ideas of national identity, intersectionality, digital celebrity, branding, and marketing related to contemporary Canadian popular music genres, the dissertation seeks to answer the question: How have the careers of Justin Bieber, Drake, and Jessie Reyez reinforced, complicated, and/or challenged hegemonic understandings of both “Canadian-ness” and “R&B-ness”? Through textual analyses of their social media posts, brand partnerships, interviews, music videos, and music lyrics, the dissertation traces out how multicultural Canadian artists Bieber, Drake, and Reyez broke into the music industry as “digital stars” (Harvey, 2017) by using online communication strategies, alongside traditional industry practices (such as networking with music industry gatekeepers). A particular focus involves Drake’s, Bieber’s, and Reyez’s brand partnerships and social media strategies, between 2019 and 2022, when the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the significance of online communications, and the Black Lives Matter movement encouraged changes to race-based music industry classifications. The dissertation includes insights from interviews conducted with 35 U.S. and Canadian marketing professionals and music industry executives in 2020. This study is applicable to explorations of how race, nationality, and music genre categories are classified, cultural branding, and contemporary marketing strategies.

The overall purpose of this dissertation was to provide a detailed assessment of the mental health, wellbeing, and prosocial behaviour of Ontario adults aged 30–59 (those at highest risk for losing years of healthy life due to chronic disease) during the first 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2020–August 2021). To address this dissertation’s purpose specifically, four distinct yet thematically connected articles were written. Article 1 provides the starting point of this program of research via an overview of Ontario adults’ inter-related health behaviours (i.e., physical activity, sedentary behaviours, and dietary intake) and outcomes including, mental health, and wellbeing during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic (April–July 2020) along with differences between physical activity status and wellbeing, mental health, and dietary intake. Article 2 presents a cross-sectional overview of the same adults’ prosocialness—inclusive of kindness—during the identical timeframe as Article 1 and, given the disparate risks associated with living locales at the time, also explored whether prosocial behaviour differed among those living in urban versus rural settings. To assess the longer term patterns of mental health, wellbeing, and prosocial behaviour as the pandemic continued, the specific purposes of Articles 3 and 4 were to quantitatively assess participants’ mental health and wellbeing (Article 3) and their prosocial behaviour (inclusive of kindness), while also qualitatively exploring their lived experiences of prosocial behaviour (Article 4) over the first 16 months of the pandemic. The findings from Article 1 indicated that during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, in general, individuals’ (n = 2,156) mental health and wellbeing were poor. The average score for participants’ mental health was concerning and indicative of experiencing some mental health problems during this timeframe. With respect to wellbeing, participants’ scores were below the “normative” range for means in Western populations in several of the domains (i.e., satisfaction with their physical and mental health, respectively, as well as their satisfaction with feeling part of their communities and their future security). Further analysis revealed that participants who engaged in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) during the initial stages of the pandemic reported significantly higher levels of positive mental health and wellbeing, compared to those who did not engage in MVPA. The results from Article 2 revealed that participants (N = 2,188) scored high on prosocial behaviour, as well as on the three kindness-related questions pertaining to their awareness of kindness around them, engagement in deliberate acts of kindness, and view of kindness as crucial to their pandemic experience, during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly, there was no statistically significant difference in participants’ prosocialness based on geographic location (urban vs. rural). The findings from Article 3 identified that participants’ (N = 2,188) mental health significantly improved over the first 16 months of the pandemic, though their average scores at each time point indicated that they still may have been experiencing mental health problems throughout this timeframe. Statistically significant changes in participants’ wellbeing were noted on several domains. Specifically, participants’ satisfaction with their standard of living, physical health, mental health, personal relationships, and spirituality/religion significantly decreased over time, while their satisfaction with their safety, community connectedness, and future security significantly decreased during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased thereafter. The results from Article 4 revealed that participants’ (N = 2,188) prosocialness significantly increased over time, while their awareness of kindness around them, engagement in deliberate acts of kindness, and view of kindness as crucial to their pandemic experience significantly decreased. Additionally, participants described their experiences receiving, giving, and witnessing kindness, their perspectives on how prosocial behaviour shifted throughout the pandemic, their experiences of prosocial burnout, and they provided several examples of how they engaged in prosocial behaviours, and continued to do so, throughout the ongoing pandemic. Based on the findings presented in this dissertation, it can be concluded that during the early stages of the pandemic, Ontario adults’ mental health and wellbeing were, in general, poor, while they reported high levels of prosocialness. As the pandemic continued, findings revealed that participants’ mental health and prosocial behaviour improved, while their wellbeing declined in several domains. Participants’ improvement in mental health may be explained, in part, by their high levels of prosocialness. These findings are particularly important as prosocial behaviour might be an approach worthy of further investigation as a mental health and wellbeing support during and following the pandemic.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic’s unprecedented impacts, governments and public health authorities globally implemented various measures to control disease transmission, including lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, isolation, and social distancing. Although these strategies have been necessary to mitigate the spread of the virus, they have had unintended, but largely predictable, consequences for individuals and groups facing marginalization, including significant increases in the incidence and severity of intimate partner violence (IPV). Indeed, the “shadow pandemic” of IPV came to attention in mainstream news media coverage of Covid-19, bringing new attention to an issue that has rarely had that level of scrutiny. While it is widely recognized that media coverage can play a crucial role in raising awareness about social issues, including placing pressure on public officials to take action, it is unclear whether and how media framing of IPV affects advocacy and policy responses regarding IPV. In the context of the increased prevalence and severity of IPV during the Covid-19 pandemic, alongside increased media coverage, this study examined, using critical media analysis methods, how IPV was covered in major Canadian news sources. This coverage was then linked to advocacy and policy development work through analysis of interviews with IPV advocates and policy actors working on IPV and related issues. The media analysis analyzed a sample of 366 news articles from 15 different news sources between March 11, 2020, and September 30, 2021. Seven primary themes were identified: 1) Reinforcing stigma: news media’s contribution to misunderstandings and misconceptions; 2) Causes of IPV: misplaced beliefs and distorted perceptions; 3) Stereotypes and simplifications: portrayal of victims and perpetrators; 4) Unseen shadows: the hidden plight of IPV within systems: 5) Unraveling the invisible pandemic: illuminating the impact of Covid-19 on victims and survivors; 6) Fractured foundations: the impact of Covid-19 on GBV advocacy organizations: and 7) Misguided recommendations and fragmented responses to IPV. This study found that most news articles framed IPV in a manner that reinforced stigma, perpetuated misunderstandings, and oversimplified the issue. However, there was an increase among some articles explicitly linking IPV to the Covid-19 pandemic in presenting IPV in broader context. These articles highlighted the experiences of survivors and the challenges faced by service providers during the pandemic, which helped to portray the issue as a social problem that required a systemic response. The interview phase of the study included 7 advocates from GBV advocacy organizations and 9 federal policy actors who discussed the impact of news media’s portrayal of IPV on advocacy and policy decision making during the pandemic. The findings revealed that news articles that included contextual information and featured advocates as sources had an important impact on policy thinking. These articles helped create a sense of urgency among government policy actors, supporting the development of policies and programs to address IPV during the pandemic. The study’s findings suggest that the media therefore played a key albeit uneven role in shaping public discourse, advocacy efforts, and policy development related to IPV during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This dissertation explored parents’ and their children’s perspectives of returning to play/sport during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada, and assessed how children’s physical activity levels changed during COVID-19. To understand the initial impact of the pandemic, Study 1 (August 2020) explored the influence of family sociodemographic factors (e.g., housing type) and risk tolerance (using the validated Tolerance of Risk in Play Scale) on parents’ return to play/sport attitudes. Via interviews with parents (n = 9) and children (n = 12), Study 2 (December 2020 – January 2021) gathered participants’ experiences of getting active during COVID-19. In Study 3, parent-reported data collected from both baseline and follow-up surveys (August 2021) were examined to understand the impact of the pandemic on children’s physical activity. In Study 1, it was found that parents’ attitudes concerning their children’s return to play/sport varied by socialization, support, and safety-related attitudes; however, attitudes were most positive towards safety-related items. Specifically, parents reported that having their children at home with them during COVID-19 made them feel safe (M = 3.86, SD = 1.11). Qualitative data revealed that parents had mixed levels of comfort about their children’s return to play/sport. Parental risk tolerance did not influence attitudes. In Study 2, children reported missing important people (e.g., coaches) as the main reason for wanting to return to play/sport, and children who had returned reported having no concerns with following COVID-19 protocols. Parents and children noted declines in children’s activity levels during COVID-19; however, they referenced getting active outdoors and virtual opportunities (e.g., YouTube) as common facilitators. Results from Study 3 revealed decreases in the proportion of children achieving 60 minutes of physical activity/day during periods of lockdown (i.e., pre-lockdown: before March 2020; during lockdown: March 2020 – June 2020; January 2021 – May 2021; and post-lockdown: August – December 2021). Generalized linear mixed-effects models revealed that the proportion of children achieving 60 minutes of physical activity/day pre-lockdown (63%) declined during lockdown (21%) and then increased post-lockdown (54%). Several demographic variables (e.g., household income) moderated results suggesting family-level factors may have influenced children’s activity during COVID-19. In conclusion, findings from this study reveal the impact of COVID-19 on children’s play/sport and provide realistic strategies families can implement to increase activity during a pandemic.