Social work

In Ontario, mainstream education often does not meet the individual learning needs of high school students who experience marginalization. Alternative school programs may offer these students greater support and flexibility in completing their high school diploma. While previous research on alternative education in Ontario is thorough, it is limited to the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). To address the lack of research within smaller communities, this project uses the experiences of alternative education students in the City of Peterborough to explore how alternative programs meet student needs. Using a narrative methodology, the project relies on interviews with six students who offer their stories of attending alternative education programs. Research findings suggest that alternative education programs offer a meaningful and effective way for students to complete high school. Participants emphasize the importance of positive relationships with teachers and staff, student-driven curriculum, paid co-operative credits, and material benefits.

Author Keywords: Alternative Education, Critical Pedagogy, Marginalization, Narrative Inquiry, Ontario, Student Experiences

This research explores key themes emerging from the question of the meaning Anishinaabe individuals attach to utilizing traditional practices and ceremonies to address their own trauma. The contributors share their stories, which are deeply rooted in relationships. The methodology of this research is also rooted within an Indigenous paradigm; storytelling is a core feature of relationships and knowledge transmission through its ability to weave together and across generations. Indigenous cultures have had a long history of both verbal and visual storytelling, in the forms of pictographs and petroglyphs, wampum belts, bead and quill work, and so on. While stories are often entertaining, they are at their core, the most human of activities. Anishinaabe approaches to ceremony, spirit and the sacred are woven into the language, attitudes and practices that people still engage in, despite the depredations of colonization. The findings of this research explore how identity, found through love, caring, self-awareness, and the (re)claiming of wellness and wholeness, permeates the stories of healing and is rooted in ceremonies. This is relationship with self and self-in-relation to all things: niwiikaniginaa. Land-as-home, culture, family, and love ground people in their sense of self and wellness. Language and thought emerge from the land, the source of well-being or mino bimaadsiwin in the most profound ways. It is through home – land, family, culture, spiritual connection – that healing occurs in ways that cannot be found in clinical systems.

Author Keywords: Colonization, First Nations, Healing, Identity, Storytelling, Trauma

My research explores potential motivators for social and health service providers to be more holistic and compassionate with those they serve. From previous research focused on spirituality, I identified seven additional concepts: faith, religion, community, culture, compassion, wellness, and wholeness. Using elements of Appreciative Inquiry, data was collected through a focus group and an in-depth, online survey. The participants work with Indigenous, religious, other spiritually motivated, or non-spiritual social or health service organizations in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Prototype concept analysis allowed participants to personally define each concept, and then indicate how much each motivated them. Results indicate, regardless of individual demographics, the definitions and motivations are very personal. The concepts with the most to least motivational impact were community, compassion, spirituality, wellness, wholeness, culture, faith and religion. Participants' voices speak directly through this research. I use their suggestions to make recommendations for improving the systems within which they provide service.

Author Keywords: community, compassion, health services, indigenous knowledge, social services, spirituality