The demands of a rapidly changing future on learners of Higher Education Institutions who need to be effectively employed, necessitate that these institutions become responsive to the demands and challenges of the future world of work. Employers keep on emphasising that first entry employees not only lack basic skills when entering the world of work, but that they also have difficulty in coping with the accelerated nature of the changing future. In order to address this dilemma, this research firstly focussed on the current state of Academic Development programmes at universities and technikons in South Africa, because these programmes claim to address problems which learners and the institutions might have, such as the support of teaching policies and procedures, quality assurance and advisory services. The documenting of the current state of academic development (AD) revealed that AD of learners focusses on issues such as access, redress, academic performance and throughput. These endeavours constitute a model where remedial, supportive work is done in fragmented fashion, to enable learners to attain the necessary skills to cope with the demands of higher education. It was further indicated that by adopting this aim for AD, higher education is not proactively responsive to the needs of the future world of work, but rather reactive to the immediate needs of learners and institutions alike. They focus on better results in stead of lifetime employability. A causal action research phase followed to identify what the demands of the future are for man, and to assess the current state of academic development of learners against these demands. The conclusion is that these demands constitute a total paradigm shift and that higher education is not responsive to these challenges. In order for learners to pursue lifetime employability, a totally new, reengineering AD-model should therefore be constructed. It is concluded that only through maximising human potential, which can be attained through facilitating lifelong learning, will leamers be able to meet the challenging demands of the future world of work. This reengineering AD-model contains the guiding idea or purpose and vision of the model namely that it should maximise human potential. It contains the theory, methods and tools, represented in the development of intra-, inter- and supra-personal relationships through facilitating metal earning and cooperative learning, and it contains innovations for the infrastructure to encompass whole institutions. Recommendations for future research fall in two categories, namely the future as source of research, and future research still to be undertaken. In terms of the future as source of research, ongoing research is needed by researchers all over the world to determine what the future holds in store. Regarding the proposed AD-model, future research still needs to be undertaken with regard to the implementation and ongoing reengineering of the model. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Curriculum Studies / Unrestricted

Teachers and others who are not representative participants in the authorized governance structure often find they must make decisions concerning the legitimacy of attempts to influence public education. These "evaluators-at-the-fringe' of the formal policy-formation structure find themselves being 'gate-keepers' for what will be considered legitimate attempts to influence public education. Having defensible criteria for determining the legitimacy of attempts to influence public education policy is important. Without such criteria, resources will be wasted on the implementation of inappropriate attempts to influence public education. Or, just as important, influences which could be beneficial for the students, or for the society as a whole, may never be seriously considered. In this paper it is argued that criteria for evaluating attempts to influence public education can be derived from the obligation to participate in the promotion of the public good, the right of individuals to self-preservation, the obligations associated with justice as fairness, and the duty to acknowledge the insights of the `marketplace of ideas.' It is argued that there is an underlying tension between the rights of citizens to influence public policy and the rights of children being raised. It is established that the right of citizens to participate in the debate concerning the nature of public education policy follows necessarily from the conditions for a satisfactory democratic social arrangement. The legitimacy of individual attempts to influence public education policy is evaluated using a two part process. The first step in the process is to categorize the attempt to influence according to the kind of interests that appear to be motivating the attempt. The second step is to evaluate critical aspects of the attempt in terms of the criteria. Only attempts which are judged legitimate in terms of these criteria are eligible for any consideration as a possible influence on public education policy. The paper concludes with an application of the framework to several examples of attempts to influence public education policy. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

Most research on medical professional socialization was conducted when medical students were almost uniformly white, upper- to upper-middle class, young men. Today 50% of medical students in Canada are women, and significant numbers are members of racialized minority groups, come from working class backgrounds, identify as gay or lesbian, and/ or are older. This research examined the impact of such social diversity on processes of corriing to identify as a medical professional, drawing on a survey of medical students in one third-year class, interviews with 25 third-year students, and interviews with 23 medical school faculty members. Almost all of the traits and processes noted by classic studies of medical professional socialization were found to still apply in the late 1990s. Students learn to negotiate complex hierarchies; develop greater self-confidence, but lowered idealism; learn a new language, but lose some of their communication skills with patients. They begin playing a role that becomes more real as responses from others confirm their new identity. Students going through this training process achieve varying degrees of integration between their medical-student selves and the other parts of themselves. There is a strong impetus toward homogeneity in medical education. It emphasizes the production of neutral, undifferentiated physicians - physicians whose gender, 'race/ sexual orientation, and social class background do not make any difference. While there is some recognition that patients bring social baggage with them into doctor-patient encounters, there is very little recognition that doctors do too, and that this may affect the encounter. Instances of blatant racism, sexism, and homophobia are not common. Nonetheless, students describe an overall climate in the medical school in which some women, students from racialized minority groups, gays and lesbians, and students from working class backgrounds seem to 'fif less well. The subtlety of these micro-level experiences of gendering, racialization and so on allows them to co-exist with a prevalent individual and institutional denial that social differences make any difference. I critique this denial as (unintentionally) oppressive, rooted in a liberal individualist notion of equality that demands assimilation or suppression of difference. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

This study explored the ways in which the racial identities and lived experiences of Black male K-12 public and independent school leaders inform their professional lives and leadership. Through a qualitative phenomenological study, use of online descriptive survey, and in-depth semi-structured interviews, including the use of visual elicitation methods, with 14 Black male school leaders from across the United States, this research study provided structural and textural descriptions as well as a synthesis of meanings and essence of the experience and phenomenon of Black male K-12 school building-level leadership. This can be summarized as: (a) growing up as a Black boy; (b) leadership as ministry; (c) when a Black man is in the principal’s office; and (d) safeguarding the village. The research expands understanding of paradigms of critical race leadership and disrupts the normative educational leadership axiology. These leaders developed a range of strategies that enabled them to navigate the multidimensional aspects of their racial identity within a dominant White-racialized education system. Additionally, their articulation of action-oriented social justice leadership was influenced by their personal lived experiences, values, and sense of community.

This project was designed to address the need for a curriculum that links environmental education and social skills. All of the social skills units were created to improve the students' understanding of social skills and important environmental concepts.

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An experiment was designed and conducted to determine how knowledge diversity and assigned task roles for members in an online virtual collaborative group affects task performance and individual learning, and to explore the role of explanations as a mediating variable in these effects. The effects of knowledge diversity and assigned roles were examined in a collaborative network design-problem solving task, along with two control conditions to compare with individual work with and without self-explanations. Results show that explanations in dyadic discourse improve individual learning, and that groups with knowledge diversity tend to use more explanations than groups with assigned task roles. The results suggest that knowledge diversity and explanations are both important factors in determining how much individual learning occurs and how well it transfers from collaborative activities to similar, novel tasks.

In the frontier days of America, the school and the community supplemented one another. Frontier life as simple and the requirements for existence on the frontier were, more often than not, a strong back rather than a strong mind. The task of the school, therefore, was relatively simple. The school amply fulfilled its duties if it provided "Reading" with which one might read from the bible, "Ritin" so that simple letter might be written and records kept, and "Rithmetic" which could be used to keep account and make measurements. / "A Paper." / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: H. W. Dean, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references.

The purpose of this research study was to examine how STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) teachers incorporate culturally relevant teaching and multicultural education into their syllabi to prepare pre-service teachers (PSTs) with the expectation that this pedagogical method would result in successfully teaching diverse students. This study explored the history of K-12 STEM education as well as the access, participation, and performance of Black and Hispanic students in AP STEM courses. The final focus of the study was to examine how high school teachers of Advanced Placement (AP) STEM courses infuse culturally relevant practices into their teaching. The study examined data about the professional teaching experience, culturally relevant teaching (CRT) philosophy, and practices of teachers and how they create their syllabi to integrate culturally relevant teaching as they prepare pre-service teachers. In addition, it also examined and analyzed data from interviews with AP STEM teachers on the pedagogical and curricular materials they utilize to support the cultural diversity of students. The findings show that teacher educators and STEM in-service teachers are familiar with CRT and acknowledge its effectiveness as a strategy in reducing the achievement gaps that exist in the education of Black and Hispanic students when compared to White students. The findings also indicate that many teacher educators and in-service teachers can translate their understanding of CRT into practice as evidenced by the examination of their syllabi and lesson plans. However, teacher educators experience challenges in helping their PSTs see the relevancy of culture or culturally relevant teaching in STEM, and the AP teachers of STEM courses experienced challenges in maintaining student engagement and improving scores on the AP exams. This study suggests the necessity of supporting both STEM teacher educators and STEM in-service teachers through professional development to inform and support culturally relevant teaching in STEM education.

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