A young woman from a rural village near Kimberley is killed by her husband in a fit of jealousy. Her illiterate mother is summoned to the hospital to authorize the removal of vital organs – eyes, liver, kidney and heart – for organ donation. But some members of the family feel that their child should not be buried with parts of her body missing. Thus begins a story that changes the lives of many people, both black and white, over the following twenty years.

Thesis (D. Tech.) - Central University of Technology, Free State, 2009 / This research analyses the discourses of students without barriers on inclusive higher education. It is assumed that the discursive practices of students without barriers will affect their perception negatively on inclusive education. This leads to the students without barriers’ attitude. As a result the students without barriers believed that upbringing played a role in their discourses. Parental and societal stereotypes blinded them to discourses. Analysing the discourses of students without barriers indicates the need for support in order to go beyond their stereotypes. To confirm these findings, I used qualitative study to conduct my research. The literature is reviewed in Chapter Two to find out what various researchers in previous studies say with regard to the discourses of students without barriers. Six respondents were selected from two different universities, namely the Central University of Technology and the University of the Free State. This was done with the purpose of analysing the discourse of students without barriers to determine if they understood what it means to be supported. The Free Attitude Interview was used as the technique for gathering information from the respondents. The purpose was to find the discourses of students without barriers in an inclusive higher education. This research study used the textually orientated discourse analysis (TODA) as a technique for gathering data. A tape recorder was used as a supplement for information that might be forgotten. The audio recordings were transcribed, verbatim and later interpreted. The spoken word of the respondents was analysed with the aim of disclosing the ideology carried by the respondents. This study is able to conclude that students without barriers felt superior to physically disabled students, as they indicated in their dominant discourses. This implies that students without barriers are positioned with ideology and discourses in so far as their meaning construction of discourses are concerned. Based on the findings, the study recommends an inservice programme to help students without barriers to become aware of their discursive practices. The students without barriers should not allow negative stereotypes and misconception to prevent them from their discourses in inclusive higher education.

This thesis reports on a collaborative action research case study into the teaching of visual literacy to Grade 10 learners in a rural high school in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Visual literacy is one of the critical aspects that have been incorporated in the teaching of English First Additional Language as required by the National Curriculum Statement (Grade 10-12), which has been implemented in Grade 10 as from 2006. With the aim of improving learners’ performance in visual literacy I designed a visual literacy unit that consisted of lesson plans running over 7 periods in 10 school days. In implementing the unit the learners were first grouped and then exposed to visual grammar and visual texts and then they critically viewed such texts and designed their own. Data was collected daily in the form of individual learner journals, researcher’s journal/diary, and copies were kept of activities done by learners (individually or in groups). Also, two teachers were invited as non-participant observers to each visit a lesson. Learner focus groups were conducted and critical friends were interviewed, tape recorded and transcribed. A camera was used to take still photographs to show learner activities in groups and during group presentations. The data revealed that visual literacy could be taught meaningfully in a rural high school as the learners could identify, cut, paste and discuss elements of visual language and they finally designed their own advertisements in groups. In the analysis of data the following factors emerged as hindrances for successful teaching of visual literacy in a rural high school: lack of resources; learners’ lack of a foundation in visual literacy from Grades 7-9; and problems revolving around time management and pacing. As action research comes in spirals, this research represented the first one and the researcher found the study an eye opener and a foundation to build on in the second spiral (that is not part of this research).

My stories are set in the townships, and move with the vigorous rhythms and jagged structures of township life. Some of them are written in English and others in isiXhosa. Some of the dialogue is township slang, a mixture of languages; and pure isiXhosa. The stories follow no particular pattern and are arranged according to any form of chronology, and different voices, at times as a man/boy and in others as a girl. The characters are not related each story perfectly stands for itself. Some of the stories hark back to the days of apartheid and are seen through the eyes of a child confused by the humiliations of his elders. / Amabali am asekelwe ezilokishini yaye ahambelana neemeko ezimaxongo zokuphila zasezilokishini apho yaye amanye asukela kwixesha lengcinezelo yesizwe esimnyama. Imiba echatshazelwa kula mabali iquka intlupheko, intiyo kwakunye nokuphilisana koluntu ezilokishini, phantsi kwezo meko. Amabali la ndizame ukuwenza alandele indlela yokubalisa yhenkwenkwana enguSkhumba, ethi ibone iqwalasele iimeko zokuphila zabantu bohlanga lwayo. Ingqokelela esisiqendu sokuqala yona ibhalwe ze yangeniswa ngesiNgesi. / This thesis is presented in two parts: English and isiXhosa.

Lurching from day-today in the months before South Africa becomes a republic, booze-befuddled Indian private investigator Rohit Biswas does not ponder how he can secure his daughter's future after he became a widower and lost his job as police detective when he killed a man who fatally stabbed his wife. Salvation appears when a rich client hires the PI to find evidence proving his son did not rape and murder a white socialite. Fighting against seeming impossible odds in colonial-apartheid Durban and a sanctions-busting conspiracy, Biswas secures his client's acquittal. In the process he defies karma and redeems himself.

These stories are about people’s experiences in relationships and how they overcome and resolve problems with their partners. Some explore myths and unexplained occurrences that raise many questions.

D.Cur. / South Africa is currently undergoing radical transformational changes in all facets of its society. This is an era immediately following the first democratic elections in the country. The new Government, the Government of National Unity (GNU) which is dominated by the African National Congress (ANC), has introduced what is known as the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP)(ANC, 1994), which seeks to redress disparities of the past. This programme has significant social, political and economical implications for the South African community. It proposes that statutory bodies and institutions should be rationalized and restructured to reflect the diversity of the South African people and should be better able to promote and protect the standards of health care and training. It aims to, inter alia, promote mental health and to increase the accessibility, quality and quantity of mental health support and counselling services. In line with this goal and based on problems that arise because of anxieties and fears that are inherent in change, the mental health of nurse educators and nursing students of a selected nursing college was investigated utilizing a qualitative, theory – generative design which is exploratory, descriptive and contextual in nature. The study was conducted in two phases. In Phase 1, in-depth phenomenological interviews were conducted individually with ten nurse educators and nine nursing students to explore and describe their experience of interaction with one another. Follow-up interviews were also conducted with some of the participants. Data was analysed using Tesch's method. Based on the results of the analysis, the major concept, understanding was identified as the essence of a model for constructive nurse educator - student interaction envisaged. In Phase 2, a theory -generative design was utilized to develop a constructive nurse educator - student interaction model, founded on a mental health approach. The identified concept was examined in existing writings to determine essential criteria of the concept. In addition, a model case was written in which the concept was constructed to the best of the researcher's understanding. Essential criteria of the concept were identified and a concept map was drawn to depict the essential criteria in relation to each other. The related concepts were identified and portrayed in a structural form. The visual model depicts nurse educators and nursing students who function as a family, as the recipients of activity, and the advanced psychiatric nurse practitioner, who facilitates their interaction, as the agent. By utilizing the deductive reasoning strategy, relationship statements were inferred from the model. Guidelines were described for the advanced psychiatric nurse practitioner with regard to all three phases, namely, the Interaction Initiation Phase, the Interaction Cohesiveness Phase and the Interaction Dissolution Phase, in terms of objectives, strategies and proposed activities.

D. Ed. (Education) / In this study two main educational issues are examined, namely language instruction and learning as well as classroom culture. The problems were not strictly formulated as research questions at the outset, but evolved partly during the pilot study and the fieldwork stage. The fragile character of South African education in this time of major transformation and socio-educational reconstruction, was the main impetus for this research. It was decided to focus on one educational micro-organism in order to try and sense if there were some noteworthy issues which could be reflected for generalization or subsequent research purposes. It was argued that the ecological and temporal validity of an extended emic study would reveal aspects of language Pedagogy, contextualized in a single classroom culture, which could potentially be of benefit to the wider educational community. The study was undertaken with the aim of giving a thick ethnographic description of classroom life, concentrating on linguistic factors. Two standard six English classes were observed for six months each, the one following upon the other. The same teacher taught the two comparable classes in which one major pattern emerged during the observation, namely the limited Cognitive, Academic Language proficiency (CALP) of most pupils.The choice of site was motivated by the fact that newly desegregated schools could perhaps benefit from a description (and interpretation) of English classroom life at an open school which has been functioning successfully for a number of years. During the pilot study it was presupposed that linguistic phenomena surfacing in a contemporary language classroom would be supported by the theory of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) , which 'is theoretically based on the theory of language acquisition and especially Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and which is the dominant second language teaching theory of the day. It became clear during the pilot study that a baseline of CLT would serve a valid purpose in that the theory could be applied and, to a limited degree, even assessed at this single site, but that the data' which would be forthcoming would be spread somewhat wider than the theory of CLT. Nevertheless, it was decided to broadly limit the theory pertaining to language didactics to CLT and SLA, as the interpretation of data would possibly reflect sufficiently strongly in the theoretical framework in these two domains. In addition to a framework from theory in Linguistics, a construction of the theory of Multicultural Education was also included. The main tenets of Multicultural Education, the most important one being equality of educational opportunity, were then woven into the theoretical unit referred to as "language classroom at an urban multicultural school". This unit included a brief foray into roleplay as language teaching tool. The third part of the theoretical scaffold consisted of an exploration of qualitative research methodology, specifically ethnography. As this study is to some degree also a study in qualitative methodology which is not widely used in some research milieus in South Africa, it is regarded as an important part of the theoretical framework.

D.Ed. / This inquiry focused on the inclusion of the psycho-biology of learning in teachers activities in school practice. The research question addressed a sample of teachers personal interpretation of the effect of an in-service programme on their practice. The programme consisted of a study of aspects of the biology of learning and how to convert these to instruction. The main claim or thesis of the study was that an inclusive model of education would be incomplete without a psycho-physiological view of learning. After a comprehensive literature review, a field study was launched making use of the following methods: focus group interviews, personal sketches and individual interviews. The data was collated and interpreted per data category and especially as a configuration. Findings from the field study were used to illuminate the thesis or claim that founded the study.

D.Litt et Phil. / The aim of this study is to illustrate how literature study in English at secondary and teacher-training levels could be informed by an inter-disciplinary perspective which would transform the classroom methodology. The teaching of English literature to speakers of other languages focuses on data-driven decoding, low-level comprehension and literary criticism at the expense of reading experience, personal but informed response and the development of literary competence ...