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As municipalities across Canada are increasingly looking to attract families to their urban cores, and understanding of the ins and outs of development proformas is helpful to support newly constructed housing units that are appropriate, suitable, and affordable for a broad range of residents, including families. Housing policies and regulations can significantly impact the design and distribution of housing in a community, therefore giving greater consideration to the spatial impacts of urban policy can enable planners to encourage the creation of attainable, family-friendly housing in every community, including within Canada's urban centres. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/23633/AgnelloFP2021.pdf?sequence=3

This qualitative study used a hermeneutic phenomenological method to gain more insight into Vietnamese immigrant parents’ perceptions towards the influences of their settlement experiences in the beginning of their new homeland’s life on their children’s school adaptation. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with five Vietnamese immigrant parents. Findings show the emerged themes in the perceptions of Vietnamese immigrant parents towards the effects of their settlement experiences on their children’s adaptation, what factors contributed to their overcoming the hardship and what support they have received. My hope is that findings from this study will provide current and new Vietnamese immigrants in Canada with necessary knowledge regarding resettlement experiences and how to overcome any challenges. Hopefully, this study supports more Vietnamese people immigrating to Canada with their families to better adapt to their new homeland and schools. In addition, emerging knowledge could also help educators and teachers better understand and be aware of difficulties their Vietnamese immigrant students may face. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/23604/Nguyen.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

To date, Smart City approaches in Canada have been initiated in major metropolitan areas and large cities. However, the principles of this approach apply equally well to mid and small cities, and also to areas with unique demographics such as the aged communities. The purpose of this research is to apply a Smart City approach, previously only considered in Canada’s major cities and metropolitan areas, to Nanaimo, BC. The research explores the current and evolving status of Smart City approaches world-wide and in Canada, discusses how Smart City approaches can be scaled to mid-sized communities, and argues special considerations for aged community members. After completing a literature review and precedent case studies, the research explores how Nanaimo could be transformed into a Smart City by engaging knowledge holders and experts. Finally, the researcher suggests on how to smarten medium and aging cities in Canada, and how to build a smarter Nanaimo. Major project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Community Planning in the Department of Community Planning, Faculty of Social Sciences. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/23593/ChenProjectMCP.pdf?sequence=3

Since 2018, the government of British Columbia has funded more than 26,000 childcare spaces across the province. Due to the mandated caregiver to child ratio, at least 12,000 early childhood educators must be recruited and retained to deliver quality childcare. Recruitment and retention of early childhood educators has been an ongoing challenge even prior to the additional spaces being created. This research project aimed to identify the contributing factors that cause early childhood educators to leave their frontline positions. After three former early childhood educators with diverse career paths were interviewed, five major themes emerged from the interviews including wages and benefits; job satisfaction and autonomy; team support for early childhood educators; professionalism, and work-life balance. Based on these findings, it is recommended that early childhood educators ought to acquire livable wages and comprehensive benefits. The benefit package should include pensions, paid breaks, preparation time, as well as professional development. In addition, childcare administrators need to be equipped with leadership skills, preferably utilizing adaptive leadership framework techniques. Professionalism is a key factor to make early childhood education valued and recognized, and one of the strategies would be to raise the qualification standards. Finally, more research on former early childhood educators needs to be conducted to further inform recruitment and retention strategies going forward. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/25278/Lin.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

Teachers in learning support roles undertake a wide array of tasks not typical of classroom teachers and thereby face unique challenges in their position which includes the expectation that they should be directly teaching students whenever school is in session. Conflict arises when there is a lack of understanding that spending time on indirect and administrative tasks is equally valuable and time consuming, and that these tasks are key components to providing services for students. This leaves teachers in learning support roles with conflicting expectations and assumptions of what is important and how their role is to be fulfilled; this often leads to job attrition. This research explores the question: Could a planning tool be used to more clearly and effectively utilize LST time and, by extension, improve the working environment and job satisfaction of the LST? Using the methodology of design-based research, both qualitative and quantitative data was collected through survey, interview and focus group meetings to explore discrepancies in the perceptions of the roles LSTs fulfill related to the needs of the students they work with from the perspectives of elementary classroom teachers, school administrators, and LSTs. The data collected indicated that all three groups exhibited incongruencies between which role functions they saw as valuable and how they felt LSTs should spend their time. Having specific tasks outlined, as in a planning tool, clarified perceptions of how time would be best spent, thereby enabling team members to plan with a unified vision. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/24380/Hoeving.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

This letter is part of an open access ebook, and was originally published as: de la Barre, S. (2021). Letter from Suzanne de la Barre. In A. Correia & S. Dolnicar (Eds.), Women���s voices in tourism research: Contributions to knowledge and letters to future generations (pp. 534-535). Brisbane: The University of Queensland. Letter to future tourism researcher colleagues.

Executive function (EF) is a life skill that is gained through development and practices throughout a lifetime. In this self-study, I explore my connection between EF, my teaching practice, and my experiences throughout my lifetime as a student, teacher, and mother. Through self-study of professional practice, knowledge will be gained about useful supports for adolescent EF development that can be addressed in the classroom. Personal experience and a life of learning will also play a role in the explanation of EF with reflections on childhood to the present day. Key themes identified in this study are: how strategies for time management are important to establish for students to use as their lives get increasingly busier; positive relationships with teachers have the power to build confidence and lay foundations for developing EF skills and enhancing student’s success; how family values play an important role in the development of EF from a young age and the ability to continue to create opportunity for EF to grow and be practiced into your teens.; how working memory is essential for building good EF, something that needs to exercised and used regularly in order to improve and maintain it; how a strong sense of initiation predicts and produces a positive work ethic, working with others and the ability to problem solve and how organization goes beyond management to prioritization of needs, and is supported by the use of tools that break tasks into smaller steps. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/24463/Jenks.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

The purpose of this study was to explore the phenomenon of sense of place and its relationship to well-being as experienced through place-based learning (PBL). Genuine relationships with places can be disadvantaged by the perpetuation of idealized and romanticized notions of places as seen in traditional place-based programs. The researcher sought to answer the following question: What is the essence of experiencing a sense of place in relationship to place-based learning and eudaimonic (as opposed to hedonistic) well-being? The researcher’s source of data was five semi-structured, virtual interviews via Zoom of purposively selected participants. Participants were members of the local Haisla First Nations community, as well as a non-Indigenous, long-term resident of the local area, and a more recent non-Indigenous immigrant to the area. An inductive analysis of the data revealed three themes relating to sense of place: 1) Transformation; 2) Temporality; 3) Self. Themes revealed the significant positive transformations that are possible in relationship to sense of place, and the often profound effect this has on well-being and sense of self. This study illustrates the need for authentic place-based programs in education that allow students to reach a sense of place through more holistic ways of knowing, including the possibilities of relating to Indigenous ways of knowing. Advocating for such a re-imagined education is tempered by a consideration of the work that still needs to be done towards inculcating a shared understanding of holistic and spiritual development. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/24399/Edwards.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

By reputation, philosophy is serious and erudite. It notoriously asks the heavy questions in life: whether an almighty God exists or moral facts or all our furniture when we leave the room. However, despite its lofty persona, philosophy can easily converge with the funny ��� especially within a college or university classroom. As a discipline, it naturally sits on a goldmine of inventive thought experiments just waiting to be punched out with a little comedic spice. Moreover, the humor in shows and movies can play on a twist that���s useful for applying philosophical theories or concepts. And in any philosophy class, but especially an informal logic one, we need to examine reasoning. Not uncommonly, jokes play on reasoning that goes astray, and can be effective power tools for explaining logic fallacies. Perhaps most importantly, humor invites creative and independent thinking ��� an important starting point for university students, and especially budding philosophers. This is an author-provided, manuscript version of a book chapter which was originally published as: Swanson, C. (2021). Teaching philosophy with humor: Not a mere laughter-thought. In K. Vaidya (Ed.), Teach philosophy with a sense of humor: Why (and how to) be a funnier and more effective philosophy teacher and laugh all the way to your classroom. The Curious Academic Publishing. For more information about this title, see: https://bit.ly/philosophy-humor

This thesis is an autoethnography and qualitative research that explores leisure in a Kwakwaka’wakw cultural context. To accomplish this, the research objectives were to: 1) explore the thoughts, experiences, stories, and teachings around leisure in a cultural context, specifically to the Kwakwaka’wakw people; 2) identify if there is a relationship between leisure and cultural Kwakwaka’wakw ways of life; and, 3) identify words and concepts in the Kwakwala language that can describe leisure. To achieve these objectives, two research methods were used to gather data: 1) autoethnography, and 2) conversational interviews. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/26009/Fulla.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y