Adolescents face many challenges in their communities, families and individually during the complex developmental stage of adolescence. It is during this time that their sense of self and an identity apart from their parents become more strongly developed and they become more autonomous. As adolescents separate more and more from their parents they move progressively towards their peer relationships, which is an important part of identity formation. However, during this period they are exposed to many healthy and unhealthy influences in the community, especially when engaging with their peers and other social structures outside of the family. During childhood they were less likely to engage in undesirable or risk behaviour for fear of disapproval and rejection from their parents but during adolescence there is a strong need for approval from their peers, who might engage in and encourage risk behaviour. Effective coping strategies can be an important protective factor aiding them in making the right choices and decisions and resisting peer pressure. Previously, many models of adolescent coping have been taken from coping studies done with adults, which have not accounted for the developmental differences between adults and adolescents. Now as literature on coping with regards to adolescence is growing, the studies often ignore religious coping strategies and their potential impact on functioning. Yet, recent data suggests that religious behaviour and beliefs have a protective influence that moderates the impact of adverse interpersonal life events and social adversity as well as physical and mental health. Thus, this qualitative study applied case study methods to explore and describe the different coping strategies used by a group of church-going adolescents from branches of a non-denominational church in Durban. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the North-West University and informed consent was obtained from the parents and the adolescent minors before they participated in the study. Data was collected using a visual representation technique, two individual interviews and a focus group discussion with twelve participants. The data was analysed using thematic analysis and three main themes and various subthemes emerged. The first theme was understanding of coping as indicated by participants while the second theme identified the sources of their coping strategies and the third theme involved their specific coping strategies, which included religion, leisure activities, physical coping, social support systems, creativity and behaviour. These findings provide a greater understanding of the coping strategies and modalities used by church-going adolescents. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Separation anxiety is highly prevalent among intellectually and visually impaired individuals, yet little research has been done into its treatment in this population. Due to delayed cognitive skills, these individuals struggle to develop the abstract concept of person permanence, which is necessary to diminish separation anxiety. The first aim of this study was to investigate whether using technology alone or including caregivers was the most beneficial approach to developing person permanence using technology-assisted therapy. The caregivers received training in advance in an attachment-based protocol about securing attachment relationships with the participant. It was hypothesised that the inclusion of attachment figures in technology-assisted therapy would enhance the acquisition of the person permanence concept. The second aim of this study was to determine whether technology-assisted therapy in tandem with the participation of caregivers consequently decreased separation anxiety and challenging behaviour in an adult with intellectual and visual impairment. It was hypothesised that the subject’s anxiety and challenging behaviour levels would significantly decrease due to the intervention. The final aim was to determine how the caregivers and the participant experienced this intervention. It was hypothesised that they would regard it as a positive experience. This single-subject design used a pre-experimental quantitative approach. It was based on the familiar ABAB design and comprised six phases. Phase A served as baseline, giving the participants time to become acquainted with the technology. Phase B consisted of automated responses to the participant’s messages. In phase C caregivers directed the active reply. The daily messages were discussed when the participant and caregiver reunited, incorporating the attachment-based protocol. Phase B and C were repeated. Phase D followed after the devices were handed in. The technology was a specially adapted touch iPhone with an application comprising coloured emoticons. When the participant was physically separated from the caregiver, he could send happy, sad, angry or scared emoticons, or request help. The caregiver, who had a similar device, responded by sending a pre-determined response such as acknowledging the participant’s “I am angry” message with a “You are angry” message. Due to the association between anxiety and challenging behaviour in this population, standardised instruments were used to measure changes in these behaviours. Repeated measure ANOVA and a non-parametric Friedman test were used to analyse the data, specifically comparing phase B and C. Overall, the results showed that behaviour did significantly change over the course of the intervention. The frequency of the various iPhone messages sent by the participant was recorded daily. ANOVA contracts results demonstrated significantly fewer anxious and angry messages sent during the C phases compared with the B phases. The professional caregivers recorded the frequency and intensity of anxiety and challenging behaviours. The ANOVA contrast results showed a significantly lower frequency and intensity of these behaviours in the C phases compared with the B phases. A questionnaire was developed to evaluate the social validity of the intervention. The independent samples t-test demonstrated a significant difference between the mean scores rated by the caregivers at the beginning and the end of the invention. The participant and caregivers were positive about the intervention. Although the results cannot be generalised, it can be concluded that the inclusion of caregivers in technology-assisted therapy can serve as an invaluable aid to developing the person permanence concept. The findings also indicate that the anxiety and challenging behaviour levels shown by the adult with ID and visual impairment decreased due to technology-assisted therapy applied by caregivers, while responses to the social validity of the intervention were positive. / MSc (Research Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

This study views the Field Band Foundation’s activities through the lens of artistic citizenship. The aim of this study is to create an expanded theoretical framework for music education as/for artistic citizenship by analysing the related literature and data gathered from the Field Band Foundation in the Gauteng area. In Another Perspective: Music Education as/for Artistic Citizenship Elliott (2012a) gives practitioners three goals to realize if they wish to empower participants to achieve artistic citizenship. These three goals may be summarized as: 1) putting music to work in the community 2) infusing music with an ethic of care and 3) making music as ethical action for social justice. These three goals served as the initial compass during the conception and analysis stages of this study. This study was designed as an instrumental case study. The eclectic data set is made up of literature, interviews, documents, visual and audio-visual data gathered from March 2013 to July 2014. Atlas.ti7 was used to analyse the data. A preliminary theoretical framework was created from the literature. In this framework each of the three themes, expressed through Elliott’s goals, are expanded to include various categories. This framework was used as a priori codes to better understand artistic citizenship as lived in the Field Band Foundation. During the analysis of the data gathered from the Field Band Foundation the categories identified in the literature was expanded to include sub-categories. After analysing the data, gathered in the Field Band Foundation, an expanded theoretical framework for artistic citizenship was created. From the view point of artistic citizenship a community music education project, such as the Field Band Foundation, is shown to empower participants to achieve personal and communal transformation. / MMus (Musicology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Thomas H. Gould / This case study explores the gap in attitudes, information and contact between soldiers and civilians and what Army public affairs officers do to try and bridge that gap. The study was exploratory and as such, brought up more questions than it answered. In-depth interviews were conducted with three Army public affairs officers from three different Army installations. A total of five community leaders from towns surrounding the installations also were interviewed. Most of the comments from public affairs officers and community leaders were positive. While the public affairs officers felt they could do a better job telling the Army’s story if they had more resources, the community leaders didn’t necessarily feel they were missing out on information. Some stereotypes or biases were detected in comments suggesting the Army was only interested in helping itself and on the flip side that there are just some things civilians would not understand. Further research on the military-civilian gap, particularly the gaps between certain demographics, would be usefully not only in helping public affairs officers target their messages but also in helping military recruiters better connect with possible enlistees.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Stephanie A. Rolley / “Toward a Critical Practice: Tracing Theory Through Design” is an exploration of Elizabeth Meyer’s idea of critical inquiry as a mode and process for professional practice as a landscape architect. Critical practice involves the application of ideas embodied in critical theory as a creative endeavor that is both self-critical and self-renewing. Critical theory is essential in bringing a deeper level of understanding to the design of landscape architecture. Critical practice is the application of critical theory to the understanding of built work and the process of design. Using Meyer’s stated intentions for this design process Noonan develops a personal framework for that process. As the framework develops it rapidly becomes multiple, overlapping, mutually supportive frameworks. Multiple perspectives are gained from using multiple viewpoints represented in theory. The frameworks serve to include the dynamics of change and provide access to a deeper understanding of the interrelatedness of forms and processes inherent to any site or project. Issues of representation become more clear and strategies are identified although this aspect of practice deserves much more attention in the future. Theories, frameworks and sources of knowledge are identified and used to question assumptions and biases, challenge orthodoxies of practice, test ideas, develop written and formal vocabulary and inspire, motivate and guide design work. Ideas and theories used in the framework are related to the formal and textual work of other designers past and present. The framework is tested through application to a design project, which is used as the case study for this paper.

Demographic changes in the Swedish context due to the aging population leads to an escalation of retirements. This presents new challenges concerning labour shortage in organizations. Another important issue is cultural diversity which posts demands on employers to meet their service users needs. The main area of interest in this study is to investigate factors in an organization that connects to diversity and labour shortages and furthermore investigate the correlation between the two areas. To do this, a case study have been conducted using Umeå municipality as the case organization. Umeå is located in the north of Sweden with a population of about 120 000 residents. The method approach is qualitative, using semi-structured   interviews for data collection. The results suggests that terms and conditions for employees within the organization differs between majority and minority groups and that the cognitive awareness in the matter is diverse. The result also states the importance of strategic management such as follow ups, evaluations and designing of proactive standardizations for the HR   processes to reinforce anti-discrimination in the organizations. Our ambition is to give perspective on how norms influence the reality we create and recreate daily in our workplaces.

Adolescents face many challenges in their communities, families and individually during the complex developmental stage of adolescence. It is during this time that their sense of self and an identity apart from their parents become more strongly developed and they become more autonomous. As adolescents separate more and more from their parents they move progressively towards their peer relationships, which is an important part of identity formation. However, during this period they are exposed to many healthy and unhealthy influences in the community, especially when engaging with their peers and other social structures outside of the family. During childhood they were less likely to engage in undesirable or risk behaviour for fear of disapproval and rejection from their parents but during adolescence there is a strong need for approval from their peers, who might engage in and encourage risk behaviour. Effective coping strategies can be an important protective factor aiding them in making the right choices and decisions and resisting peer pressure. Previously, many models of adolescent coping have been taken from coping studies done with adults, which have not accounted for the developmental differences between adults and adolescents. Now as literature on coping with regards to adolescence is growing, the studies often ignore religious coping strategies and their potential impact on functioning. Yet, recent data suggests that religious behaviour and beliefs have a protective influence that moderates the impact of adverse interpersonal life events and social adversity as well as physical and mental health. Thus, this qualitative study applied case study methods to explore and describe the different coping strategies used by a group of church-going adolescents from branches of a non-denominational church in Durban. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the North-West University and informed consent was obtained from the parents and the adolescent minors before they participated in the study. Data was collected using a visual representation technique, two individual interviews and a focus group discussion with twelve participants. The data was analysed using thematic analysis and three main themes and various subthemes emerged. The first theme was understanding of coping as indicated by participants while the second theme identified the sources of their coping strategies and the third theme involved their specific coping strategies, which included religion, leisure activities, physical coping, social support systems, creativity and behaviour. These findings provide a greater understanding of the coping strategies and modalities used by church-going adolescents. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

La presente ricerca intende portare l'attenzione sulla necessità di integrare in maniera consape-vole le immagini nelle pratiche didattiche e di fondarne l'uso sul piano neuroscientifico. Da sempre l'insegnante se ne serve per supportare l'esposizione orale, per rendere visibili e si-tuati i concetti, per facilitare la messa a fuoco di elementi rilevanti. Gli studi sul cervello visivo (ci riferiamo in particolare alla teoria della visione del neurobiolo-go Semir Zeki) rendono ragione a ciò che l'insegnante ha sempre saputo: fornire ai discenti una rappresentazione grafica o iconica di un determinato concetto, tema, argomento sostiene il lavoro del cervello, normalmente impegnato in una ricerca dell'essenziale, entro il fluire incessante del mondo. La rappresentazione proposta dall'insegnante consentirebbe dunque di lavorare su uno scenario semplificato, favorendo la comprensione dell'oggetto dell'insegnamento da parte dell'alunno. Alcune tipologie di immagini, tuttavia, non riducono la complessità, a causa della propria "ambiguità semantica": molte interpretazioni sarebbero possibili, tutte egualmente valide. Tale caratteristica potrebbe essere sfruttata dall'insegnante al fine di accendere la curiosità, stimolare la discussione, la presa di posizione, la riflessione, la costruzione di ipotesi interpretative. Tramite quattro studi di caso, si è inteso fare luce sulle concrete modalità di impiego della fotografia (fruita e prodotta) nella scuola primaria. A partire dalle riflessioni pedagogiche stimolate dai casi, la ricerca si propone di aggiornare il quadro di consapevolezze della ricerca didattica relativamente all'uso delle immagini fotografi-che in classe, fornendo alcuni suggerimenti per integrarle nella didattica e operando in ultima battuta una mappatura di applicativi digitali che consentano di lavorare con e sulle immagini. / This research project aims to focus on the need of conscious pictures' integration into the teaching and learning activities (TLA) and to base the use at a neuroscientific level. The teacher usually adopts visuals to support oral presentations, to make the concepts clear and situated, to facilitate focusing of relevant elements. Studies on the visual brain (mainly referring to the recent theory of vision by neurobiologist Semir Zeki) validate what the teacher has always known: providing learners with visuals of a particular concept, theme, topic supports the brain's work, normally engaged in looking for the essential, within the non-stop flow of the world. The teacher's representations would enable the pupils' brain to work on a simplified scenario, facilitating the understanding of the object of teaching. However, certain kinds of images do not reduce the complexity, because of their "semantic ambiguity": many interpretations would be possible, all equally strong. The teacher could take advantage of this feature in order to turn on the curiosity, to encourage the discussion, the reflective thinking or interpretative hypothesis. Through four case studies, we aimed to explore the actual use of photography in primary school. Starting from the pedagogical reflections about the cases, the research intends to increase the educational research's awareness about the use of photographic images in the classroom, sug-gesting some tips for designing TLA and developing a review of appropriate digital apps.

Talent Management (TM), as a new managerial concept with regard to Human Resource Management (HRM), has increasingly gained concern and attention from the academic as well as business world, but there are many gaps and omissions left for further theoretical development and empirical study. Hence, understanding the differences between TM and HRM becomes necessary. Given an absence of clarity in the literature, the aim of the present study is to gain a thorough understanding of TM among Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in Beijing, to explore to what extent this managerial idea represents anything new, and to find out why organisations adopt TM. A case study method was selected as the main research methodology. The study was undertaken in Beijing, and the target companies were limited to four MNCs, respectively from the IT (two organisations), health care and education industries, and three consultancy companies. The theoretical perspective largely draws upon the literature on TM, management fashion and institutional theory. Findings show that the topic of TM has been enthusiastically pursued. However, there is not a single concise definition shared by all the case study organisations, even though different strands of understanding regarding TM are explored in this study. The thesis has also explored what is distinctive about TM, and the factors and purposes influencing the adoption of TM in China. Through comparing HRM with literature and empirical findings relating to TM, this thesis has found that TM seems to presage some new approaches to the management of the people resource in organisations, rather than a simple repackaging of old techniques and ideas with a new label. Meanwhile, this thesis strongly challenges the idea that TM is another struggle by HR professionals to enhance their legitimacy, status and credibility. Therefore, TM should not be considered as ‘old wine in new bottles’, at least with respect to the case of MNCs in China.

In the new millennium the Scottish government has been seeking effective practice developments in Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions (NMAHPs) through setting up numerous policy initiatives to improve patient care both directly and indirectly. Despite the fact that many of these initiatives have been subject to individual commissioned evaluations, to date, no systematic integrative study has been carried out in Scotland. This thesis addresses this deficit with the aim of constructing better understanding of key lessons and issues in regard to policy contexts, processes and outcomes. Based on a constructivist approach and case study methodology, this study consists of: critical review of literature in relevant cognate areas; critical review of selected commissioned reports and other documentary analysis; case studies of four selected policy initiatives using twenty four in-depth semi-structured interviews; and integrative analysis and synthesis featuring framework analysis and application of relevant theoretical perspectives to enable explanation. At micro level this has provided insight into how and why selected policy initiatives were developed and implemented, based mainly on the perspectives of the various participants involved in the policy initiatives. At macro-level, cross case study enabled identification of key generic lessons such as policy internal and external alignment, good leadership at all levels and effective communication. In doing so the thesis also illuminates relationships between clusters of policy initiatives and their continuous development. In particular, a new explanatory model of policy to practice change has also been developed in this thesis, building from relevant theoretical perspectives and empirical research. The thesis suggests that the new model will be useful for the analysis of policy through to practice both from ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ perspectives. Finally, the findings have significant implications for future policy, education, practice and research. The thesis concludes with a summary of its contributions and related recommendations.