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This research study deals mainly with the educator professionalisation in the post democratic South Africa, paying attention to the role of a professional council in promoting educator professionalism. The status and image of teaching in this country seem to have been viewed From the racial and cultural differences of communities previously. The democratic dispensation brought an end to this unfair racial and cultural discrimination in the education system through the establishment of a non-racial professional council for educators (i.e. SACE). The research aims are to determine: - The characteristics of a professions and those needed for educator professionalism; and - the role of the a professional council in promoting educator professionalisation. In order to attain the above-mentioned research aims, a literature review and an empirical investigation were undertaken. The literature study was used to clarify concepts such as occupation, semi-profession, profession, professionalisation and professional status. Secondly, characteristics or common features associated with traditional models of professions (ie. accounting, law and medicine) were discussed from a theoretical point of view. Lastly, the literature study highlighted the establishment of professional councils for educators in other parts of the world, including South Africa. The different forms of legislation and policy documents applicable in education were discussed. In order to determine the extent to which teaching adheres to or fulfils the characteristics associated with a profession, teaching was tested against these characteristics. The history of the establishment of SACE was briefly discussed and the objectives or role of this organisation in educator professionalisation concluded this chapter. The empirical research was conducted by using the questionnaire as a measuring instrument. The advantages and disadvantages of the questionnaire as measuring instrument were highlighted. The target population comprises of 239 educators from a total population of 2070 educators in Lejweleputswa and Northern Free State Education Districts -Free State Province. The data collected in the investigation was processed through the SAS computer package to establish frequencies and percentages of responses mean scores ranking, t-test procedures and the effect sizes. The results were then presented tables, analysed and interpreted in accordance with the literature study. The literature study revealed that like all other occupations, teaching aspires to attain recognition and status as a profession. It was also revealed that teaching partially satisfy characteristics associated with professions. The empirical study revealed that the employment of un- or under qualified educators is still prevalent in South African schools. In the last chapter, Chapter 5, conclusions from the literature review and empirical investigation were drawn. The recommendations with regard to the role of SACE in educator professionalisation were provided. Finally based on the research, future research studies in SACE and educator professionalism were recommended. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006.

Establishing and enhancing standards of practice is important in any profession, and particularly so in a new and emerging domain such as sport psychology. Accordingly, this thesis draws on literature from teaching, medicine, and parallel disciplines such as clinical and counselling psychology to propose a Professional Judgment and Decision Making (PJDM) approach to the evaluation, reflective practice, and training of applied sport psychologists. Methods and mechanisms already utilised in these more established professions are considered alongside empirical data, generated from long-term programmes of sport psychology consultancy, as potential means to further enhance the performance of professionals in this developing field. As such, the thesis highlights gaps in current process, proposes an original conceptualisation of practice, and illustrates the possible outcomes and implications of this PJDM approach. In addition, the emergent PJDM principles are illustrated in practice through a reflection-in-action case study, and trained and evaluated in novice applied sport psychology practitioners as a basis for the effective development of PJDM expertise.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. / This thesis investigates the stability of the random multiaccess protocols, slotted CSMA and slotted CSMA/CD, utilizing one power level and two power levels to create beneficial power capture effect. Use of more than two equally spaced power levels provides no significant improvement in the throughput achievable when realistic capture thresholds are considered. The investigation centers on a technique known as pseudo-Bayesian stability. Another task of this thesis is to stabilize multichannel slotted CSMA and slotted CSMA/CD with pseudo-Bayesian technique. The multichannel slotted CSMA and slotted CSMA/CD show a large improvement in throughput over a traditional single channel with a combined bit rate. / http://archive.org/details/pseudobayesianst00boya / Lieutenant Junior Grade, Turkish Navy

This research study investigated age as a predictor of success in the academic outcome and early professional performance of recent occupational therapy graduates. The study was divided into two parts. The analysis of age and academic performance in occupational therapy education initially provided a picture of mature student success when compared with the performance of younger students, but this finding was negated when the confounding variable of entry qualification was added to the analysis. The mature student data were strongly influenced by the superior academic performance of the students who had a previous degree on entry to occupational therapy education. When these degree-level entrants were removed from the age analysis, the academic performance of the remaining mature students did not differ significantly from that of the younger students. This result indicates that entry qualifications, in particular a previous degree, have a positive predictive affect on academic performance in occupational therapy education. The second part of the study investigated the impact of age on the early professional performance of recent occupational therapy graduates using a competency questionnaire adapted from the curriculum framework document for occupational therapy in the UK (COT, 1998). The hypotheses that age is a value-added factor in the early professional performance and level of threshold competence after graduation was partially upheld in the graduate self-ratings of competence but not in the employer ratings of new graduates in practice. No age differences were observed in the employer ratings of graduate abilities but academic performance at university was related to perceived levels of. competence. When graduates rated their self-perceived levels of competence, it was the mature graduates who consistently rated themselves as being more competent than their younger peers. The type of occupational therapy programme undertaken did not relate to either the employer or graduate ratings of competence. All respondents were provided with an opportunity to comment on the issue of professional competence. Mature students expressed high expectations of their professional competence yet were no different to all other new graduates in reporting stress when making the transition between being a student and qualified practitioner. A discrepancy in expectations of threshold competence was observed between the employer and the graduate comments.

Seven Vermont school districts participated in a five year professional development program sponsored jointly by the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Education from 2002-2007. Using a robust mixed methods evaluation, teachers and students demonstrate pronounced organizational and academic growth. Analysis of data from focus groups held with teachers over the course of the period from fall 2004-spring 2006 provides strong supporting evidence for the growth. The purpose of this dissertation is to reanalyze the focus group data to document institutional and longitudinal change at the first person level. With focus groups as the unit of analysis, themes rising from the anonymous participants‟ I statements form the substance for this review. By revisiting an extensive pre-existing data set with a different method of analysis, this work expands on what is known about how teachers process change on the ground level. The findings reveal how complex individual feelings about one‟s experiences serve to describe degrees of institutional as well as personal change. New thematic coding confirms the original findings of the program evaluation. More importantly, the findings provide new details and understandings about organizational change and growth previously unobserved in the aggregate reports. By way of a methodological contribution, the research findings suggest and demonstrate an alternative approach to the analysis of focus group data in the aggregate.

The aim of this qualitative study is to identify what factors a group of professional disabled people perceived had influenced their career success, and how they define career success. The study is based on subjective accounts of thirty-one disabled highflyers: men and women from different social and ethnic backgrounds, with congenital or acquired physical impairments, and hold occupational positions in Social Class I or H of the Registrar General's classification of occupations. This work looks at the extent to which the disabled high-flyers perceived career choice and progression, childhood, education, disability, and personality to be significant to their career development and success, and how they define success. Using the data collected from semi-structured interviews, this research provides an indepth insight of the journey travelled, by each of the thirty-one disabled people, from childhood to achieving career success in adulthood. The study shows that oldstyle careers, operating in stable and supportive organisations are sometimes more beneficial to disabled people than some forms of new careers known as `boundaryless' and which require more flexibility and moving from place to place. It indicates the existence of the `glass ceiling' in many sectors of the economic market, showing it to cause disabled people to redirect their original career choice. The study also shows that individuals with congenital disabilities were often likely to follow more of a boundaryless approach of career progression in order to meet their initial career aspirations. It also found that, disability was not only sometimes a causal attribute of re-directed career progression, but also, at times, a precursor of career choice and success. However being disabled was not always the cause of career change and re-direction. Several of the disabled people perceived their career to have developed much the same as that of their non-disabled colleagues. This thesis recognises the role of education in the career and life success of the disabled high-flyers. The advantages and disadvantages of mainstream and segregated education are highlighted. Although segregated education does indeed restrict the educational and therefore, occupational choices of young disabled people, it is nonetheless considered to be essential to the social, physical and psychological development of disabled children. This work offers the idea of link schools and partial integration to facilitate disabled students to achieve life goals at the rate of their nondisabled peers. The career orientation of the female disabled high-flyers, particularly those with childhood disability, was unlikely to be influenced by their gender. It seems that disability was the master status, overriding all other attributes, including gender. However this was not a negative thing. It was found that disabled women are not only capable of achieving a status equal to non-disabled women in the home, but also have the potential to compete with non-disabled men in the workplace and succeed in gender atypical careers.