In South Africa, the issue of learners reading below their grade level is of great concern. In order to overcome this problem, the Department of Education made it possible that learners be taught to read early in Grade 1. However, despite the learners being taught to learn to read at an early stage, numerous studies have revealed that most of the learners, including those in Grade 3, are still experiencing reading problems. The purpose of this study is to explore how Grade 3 teachers support learners who experience reading problems in Full-service schools. Full-service schools are mainstream schools that were transformed to attend to the underlying inclusive principles and to provide quality education to all learners. In this study, a qualitative approach was used to collect data at the Tshwane North District in the Gauteng Province. The interview questions were piloted with one of the Grade 3 class teachers from a neighbouring full-service school. Then after the pilot study, eleven Grade 3 class teachers and six Learner Support Teachers from three identified full-service schools were interviewed and observed in their classroom while supporting learners experiencing reading problems. The documents that they used were also analysed. To analyse the empirical data an inductive approach and the method for analysing data suggested by Creswell (2000) was followed. The findings revealed that teachers who participated in this study followed a more prescriptive approach of supporting learners who were experiencing reading problems. Furthermore, the findings revealed they used different reading strategies and reading methods even though there were some challenges that hampered the implementation of the support. The issue of differentiating and adapting the reading support to suit the diverse reading needs of learners arose from the study. This was due to the fact that most of the teachers were not trained to adapt the reading support based on the reading needs of the learners. Based on the findings, recommendations were made, and guidelines to draw up an effective reading support based on an integrated approach for Grade 3 learners who experience reading problems in full-service schools was developed. The guidelines combined two theories that underpinned the study, namely, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. The researcher concluded that learners’ improvement in terms of their reading abilities relies on how teachers provided support to them. Hence it is important for teachers to be equipped with sufficient skills and knowledge to provide individualised reading support to learners experiencing reading problems. / Inclusive Education / Ph. D. (Inclusive Education)

In transboundary water resources policy and management situations, such as the governance of the Columbia River Basin, complex social, ecological, and economic factors seem to be in irreconcilable competition with one another. However, cooperative negotiation provides an outlet for entities and stakeholders to "expand the pie" and develop creative alternatives for integrated, resilient management. To achieve these goals, it is critical that stakeholders have meaningful dialogue that goes beyond positions to identify the underlying values and interests in the basin. Furthermore, parties must develop a shared understanding of the substantive complexities of the social-ecological system. Collaborative learning allows participants to meet both of these objectives at once, and facilitators can spark collaboration through carefully planned interventions. The goal of this study was to test a carefully crafted "facilitative" documentary film as a facilitation tool to promote dialogue, understanding, and creative scenario development amongst parties. The study has three main components: 1) the resilience and learning analysis of the case study (the Columbia River Treaty) policy situation, 2) the creation of a facilitative film featuring interviews with diverse stakeholders in the basin, and 3) the qualitative and quantitative assessment of the effects of the film in the cooperative negotiation process. The film, A River Loved: A film about the Columbia River and the people invested in its future, premiered at the Universities Consortium Symposium on Columbia River Governance- an informal forum for dialogue held in Kimberley, British Columbia in October 2011. I measured participants' reactions to the film and found substantial support for my hypotheses, concluding that interventions such as facilitative documentary film have great potential to transform complex, multi-stakeholder social-ecological policy situations. / Graduation date: 2012

River basins provide essential services for both humans and ecosystems. Understanding the connections between ecosystems and society and their function has been at the heart of resilience studies and has become an increasing important endeavor in research and practice. In this dissertation, I define basin resilience as a river basin system's capacity to absorb, manage, and adapt to biophysical, social-economic, and political changes (or stressors) while still maintaining its essential structure, feedbacks, and functional integrity. I address the question of resilience, scale, and development in the Mekong and Columbia River Basins. This dissertation answers the following questions: 1) is systems theory an appropriate model to evaluate basin resilience, 2) is the Mekong Basin resilient, 3) are the Mekong and Columbia River Basins resilient across multiple scales, 4) can conflict management and collaborative learning enhance resilience, 5) can a resilience framework be used for basin comparisons, and 6) what lessons can the Mekong basin take from rapid development in the Columbia basin? In Chapter 2, I create and apply a social-ecological systems (SES) model of the Mekong River Basin to assess resilience at sub-basin (provincial), watershed (national), and basin (regional) scales. Feedbacks, thresholds, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity are determined and used as inputs into an overall basin resilience assessment. Drawing upon field work done in the Mekong Basin, Chapter 3 uses Conflict Management and Collaborative Learning processes to address resilience weaknesses across multiple scales in the Mekong Basin. Chapter 4 uses the basin resilience framework to compare the Mekong and Columbia Basins against physical characteristics, development rate, conflict and cooperation, and institutional responses to development projects. In this dissertation I find the Mekong has medium-low basin resilience and that scale is a critical determinant in basin resilience assessments. I find that in this study, vulnerability is inversely proportional to resilience, and low resilience at one scale, for example fisheries in the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia, decreases resilience for the entire basin. I find that Cambodia and Lao PDR are the least resilience and Thailand the most resilient countries in the Mekong Basin ��� Thailand more resilient in some sectors than the Mekong River Commission (MRC). I find that the MRC's conflict management strategy is hampered by a restrictive mandate and weakness in capacity building at tributary and national scales but that Collaborative Learning processes are effective in enhancing resilience at the sub-basin scale. Finally, I demonstrate through the basin comparison that the Mekong has a highly resilient biophysical system and traditionally a resilient institutional system however, the proposed rate of development is unsustainable with trends indicating a significant erosion of resilience. I find the Columbia Basin lacking resilience in fishing, hydropower, and water quality ��� sectors mitigating the effects of development in the Columbia Basin, manifesting as overall negative trends in cooperation. However, the Columbia shows signs of increasing cooperation due recent inclusion of Tribal Nations in water management. Flexible and inclusive institutional responses to water resource development challenges, in the Mekong to rapid development on the mainstream and in the Columbia to negotiations over renewal of the Columbia River Treaty, are key determinants to whether or not each basin can halt the current negative trends and strengthen basin resilience to face the challenges now and those coming in the future. / Graduation date: 2013

The development of human societies rests on functioning ecosystems. This thesis builds on integrated theories of linked social-ecological systems and complex adaptive systems to increase the understanding of how to strengthen the capacity of ecosystems to generate services that sustain human well-being. In this work, I analyze such capacity in human-dominated production ecosystems in Tanzania and Madagascar, and how this capacity is related to local management practices. Resilience of social-ecological systems refers to the capacity to buffer change, to re-organize following disruption, and for adaptation and learning. In Papers I and II, qualitative interview methods are used for mapping and analyses of management practices in the agroecosystem of the Mbulu highlands, Northern Tanzania. Practices such as soil and water conservation, maintenance of habitats for pollinators and predators of pests, intercropping, and landscape diversification, act to buffer food production in a variable environment and sustain underlying ecological processes. The practices are embedded in a decentralized but nested system of institutions, such as communal land rights and social networks, that can buffer for localized disturbances such as temporary droughts. Paper II compares these findings with practices in a farming system in Sweden, and suggests that similar mechanisms for dealing with uncertainty and change can exist in spite of different biophysical conditions. In Papers III and IV, interviews are combined with GIS tools and vegetation sampling to study characteristics and dynamics of the dry forests of Androy, southern Madagascar. Paper III reports on a previously underestimated capacity of the dry forest of southern Madagascar to regenerate, showing areas of regeneration roughly equal areas of degenerated forest (18 700 ha). The pattern of forest regeneration, degradation, and stable cover during the period 1986-2000 was related to the enforcement of customary property rights (Paper III). Paper IV reports on a network of locally protected forest patches in Androy that is embedded in a landscape managed for agricultural or livestock production and contributes to the generation of ecosystem services and ecosystem resilience at a landscape scale. Forest protection is secured by local taboos that provide a well-functioning and legitimate sanctioning system related to religious beliefs. In Paper V, two spatial modeling tools are used to assess the generation of two services, crop pollination and seed dispersal, by the protected forest patches in southern Androy. The functioning of these services is dependent on the spatial configuration of protected patches in the fragmented landscape and can be highly vulnerable to even small changes in landscape forest cover. In conclusion, many of the identified practices are found to make ecological sense in the context of complex systems and contribute to the resilience of social-ecological systems. The thesis illustrates that the capacity of human-dominated production ecosystems to sustain a flow of desired ecosystem services is strongly associated with local management practices and the governance system that they are embedded in, and that, contrary to what is often assumed, local management can and does add resilience for desired ecosystem services. These findings have substantial policy implications, as insufficient recognition of the dynamics of social-ecological interactions is likely to lead to failure of schemes for human development and biodiversity conservation.

L’agroécologie implique la conception de systèmes agricoles intégrant autant que possible les services écosystémiques. Aux produits chimiques souvent employés contre les ravageurs de cultures peut être privilégié la régulation par leurs ennemis naturels. Des résultats en écologie indiquent que des paysages agricoles dont la composition est riche en habitats semi-naturels (bois, forets, prairies, etc) les favorisent en leur fournissant abris, sites de pontes et nourriture. Il serait donc possible de mettre en place une Gestion Paysagère des Ravageurs (GPR), c’est-à-dire de concevoir et d’aménager des paysages agricoles en faveur de ces habitats afin de favoriser les ennemis naturels et le contrôle biologique. Toutefois, l’implémentation d’une telle innovation potentielle par les acteurs de ces paysages reste largement à explorer. Dans cette thèse, dans un esprit de recherche-action, nous avons pris le parti d’explorer la conception de tels paysages régulateurs de ravageurs en s’impliquant avec des acteurs locaux et scientifiques. Nous avons initié une démarche de recherche participative avec des acteurs agricoles d’une région du Tarn-et-Garonne spécialisée dans l’arboriculture fruitière, intensive en traitements chimiques. A partir de leurs représentations et de leurs connaissances nous avons cherché à déterminer quels étaient les facteurs favorables ou non à la GPR. En particulier, nous avons qualifié les conditions dans lesquelles le paysage et les ennemis naturels étaient construit socialement par ces acteurs comme des ressources pourvoyeuses de services écosystémiques de régulation. Nous avons cherché également à identifier si ces acteurs étaient liés entre eux par des dépendances pouvant nécessiter une gestion coordonnée du paysage. Nous avons exploré la possibilité de la gestion paysagère par plusieurs cycles de modélisations participatives. La thèse a ainsi : mis à jour et qualifié la diversité des modèles mentaux des acteurs locaux sur leurs stratégies de gestion des ravageurs, co-construit des modèles Bayésien participatifs afin d’explorer via des scénarios les incertitudes autour de la question de la régulation biologique des ravageurs et, enfin, réalisé la coconstruction d’un modèle multi-agents autour de le la dynamique de population du ravageur invasif Drosophila suzukii et de sa potentielle gestion paysagère. Nous avons pu ainsi déterminer qu’en l’état actuel des représentations des acteurs, qu’ils soient scientifiques ou locaux, la composition du paysage en éléments semi-naturels leur apparaît comme faiblement reliée à un service écosystémique de régulation des ravageurs, quand bien même ce paysage est souvent favorable à la biodiversité fonctionnelle. Actuellement, faute de bénéfices agricoles clairement identifiés, les acteurs impliqués sont en conséquence peu dépendants entre eux et le besoin de se coordonner pour mettre en place une GPR est faible. La plupart des agriculteurs indiquent plutôt une nette préférence pour les solutions individuelles vis-à-vis des ravageurs, par l’utilisation de pesticides et de filets protecteurs entourant les cultures. Ce focus individuel suggère qu’innover dans l’intégration de l’activité des ennemis naturels pourrait être plus aisé au niveau de la végétation naturelle des exploitations individuelles, comme peut l’être l’inter-rang des vergers. Par ailleurs, ces résultats font apparaître le besoin d’études scientifiques liant écologie et économie qui chercheraient à mesurer explicitement les bénéfices obtenus par les acteurs agricoles par le biais de paysages favorables aux ennemis naturels. Des résultats positifs de telles études seraient mobilisateurs pour de futures recherches participatives dans ce domaine. Enfin, cette thèse participative et exploratoire nous a permis également d’identifier de nouveaux terrains et questions de recherches dans le domaine de la GPR qui pourront être poursuivis. / Agroecology requires the design of farming system integrating as much as possible ecosystem services. Biological control by natural enemies may substitute commonly used pesticides. Ecology findings demonstrate that farming landscapes with a high proportion of natural habitats (woods, forests meadows, etc) favor natural enemies by providing them shelter, nesting sites and food. Landscape Pest Control (LPC), i.e. the design of farming landscapes in favor of these habitats, may be implemented to foster natural enemies and biological pest control. However, how stakeholders may design such landscapes remains unexplored. In this PhD, we followed an action-research approach and explored the design of such pest regulating landscapes together with local and scientific stakeholders. We initiated a participatory approach with agricultural stakeholders in a part of the Tarn-et-Garonne region specialized in fruit production. Our research seeks to identify the factors in favor of a LPC according to stakeholders’ representations and knowledge. In particular, we qualified the conditions under which natural enemies and the landscape are socially constructed resources providing ecosystem services. We also seek to identify if these stakeholders were linked through dependencies which may necessitate a coordinated management of the landscape. We explored the possibility of a LPC through several cycle of participatory modelling. This PhD successively established mental models of local stakeholders about their pest control strategies, co-constructed participatory Bayesian models in order to explore uncertainties surrounding LPC, and finally we co-constructed an agent-based model about the population dynamic of the invasive pest Drosophila suzukii and its potential landscape management. Our results show that, according to scientific and local stakeholder’s actual representations, the composition of the landscape in natural habitats is weakly related with pest regulation ecosystem services, even though the landscape is related with higher functional biodiversity. Nowadays, as stakeholders see little benefit, they don’t consider to be dependent to benefit from an enhanced biological control through a LPC strategy. Farmers rather mention their preference towards individual solutions such as pesticides or exclusion nets surrounding their orchards. This individual focus suggests that designing innovation favorable to natural enemies might be more relevant within farms, like focusing on the vegetation between rows of fruit trees. Besides, these results show the need for scientific studies relating economics and ecology to explicitly measure the benefits farmers could obtain from a landscape favorable to natural enemies. Positive results of such study would enhance further participatory research around LPC strategies. Finally, this participatory and exploratory research identified new sites for investigation and raised questions about the LPC which could be further looked into.

The National Commission of Special Needs in Education and Training (NCSNET) Document (1997) which portrays the new Education Policy in South Africa. clearly states that one of the crucial outcomes is that all possible barriers to learning must be eliminated so that all learners are able to actualise their full potential. Inclusive education, as embedded within the Education Policy, is regarded as an approach which will allow learners to actualise their full potential. This study is a critical reflection on whether inclusive education is practised in primary schools in the Thohoyandou area. The research findings indicated that inclusive education is not practised in the Thohoyandou area. A major factor or barrier in this regard is that teachers and principals are not empowered in terms ofknowledge to practise inclusive education. Other factors acting as barriers to the implementation of inclusive education are that the school buildings do not cater for physically and visually impaired learners as well as the attitudes of teachers, parents and peers are inclined to be negative towards learners experiencing barriers to learning. The community should also be educated and empowered to assist and understand these learners, who will become the future members of the community, more effectively, As inclusive education is one of the means whereby all learners are given the opportunity to actualise their full potential, these barriers must be addressed so that inclusive education can be practised in all primary schools in the Thohoyandou area. A few strategies to implement inclusive education in the Thohoyandou area are suggested by the researcher. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Special Needs Education)

There has been a paucity of research concerning vocational training of learners with special education needs. The literature study focused on a vocational training and transition planning programme in the United States of America, which could provide as a useful guide to educators and school managers, when implementing vocational training and transitional planning in South Africa. Research was conducted using semi-structured interviews with educators and principals at special schools, observation of learners whilst performing skills training and documentary analysis, to explore whether learners with barriers to learning are receiving skills training that could position them for employment in the open labour market after they exit school. Findings revealed that principals and educators at special schools are faced with challenges in the learner’s microsystem, exosystem and macrosystem, resulting in the inadequate preparation of learners with special education needs for employment in the open labour market. Based on the findings, recommendations in terms of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory were made, to increase the opportunity for learners who experience barriers to learning, to be engaged in meaningful employment. / Education Management / M. Ed. (Education Management)

Les travaux de recherches sur la commande, le diagnostic et la tolérance aux défauts appliqués aux drones deviennent de plus en plus populaires. Il est judicieux de concevoir des lois de commande qui garantissent la stabilité et les performances du drone, non seulement dans le cas nominal, mais également en présence de fortes perturbations et de défauts.Dans cette thèse, un nouvel algorithme bio-inspiré adapté pour la recherche de solutions dans des problèmes d’optimisation est développé. Cet algorithme est utilisé pour trouver les gains des différents contrôleurs conçus pour les drones. La commande par mode glissant est utilisée pour développer deux contrôleurs passifs tolérants aux défauts pour les quadrirotors: un contrôleur par mode glissant augmentée avec un intégrateur, et un contrôleur par mode glissant implémenté en cascade. Parce que les commandes passives ont une robustesse réduite, une commande active par mode glissant est développée. Pour traiter les défauts extrêmes, un contrôleur d’urgence basé sur la conversion du quadrirotor en trirotor est développé. Les commandes actives, passives, et le contrôleur d’urgences sont ensuite intégrés pour former un contrôleur tolérant aux défauts capable de gérer un grand nombre de défaillances tout en garantissant les ressources actionneur et en limitant la charge de calcul du processeur. Finalement, des contrôleurs tolérants aux défauts, actifs et passifs, basés sur des méthodes par mode glissant du premier et deuxième ordre sont développées pour les octorotors. La commande active utilise des méthodes d’allocation de contrôles pour redistribuer les efforts sur les actionneurs sains, réduisant ainsi l’effet du défaut. / Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are more and more popular for their civil and military applications. Classical control laws usually show weaknesses in the presence of parameter uncertainties, environmental disturbances, and actuator and sensor faults. Therefore, it is judicious to design a control law capable of stabilizing the UAV not only in the fault-free nominal cases, but also in the presence of disturbances and faults. In this thesis, a new bio-inspired search algorithm called Ecological Systems Algorithm (ESA) suitable for engineering optimization problems is developed. The algorithm is used over the thesis to find optimal gains for the fault tolerant controllers. Sliding Mode Control theory is used to develop two Passive Fault Tolerant Controllers for quadrotor UAVs: Regular and Cascaded SMC. Because Passive Controllers handle a few numbers of faults, an Active Sliding Mode Fault Tolerant Controller using Kalman Filter is developed. To overcome severe faults and failures, an emergency controller based on the Quadrotor-to-Trirotor conversion maneuver is developed. The Controllers developed so far (Passive, Active, and emergency controllers) are then integrated to form the Integrated Fault Tolerant Controller (IFTC). The IFTC is a powerful controller that is able to handle a wide number of faults, and save actuator resources as well as processor computational effort. Finally, Passive and Active Fault Tolerant Controllers are designed for octorotor UAVs based on First Order and Second Order Sliding Mode Control. The AFTC uses Dynamic and Pseudo-Inverse Control Allocation methods to redistribute the control effort among healthy actuators reducing the effect of fault.

This study aims at exploring the social, affective and cognitive variables that would be related to the use of the address form usted in Chilean Spanish. Specifically, we refer to the use that can be observed in interactions between Chileans residing in Sweden. A particular aspect of this situation is that, while the majority group almost exclusively use the form that is commonly associated with solidarity (in this case the Swedish pronoun du), the minority group referred to maintains the pronoun that normally is associated with power, distance, formality and politeness: usted. In other words, while the equivalent in Swedish of usted (ni) is seldom used in majority language, the opposite is observed in the minority language object of study. We believe that the motives for the use of usted in this minority context are more complex than they appear to be. Consequently, an alternative hypothesis has been worked out with reference to theories within the area of Social Psychology. On this basis the following main hypothesis was formulated: Individuals representing the minority group in ethnic contact situations tend to increase their identification with the minority group in order to be admitted by and adhere to this group, if they feel that they are rejected by the majority group. The form usted is not the result of a fortuitous situation, nor can it be explained by the fact that it is the normal usage in the native country, but that it fulfils a strategic objective: to mark the affiliation with the minority group. The method has consisted in grouping together and correlating factors pertaining to the environment, the agent and the guest according to the Ecological Triad, the interaction of which contributes to the appearance of the observed behaviour that underlies this study. The statistical analysis enabled us to verify what was put forward in the hypothesis.

The aim of the work is to design Fire station with a gym in Olomouc. Diploma thesis has three parts. First from institute of building structures, second from intitute of building services and last part is devoted to modeling and assessment of details of building. Fire station is divided into three parts. Garage for 3 fire trucks, main part and gym with training tower. The main part contains toilets, showers, locker rooms, storage places, offices and facilities for firefighters and office rooms. Structural elements of the building are from reinforced concrete. Infill walls are made from ceramic bloks. Thermal insulation is from mineral wool and cladding of the wall is made of fibre-cement boards. The slab in the main part is made of cast-in-place concrete. Others slabs in the garage and gym are made of prefabricated elements. On the building are desined three types of roofs. Extensive green roof, flat roof with a stabilization layer of river aggregates and roof made of insulating sandwich panels. In the thesis is design conception of artificial lighting, ventilating, heating, cooling, water managment, photovoltaics and management scheme of energy and ecological systems. The work contains project documentation for building permits, which were made in accordance with applicable legal and technical regulations.