Magister Educationis - MEd / Insights into the experiences of students at TVET colleges can inform policies and practices. This paper focuses on an investigation into students’ experiences of access, and barriers to participation, and success at a TVET college in the Western Cape. I mainly used the theories by Margaret Archer (2003), Anthony Giddens (1979; 1984), Albert Bandura (1989; 2001; 2006), Steven Hitlin and Glen H. Elder (2006), Kjell Rubenson and Richard Desjardins (2009), and K. Patricia Cross (1981) related to structure and agency to analyse my data. Data was collected from interviews with the exit level students at a TVET college who are registered for a National Certificate (Vocational) programme. The evidence of this qualitative research revealed that students experience several institutional, dispositional and situational barriers, but find ways of overcoming these in order to complete their studies successfully. Findings show that elements of ‘agency’ such as ‘intentionality’ ‘forethought’ and self-reflectiveness are prevalent in the ways that students overcome barriers. The findings further revealed that the majority of participants accessed vocational education at a TVET college to improve their lives with the desire and intention to study further. This study generally suggests that intentionality and resilience, amongst other factors, are important elements of agency and are used to explain and interpret the positive relationship between agency, barriers to participation and success.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-17T14:52:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcos Barros e Silva.pdf: 1611676 bytes, checksum: 2ac174c844a81425dc12f950d38f1b39 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-06-28 / This dissertation is part of TMS project whose objective is the development of a Intelligent Traffic Administration System . TMS has three fundamental functions: (1) Manage the necessary resources to the traffic control; (2) aid in the training of traffic employees; and (3) Accompany the changes of the urban traffic for ends of decision. TMS was conceived to assist the cities that doesn't have systems of traffic control and the others witch has the whole mounted structure with interlinked traffic lights. We show the conception of a system that seeks to assist the needs of traffic administration organs and, at the same time, allow its users to aid in the constant evolution of this management. We will specifically treat an architecture based on agents for our system, the technologies which the system uses and interactions among agents of traffic control. The prototype implemented in this work it allows the automation of the mechanisms of Traffic Administration operation - time of green and red of the traffic lights - turning the changes of semaphored plans the more dynamics as possible. / Esta dissertação é parte do Projeto TMS cujo objetivo é o desenvolvimento de um Sistema inteligente de Gerenciamento de Trânsito. O TMS tem três funções fundamentais : (1) Gerenciar os recursos necessários ao controle do tráfego ; (2) Ajudar no treinamento dos funcionários das companhias de trânsito ; e (3) Acompanhar as mudanças do tráfego urbano para fins de tomada de decisão. O TMS foi concebido para atender desde as cidades que não tem sistemas de controle de tráfego até aquelas que tem todo a estrutura montada com semáforos interligados, etc. Apresenta-se aqui a concepção do sistema que visa atender às necessidades dos órgãos de gerenciamento de trânsito e que, ao mesmo tempo, permita que os seus usuários pudessem auxiliar na constante evolução do mesmo. Trataremos especificamente da arquitetura baseada em agentes proposta para o sistema, as tecnologias que o fundamentam e apreendemos as interações entre agentes de controle de trânsito. O protótipo implementado neste trabalho permite a automação dos mecanismos de funcionamento de Gerenciamento de Trânsito tempo de verde e vermelho dos semáforos - tornando as mudanças de planos semafóricos as mais dinâmicas possíveis.