M.Ed. (Education) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

D.Arch., Faculty of Architecture, University of the Witwatersrand, 1953

The purpose of this research is to document the experiences of black South African scientists en-route to gaining a doctorate and provide an explanation of how and why they achieved academic success in the unequal South African society. The South African apartheid society was designed to promote black intellectual underdevelopment. Some managed to proceed to university and a few gained a doctorate. Little is known about these experiences beyond the anecdotal accounts. This study attempts a more systematic study about academic success in an unequal society. The study used a life history approach to understand and explain academic success. The study is not located in any particular discipline or apriori theoretical constructs. The approach involved individuals relating their experience and their subjective interpretation of their experiences. I have written individual stories and by grounded theorising in a cross-case analysis I have suggested constructs to provide an explanation of why they achieved academic success. This study gives us the social history of the education for blacks in South Africa for the period 1948 to 1994. The life stories are contextualised within that social historical period. In this study the analytical, research stories of individuals are presented. These stories illuminate the unfolding of the academic lives and the dynamics that shaped the unfolding of those lives. Using the ten stories a composite thick description of how the variables (social, institutional and individual) shaped the academic pathways for the group is presented. From this data explanatory constructs are suggested to provide an explanation of their academic success. In order to pursue and achieve academic success it was necessary that participants demonstrate academic capability and have access to resources (material and information). In this research I propose three new explanatory constructs plus a fourth one which is not unanticipated but expresses itself in unusual ways in the South African context. The three constructs I am proposing and which are not found in the life history literature about academic success are: academic role replication and expectation; strategic compliance and deferred gratification. The explanatory construct, coherence of roles and support mechanisms, had a particular characteristic in South Africa during this period. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2000.

This research project investigates black cognitive structuring of their residential environment in the Grahamstown location. A clinical psychological method (repertory grid method) was used to elicit the construct systems of residents. The associative construct theory formulated by Kelly (1955) was used in interpreting the data set from the liberal perspective. The radical perspective demonstrated an alternative interpretation. A focus of the study centres around the possible implications of this type of research for planning action. The results showed that the repertory grid did appear to accurately reflect people's construing systems regarding their circumstances and behaviour. However, Kelly's (1955) Personal Construct Theory proved inadequate as a theory of explanation as to why people construed in the manner they did. To enhance this explanation, the marxist approach to the theory of knowledge was investigated.

M.Ed. (Didactical Education) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The study is on Healdtown Missionary Institution. A broad background has been given from 1855 when the Institution was established by Sir George Grey. The emphasis has, however, been from 1925 when the earliest respondents were admitted, up to 1955 when the Department of Bantu Education took over from the missionaries. This period has been deliberately chosen since Healdtown was largely run by the Wesleyan Missionaries during that time. It must also be mentioned that the administration side of Healdtown has not been covered, since Professor Hewson has given a broad picture of this aspect in his doctoral thesis (1959). Similarly, the situation in the classrooms has not been considered except where appropriate references have been cited by respondents. The stress is on the different activities that took place, mainly in every day life in the Institution. Some of these are the positions of responsibility held by respondents in the Institution and their effect on them (the respondents) in later life. This can be coupled with the contribution the respondents made to their communities after leaving Healdtown. The most important thing about the study is what has been revealed with regard to the three generations: the parents of the respondents, the respondents themselves and the children of the respondents. In this aspect a picture of how elite produces elite has been highlighted. To add more flavour, the memories, both good and bad, have been analysed and in order to see whether these are common or peculiar, a comparison was made with similar day schools (secondary) in Soweto. In the conclusion, especially, the limited opportunities for Black pupils to have secondary education during this period is also highlighted. This goes with the eagerness and efforts shown by parents to give secondary schooling to their children. Last, but not least, in the conclusion to this thesis certain deductions from the study have been exposed. What the graduates think about the future of the Institution together with how they view the pupils of the eighties has received a place. It must also be mentioned that the graduates seem to view Healdtown as having prepared them for life

The principal objectives of this empirical study were to test the hypothesis that eduction is a major determinant of people's earnings differentials and to calculate private and social rates of return to education of blacks in South Africa excluding Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei. Basically, the data for working men and women used in the study were extracted from the 1985 current Population survey files comprising a sample representative of the black population. Lifetime earnings profiles are constructed from these data for five educational levels, namely, no schooling up to standard 1, standards 2 to 4, standards 5 to 7, standards 8 to 9 and standard 10. Schooling is assumed to account for 60% of the income differentials between these profiles, after adjustment for the differing probabilities of finding work of persons in specific age-education groups. Imputed average household outlays on schooling are taken as the private direct cost of education supplemented by estimates of per pupil spending by the various government departments responsible for black schooling for calculation of the social costs per year of primary and secondary schooling. Indirect cost in the form of imputed foregone earnings are included from standard 5 (age 15) onwards. The resulting private internal rates of return to education of males are about 16% at primary level and 24% for secondary schooling. Corresponding social rates of return are about 6% for primary and 15% for secondary education. The estimates for females indicate that between no schooling and standards 2 to 4 level, the private and social rates of return are -1% and -4% respectively, from standards 2 to 4 to standards 5 to 7 level, private returns of 12% and social returns of 4% are reported and for the remaining secondary school phases private returns of 32% and social returns of 15% are estimated. It is implied that black education is receiving minimal government financial assistance compared to those of the other population groups. The evidence of the results of the study indicates that; besides education, marital status, locational, regional and occupational variables also influence earnings differentials, the governments responsible for black education should emphasize human capital investment in relation to physical capital investment, on average more educated persons are better off than the less educated ones and with the exception of female early primary schooling, generally, it is worthwhile for an individual to undertake a certain educational programme investment

1. Reasons for Choosing the Topic. Much has been written about secondary education in England, Continental Europe, the United States, Canada, China and other countries mainly "because Secondary Education has been one of the most prized of all formal types of education ... because it has been the rung of the educational ladder that has led to opportunity and preferment". Very little research work has been done on Bantu secondary education in the Ciskei, and still less about Bantu urban secondary education. This is a shortcoming since the Ciskei has been one of the most important educational areas for the Bantu in the Union of South Africa and the territories outside her borders. It was here that the experiment of Bantu day secondary schools was carried out. It could aptly have been said of the Ciskei, too, that "experimental work (destined one day to blaze into a consuming fire) has been carried on, where men and women of faith and inspiration have lit up some dark corner of the field, and where teachers of genius have defied tradition and convention, gone their own way in scorn of consequence, and have lit a candle which will never be put out". The Bantu Urban Day Secondary Schools started amidst conflicting opinions as regards their advantages and disadvantages. Difficulties were encountered and efforts made to overcome them. The present writer attempts to show how the problems of these schools were overcome and to assess the progress that was made. 2. Need for the Study. There is a great need for the study of the history and problems of Bantu Urban Day Secondary education because for many years to come these schools will have to serve an increasing number of urban Bantu pupils. The results of the research may serve as a guide to teachers appointed to these schools. The important history of these institutions preserved only in the minds of old men and women, may be lost to posterity. There is also a great need to bring to light the unique problems confronting these schools. 3. Scope of Dissertation. The dissertation limits itself to Bantu Urban Day secondary education, in specific areas of the Ciskei. Two secondary and two high schools have been chosen for special study. Bantu Urban Day Secondary Schools are those schools which are situated in areas under the jurisdiction of municipalities or town councils irrespective of whether the school admits largely pupils who are outside such an area or only those within it or both. The entrance qualification to these schools has always been a pass in Standard VI (normally after eight years of primary or elementary schooling). For the Bantu pupil the Junior Certificate Course was of three years' duration. The successful completion of the J.C. course qualified pupils to train as nurses, in the case of girls, and agricultural demonstrators in the case of boys. Both sexes could undertake studies for Native Primary Higher Teachers' Course, and the Senior Certificate Course or the Matriculation leading to university degrees.

M.Ed. (Education Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.Ed. (Psychology of Education) / Please refer to full text to view abstract