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This study is scientifically aimed at the problematic question of the present situation regarding the climate in the Bible Education classroom in secondary schools. A possible cause of the problems experienced with Bible Education and the negative view prevalent with regard to the subject, can be ascribed to the prevailing climate in the Bible Education classroom in the secondary school. An empirical study was conducted by means of a structured questionnaire distributed to the Bible Education teachers and a stratified sample of ten pupils per class at four Afrikaanse secondary schools. The four schools were chosen at random and served as test sample. According to the answers of the respondents, it became clear that the present classroom climate puts a very high premium on rules and control in the classroom. Therefore it would appear as if a lot of work needs to be done concerning the mutual relationship between teacher and pupil for the effective improvement of the climate in the classroom. / Skripsie (MEd (Didaktiese Opvoedkunde))--PU vir CHO, 1995

This study is scientifically aimed at the problematic question of the present situation regarding the climate in the Bible Education classroom in secondary schools. A possible cause of the problems experienced with Bible Education and the negative view prevalent with regard to the subject, can be ascribed to the prevailing climate in the Bible Education classroom in the secondary school. An empirical study was conducted by means of a structured questionnaire distributed to the Bible Education teachers and a stratified sample of ten pupils per class at four Afrikaanse secondary schools. The four schools were chosen at random and served as test sample. According to the answers of the respondents, it became clear that the present classroom climate puts a very high premium on rules and control in the classroom. Therefore it would appear as if a lot of work needs to be done concerning the mutual relationship between teacher and pupil for the effective improvement of the climate in the classroom. / Skripsie (MEd (Didaktiese Opvoedkunde))--PU vir CHO, 1995

There is a wealth of studies which suggest that manager's positive perceptions/expectations can considerably influence organisational performance; unfortunately, little empirical evidence has been obtained from development studies. This first time research explores how Japanese aid workers' perceptions towards the local staff affects their behaviour and performance in cross-cultural project settings. Moreover, this research focuses on the perceptual and behavioural trait differences of successful and unsuccessful aid workers. With cooperation from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), 244 valid responses were obtained from the aid workers (managers) through a webbased survey. As a result of statistical analysis, positive causal relationships were confirmed between perception related factors and behaviour related factors and the organisational performance variable. These results strongly suggest that aid worker's positive perceptions result in positive behaviour in local colleagues and subsequently higher organisational performance. In addition, it was discovered that the aid workers' positive perception/expectation about work and their local colleagues was related to higher organisational performance, whilst conversely, the negative perception on their part was generally associated with negative behaviour and lower organisational performance.Although the differences in perceptual tendencies suggested by that these findings apply to Japanese aid managers; however, as human nature is universal, positive perception and behaviour should bring out positive output in most organisations. It is recommended that there is a need for people-related and cross-cultural management skills to ensure successful future activities, and stress management competencies to maintain positive managerial perception on the part of aid workers.

The use of group lending for poverty alleviation is a widespread feature of modern microfinance. The structure of joint-liability credit - if one member defaults the others are held financially responsible - produces a natural tension between a borrower's social and economic interests. This study integrates theory from economics, sociology, and behavioural experiments to address the question, "How do social and economic mechanisms interact to shape a microcredit group's financial behaviour?" The empirical analysis involves an original dataset from a microfinance institution in Sierra Leone. The total dataset includes 7,025 joint-liability borrowers involved in 47,931 repayment transactions from 2005 to 2011. The empirical methods used are diverse: ethnographic fieldwork, GPS spatial analysis, social affiliation survey design, and multilevel statistical analysis of loan performance data. The original work is structured as three distinct papers. In the first paper, I examine social collateral, the formal use of a borrower's relationships as security against loan default. How does a group's spatial structure affect the efficacy of social collateral? Spatial concentration improves a group's economic performance up to a certain level after which the effect reverses and performance declines. The relationship is driven by a social trade-off between ability and willingness to enforce the loan. Further, groups that consist of multiple spatial fragments produce worse performance. Spatially fragmented groups are prone to splitting into social factions. In the second paper, I question what drives the self-selection process of microcredit group formation. The results show that group leaders prefer members with pre-existing social ties, who are spatially proximate, and have matching business types. The preference for socio-spatial factors is likely motivated by reducing the risk of strategic default by group members. In the third paper, I explore how economic cooperation in small groups evolves over years of repeated interaction. Despite the selective retention of better performing groups, average cooperation rates consistently decline, in terms of contribution and effort. Further, variance across groups continues to increase over 30 months of repeated interaction, suggesting that convergence to a stable cooperation rate has not occurred. Given that group lending exhibits many of the factors found to promote cooperation in laboratory experiments, it is surprising to find such a marked decline in this field setting. Overall, this thesis contributes to economic sociology by dissecting the difficult trade-offs between social and economic motives in group lending and offers policy implications for microfinance institutions regarding group formation heuristics, contract design, and loan management.

This multi-disciplinary study explores a field of enquiry at the boundaries of information science and development studies. It is concerned with the facilitation of knowledge processes - processes of knowledge exchange and co-creation - in the international development sector. Additionally, this study considers the importance of human relationships and social networks (and power), and studies these in knowledge intermediation projects. The main gaps that are addressed regard the understanding of intermediating knowledge process concerned with learners situated (partly) across cultural, language, and political boundaries in developing countries. Such projects/programmes/approaches, coined South-South knowledge exchanges by the World Bank, have only seen very limited amount of research; the foci of this research are human relationships and initiation acts, which add further novelty. By mirroring ideas of triangular and South-South collaboration the thesis explores knowledge intermediation projects and three roles played by actors participating in such projects: the intermediary and facilitator of knowledge processes (usually backed by a funding body), someone sharing knowledge (knowledge holders), and someone learning from others (knowledge seeker). This study not only shows how these roles apply to knowledge intermediation projects but also addresses their influence on relational elements at the interpersonal level. Two case studies are used to show how knowledge intermediation projects in the international development sector are shaped by their approach (demand initiated, facilitator/funder initiated), especially in terms of the relationships they foster. The sociology of knowledge approach to discourse analysis (SKAD) is used in the study of the case studies, which is supplemented by social network analysis. After linking the discovered relationship patterns to the initiation acts in the respective case studies a picture emerges that offers two broad insights. Firstly, facilitator/funder initiation of South-South knowledge intermediation projects appears to lead to many potential relationships, most of them irrelevant to an individual and, therefore, unestablished. Secondly, demand initiation of South-South knowledge intermediation projects appears to lead to very few, yet highly relevant, relationships.