The study sought to investigate factors that lead to low parental involvement in rural and farm schools in the Madibeng area. The qualitative research method was used for the study and the interviews were used to collect data from the participants, particularly in-depth interviews and focus group interviews. The study discovered that the majority of teachers and parents did not know what parent involvement was; and it was also discovered that low parental involvement bears a negative effect on learners’ performance, learners’ discipline, cleaning campaign, fundraising, teachers moral, functionality of School Governing bodies and the effectiveness of the Quality of learning and teaching Campaign. As a result of the findings the study recommended measures to curb low parental involvement in schools around the Madibeng Area. / Educational Leadership and Management / M. Ed. (Education Management)

Allowing communities to become integral players in curriculum implementation conversation has not been taken seriously by academics and the educational leaders. Generally, there is a growing realisation in academic circles that knowledge and skills in primary school education cannot be solely owned by school heads and teachers for effective curriculum implementation to be realised. School heads and teachers need pedagogical support from members of the community around their primary schools who have the knowledge and skills that teachers can make use of in teaching and learning. Current curriculum implementation practices have seen community members as peripheral players whose knowledge and skills are of diminished value. The purpose of this study was to explore how community members’ knowledge and skills could be harnessed in curriculum implementation at primary school level in Zimbabwe’s Chivi district of Masvingo. The notion was to grow a partnership between community members, school heads and teachers. The study was informed by the Social Capital Theory, a theory devoted to the establishment of social networks, links and social relations among individuals and groups for the realisation of new ways of co-operation. The qualitative case study design was employed, where individual interviews, focus group discussions and open-ended questionnaires were the data-collection instruments. Four rural primary schools with their respective school heads, were randomly selected to participate in the study. Twenty teachers, two traditional leaders, two church leaders, two business people and eight parents comprised the purposefully selected participants. The study findings indicated that community members and the school community have not meaningfully engaged each other in curriculum implementation. The barriers to a successful relationship included: the language of education, feelings of inadequacy, time constraints, and the polarised political environment. Evaluated against the social capital theory, participants appreciated the need for partnerships in curriculum implementation for shared resources, knowledge and skills for the benefit of the learners. The study recommends a rethink by school heads, teachers and community members, aided by government policy to create space for community contribution in curriculum implementation. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)

Collaboration between the parents, the schools and the community has a powerful influence on a child’s development, academically as well as behaviourally. Such partnerships benefit the students, the educators and the families alike. However, home, school and community partnerships are weak in Kenya’s Child Friendly Schools (CFSs) at primary school level, particularly in Kakamega County. This study, therefore, was designed to assess the effectiveness of family-school-community partnerships in these schools. A literature study of local and international sources regarding family-school-community partnerships and the CFS initiative in Kenya was done to frame the sequential mixed method inquiry used in this study and also to inform the design of the data-collecting tools. The study was done in two phases. Phase 1 constituted the quantitative component (a survey) and Phase 2 the qualitative component (interviews). In Phase 1 a sample of 361 primary school teachers in 34 schools were selected from a population of 8 964 teachers in 848 primary schools, distributed across the 12 districts in the county, by means of stratified random sampling. In Phase 2 thirteen parents, twelve Parent Teacher Association (PTA) chairpersons and ten District Quality Assurance and Standards Officers (DQASOs), as being information-rich informants, were purposively sampled for the interviews. The parent participants and the PTA chairpersons were nominated by the head teachers of the 34 schools indicated in the stratified random sample. A self-designed paper and pencil questionnaire was used to gauge the teachers’ views of home-school-community partnerships in the CFSs. The data were analysed and presented by means of descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages and mean. Similarly, the researcher made use of semi-structured individual interviews, guided by interview schedules, in interviewing selected parents, PTA chairpersons and DQASOs. The presentation of the relevant data was done in a narrative format substantiated by verbatim quotations. The findings indicated inadequacies in parenting skills, home-school communication, volunteering, home-learning, decision-making and collaboration with the community as the key areas of focus in this study. It was ascertained that the family-school-community partnerships in the county were largely ineffective. The findings could be used to improve practice involving these partnerships and implementing the CFS initiative with a view to attaining meaningful learning among the children. / Educational Foundations / D. Ed. (Comparative Education)

Submitted by Carlo Loria (santosloria@yahoo.com) on 2018-08-28T17:03:55Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE CARLO LORIA ALT.pdf: 11490877 bytes, checksum: d5002255e342591fc2e11a7b53ae7d92 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by NUBIA OLIVEIRA (nubia.marilia@ufba.br) on 2018-09-25T20:48:40Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE CARLO LORIA ALT.pdf: 11490877 bytes, checksum: d5002255e342591fc2e11a7b53ae7d92 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-25T20:48:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE CARLO LORIA ALT.pdf: 11490877 bytes, checksum: d5002255e342591fc2e11a7b53ae7d92 (MD5) / CAPES / Na Itália, na passagem da década de 1960 para 1970, um quadro de fortes conflitos políticos nacionais repercutia sobre a vida universitária, sobre as pesquisas e ensejava profundas mudanças nas visões sobre a essência da ciência e sobre as práticas de investigação estabelecidas. O nível de radicalização gerou divergências e polarizações nas comunidades científicas, passando a ameaçar de cisão a Sociedade Italiana de Física, SIF. A ruptura não aconteceu graças à uma dinâmica endógena à própria comunidade que, mediante debates e propostas acadêmicas, encontrou a rota da pacificação. Esse processo tornou-se objeto de atenção de historiadores da ciência, interessados em explicar as condutas e protagonismos de membros da sociedade. As narrativas sugerem papeis importantes tanto das lideranças formais como das lideranças difusas, que emergiam de reuniões e assembleias, na proposição de temas para a Escola de Verão Enrico Fermi, que tinha lugar na cidade de Varenna. O objeto desta tese é tentar verificar como atuaram estas lideranças e se houve maior destaque ou supremacia de um tipo ou de outro. O campo de conhecimento desta pesquisa é a história da ciência com foco na comunidade de pesquisadores e o procedimento metodológico empregado privilegiou a utilização de fontes primárias como questionários aplicados à alguns informantes qualificados, pesquisadores da época, análise de epistolário entre esses pesquisadores e outras fontes como comunicações científicas. Os resultados esperados ajudarão a entender a solução da controvérsia. / ABSTRACT In Italy, during the sixties and seventies years of the las century, a series of strong national political riots and conflicts had an impact on university life, on research, and provoke deep changes on the views about the essence of science and established research practices. The level of radicalization has generated divergences and polarizations in the scientific communities, brought threats to split the Italian Physical Society, SIF. The rupture did not happen because to endogenous dynamics, inbuilt the own community, which, by means of debates and academic proposals, found the pacification route. This process attracted attention of historians of science, interested in explaining the conduct and protagonism of members of society. The narratives suggest important roles of both formal leaderships and diffuse leaderships, which emerged from meetings and assemblies, in proposing themes to the Enrico Fermi Summer School, which took place in the city of Varenna. The purpose of this thesis is to try to verify how these leaders acted and if there was greater prominence or supremacy from one type or another. The field of knowledge of this research is the history of science with a focus on the community of researchers and the methodological procedure employed privileged the use of primary sources as questionnaires applied to some qualified informants, researchers of the time, analysis of correspondence between these researchers and other sources as scientific communications. The expected results will help you understand the solution to the controversy.

The general aim of this thesis is to illuminate the process of learning as it occurs in formal and informal contexts. The study focuses on South African scholars attending school in rural areas where the contrast between learning in formal and informal learning contexts is more pronounced than that in urban areas. The research draws on rural scholars' local knowledge of formal and informal learning contexts in order to gain a rich insight into how cognition is situated in different learning contexts. This is accomplished through investigating the structure of the respective learning tasks, the mediators involved, the task objectives and the means for achieving these objectives in the different learning contexts. The thesis draws on a socio-cultural approach to the study of cognitive development to probe the activity of learning in a formal and informal learning context. Through the use of a context sensitive methodological methods especially Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools and techniques, it was possible to illuminate tacit local knowledge structures and to get participants to actively explicate their understandings related to learning in different contexts The research results illustrate the assertion that the activity of learning is fundamentally situated in the learning context from which it arises. Learning is framed by the community of practice which structures affordances for situated learning, through mediation, within zones of proximal development. Learning in a formal context such as the school is often abstract, rule-based, standardised and theory related. Learners also find it difficult to reflect on the learning tasks and the mediational means used in a formal learning context. In contrast, the learning which takes place in an informal setting is often practical, individualised, flexible and environment based. This learning is structured around everyday activities and is dynamically defined and supported. In a situation where a learner is exposed to dislocated learning contexts, the essential goal of educational initiatives is to bridge the gap between the two. This can be achieved through mediators creating effective zones of proximal development which facilitate the individuals adaptation between learning contexts. Exposing rural scholars' local knowledge of learning in formal and informal contexts allows for a fuller understanding of the cognitive development structured within formal and informal communities of practice. It is this understanding that is necessary to address the situation where learning contexts, drawing on different knowledge bases find ways of thinking, prove challenging and/or conflicting to the scholar.

The purpose of this study is to develop a substantive grounded theory explaining the development of a philosophy and the practice of leadership amongst young adults who had attended Hilton College and whom were exposed to their servant leadership development programme. The grounded theory method in this study was developed using conventions identified by Strauss and Corbin (1990) and relying upon a collection of incidents noted during interviews with former students, teachers, housemasters, headmaster and Hiltonian Society board members. In total thirty-six interviews were conducted over a period of four years in South Africa, the United Kingdom and Kenya. Using the grounded theory methodology, an understanding of the theoretical model emerged through the development of a personal philosophy and the practice of servant leadership. Related to the central phenomenon of individual leadership philosophy and practice, the causal condition of opportunity to lead, influenced how the individual philosophy and practice emerged. Strategies used by the participants to nurture their philosophy and practice of leadership were the leadership development programme, community service, feedback and reflection. The data identified the intervening conditions and conditions relating to the context of the leadership philosophy and practice. The consequences of developing a leadership philosophy and practice were related to leadership behaviour; self-esteem; growth; follower relations; empowering of others; and relationship to institutions. The theoretical model illustrated the holistic nature of an individual’s leadership philosophy and practice. In this instance, the nature of the data revealed that the individual's leadership philosophy and practice that developed amongst the participants was predominately servant leadership. The different approaches to leadership development were scrutinised with the intention of locating the grounded theory that developed in this study, within the available literature. The literature did provide some useful insights, in particular the social field theory of Bourdieu (1998), which offered a more encompassing explanation and showed much promise in providing an understanding of leadership development. Wheatley's (1999) interpretation of field theory further explained the influence of servant leadership in leadership development. Finally, the researcher developed a set of propositions and recommendations for practice and future research and discussed the value of this research.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T18:08:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 marciana_gomes_falcao_alves.pdf: 759043 bytes, checksum: a47ff7b2e2af189354cfc1d11210ce6b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-04-08 / Family and school are areas of human development that promote physical, cognitive, emotional, and social growth of the individual preparing him for insertion in his culture by strengthening his social relationships. However, each of them has its specific features in its tasks . While families have the primary function of providing conditions which favor the full development of their children, regarding the feeling of belonging, physical, emotional and financial care, school, on the other hand, has as its ultimate purpose to lead children and young people for life in society as citizens able to live, socialize and act competently in the contemporary world. It is in this context school/family that it is sought to investigate this relation, which is as narrow as it is conflicting. Thus, our thesis main goal was to understand the social representations that families that live in situations of social vulnerability, in São Lourenço da Mata, make or build about school. The chosen theoretical and methodological support was Moscovici s Social Representation Theory, which provided the understanding of how families that joined this study anchor and objectivize their social relationships about school, considering the values, feelings and social beliefs shared by this group. The methodology of the study was of qualitative nature, and for data collection were utilized semi-structured interviewing and the Free Association technique. Ten members of municipal school students families participated, from a city of the Metropolitan Region of Recife, who live in situations of social vulnerability. The findings of this work were analyzed by the Analysis of the Theme Content, where we sought to identify centers of meaning from the words evoked in Free Association as well as the content of the interviews. As a result, we infer that the group of studied families represents the School as" education" and "respect", supported by the social, political and educational environment where they are in and make their objectives when en rolling their children at school aiming for a more dignified future, and a good job. / A Família e a Escola são espaços de desenvolvimento humano que favorecem os crescimentos físico, cognitivo, afetivo e social do indivíduo preparando-o para sua inserção na sua cultura fortalecendo as suas relações sociais. Contudo, cada uma delas tem as suas especificidades nas suas tarefas. Enquanto a família tem como função básica propiciar condições que favoreçam o pleno desenvolvimento de seus filhos, no que diz respeito ao sentimento de pertença, cuidados físico, emocional e material, a escola, por sua vez, tem como finalidade última, instrumentalizar crianças e jovens para a vida em sociedade, como cidadãos que saibam viver, conviver e agir com competência técnica e emocional, no mundo contemporâneo. É nesse contexto escola/família que se busca investigar essa relação, ao mesmo tempo tão estreita quanto conflituosa. Dessa forma, esta dissertação teve como objetivo compreender as representações sociais que famílias que vivem em situação de vulnerabilidade social, no município de São Lourenço da Mata, fazem ou constroem sobre a escola. Como aporte teórico-metodológico foi utilizada a Teoria das Representações Sociais de Moscovici que proporcionou a compreensão de como as famílias que participaram deste estudo ancoram e objetivam suas representações sociais sobre a Escola, a partir dos valores, sentimentos, crenças compartilhados socialmente por este grupo. A Metodologia do trabalho foi de natureza qualitativa e para a coleta dos dados foram utilizados como instrumentos, a entrevista semi-estruturada e a técnica da Associação Livre. Participaram da pesquisa dez membros de famílias de estudantes de escolas municipais, de uma cidade da Região Metropolitana do Recife, que vivem em situação de vulnerabilidade social. Os achados deste estudo foram analisados através da Análise de Conteúdo Temática, onde buscamos identificar núcleos de sentido a partir das palavras evocadas na Associação Livre e no conteúdo das entrevistas. Como resultado, inferiu-se que as famílias estudadas representam a Escola como educação e respeito , ancoradas no contexto social, político e educacional onde estão imersos e fazem suas objetivações ao matricularem seus filhos na escola com vistas a um futuro mais digno, a um bom emprego.

Department of Curriculum Studies and Education Management / MEDEM

The involvement of teachers, parents, and administrators in shared decision making is a critical component in recent attempts to implement site-based decision making in Texas schools. This involvement is usually maintained through the school council, which is the sanctioned forum for discourse as defined by Texas laws. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe and analyze the content and patterns of decision making discourse in three Texas elementary school councils. The research questions focused on (a) council member role descriptions, (b) training, (c) patterns of deliberation, and (d) varieties of issues discussed. A total of 44 council members participated in the research. Observation, interviews, structured group interviews, decision-making inventories, and documents were used to collect data from December 1992 until January 1994.

Abtract Title: The role of social worker at an elementary school Name of student: Bc.Helena Valentova Department of study: Social Policy and Social Work Thesis supervisor: Doc. PhDr. Oldřich Matoušek, CSc. Opponent work: Martin Malotová The thesis is focused on the role of social worker at an elementary school. It is a comprehensive characterization of the profession including history, descriptions school of social work in several national systems of education (for example USA, England, Finland, etc.), analysis of target groups and content of school social work, which is supplemented by examples from practice. The empirical part of the work aims to determine whether the elementary schools in Praque are interested in introduction of position of school social worker and reasons of introduction. Other aims are to map the situation in solving educational problems at Prague's elementary schools, the views of the respondents to content of the activity school social worker and his authorization and also to map out how many of Prague's elementary schools have already established. The respondents were directors of the elementary schools, educational consultants and experts in prevention. Questionnaire was selected as a method of data collection because of extensive number of respondents was selected questionnaire....