The VSB/UBC Transition Program is a Ministry of Education Provincial Resource Program for highly academically gifted young adolescents. Unique to British Columbia and Canada since its inception in 1993, the two-year program is currently housed on the UBC campus and affiliated with University Hill Secondary School. Despite an extraordinary range of hurdles - which are fully discussed and analyzed in this study - the eventual establishment of an early entrance to university program is seen as a remarkable accomplishment of educational leadership and organizational learning involving institutional partnerships, flexible governance and a shared commitment to academically gifted young people. The study examined the complexities of implementing a unique educational innovation for academically highly gifted young students in a university setting and in a provincial context which has not traditionally favored support for the highly gifted. The study had two phases. An historical narrative traced the development of this innovation and described how the current program model evolved in response to student needs. Documentary evidence based on original documents and interviews with program developers, implementers, and participants provided a multi-faceted perspective of the program's complex history and highlighted factors contributing to program success for students, as well as problems encountered along the way. Building upon this narrative, the second phase surveyed and then analyzed the views and expectations of students, parents, and staff as well as program planners at different stages of the program. These various perspectives were used to advance an understanding of how and why this unique program developed as it did, and how its participants variously responded to a wide range of expectations and needs to arrive at the current delivery model. The study concludes with a discussion of critical issues and documents the strengths and unmet needs of academically gifted students that have emerged over the course of the program's development. It culminates by providing an understanding of key elements related to program success for gifted youth together with recommendations for future program development and a broader array of programs and services for academically gifted students in secondary schools and post-secondary institutions in BC. The study ends by encouraging more support for educational innovations that respond to the developmentally unique needs of all students, and a commitment to on-going short term as well as longitudinal research on the Transition Program and its graduates. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Aim: This study aims to generate recommendations for enhancing the access and success of historically disadvantaged students to health science education at UDW, based on barriers identified within diverse schooling contexts and local conditions at UDW. Methodology: A case study approach was used to select five former DET schools within the DFR to constitute the sample of historically disadvantaged schools for this study. In order to capture the specific ecological milieu, social and cultural conditions pertaining to rural, urban and informal settlement contexts, three schools were strategically selected from each of these contexts (i.e. Sobonakhona, Ilanga and Inhlanhlayethu High schools respectively). In addition, two former DET schools that displayed relatively high achievement rates were also selected (i.e. Vukuzakhe and Zwelibanzi High schools), in order to contextually understand how barriers to positive educational outcomes might be overcome. A multistage sampling procedure was used to sample 40 standard seven and 40 standard ten scholars from each of the selected schools (n=400) and a purposive sampling procedure was used to obtain a sample of teaching staff involved in career counselling and/or science education in each school (n=16). In addition, saturation sampling was employed to obtain a sample of second year African students in the Faculties of Health Sciences and Dentistry at UDW (n=73). A combination of quantitative and qualitative data collection methods was employed, with questionnaires being administered to standard seven and ten scholars as well as to historically disadvantaged health science students. In addition, a total of five focus groups were conducted with teaching staff from each of the selected schools. Results and discussion: It was evident that a complex and interwoven web of factors impacted on the access and success of historically disadvantaged students in health science education at UDW, including, inter alia, inadequate school instructional resources; limited community economic resources; a paucity of educational opportunities and experiences in the home environment; poverty status; low levels of self-efficacy in academic skill; inadequate school career counselling; university selection procedures with a eurocentric bias; adjustment difficulties in the transition from secondary to tertiary education; financial difficulties; a paucity of 'in-group' academic role models; inadequate ADPs and negative conditions in campus student residences. These results are discussed and interpreted within the context of relevant empirical literature as well as a taxonomy derived from over 60 multivariate school-effects studies undertaken in developing countries, comprising four dimensions, viz. ecology, milieu, social system and culture. Conclusions: On the basis of the findings of this study, recommendations for enhancing the access and success of historically disadvantaged students to health science education at UDW are offered. While these recommendations pertain to a broad range of stakeholders, including the Education Ministry, the schooling sector and higher education institutions, particular attention is paid to the development of practical recruitment, selection and retention strategies to be employed by UDW and its Faculty of Health Sciences. Finally, the limitations of the study are discussed and recommendations for future research in this field are offered. KEY terms: access, success and equity; historically disadvantaged; health science education; educational outcomes. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1999.

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Thesis (MTech (Engineering))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2008. / The Peninsula Technikon and Cape Technikon merged at the beginning of 2005 and became the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). The University consists of six faculties, namely the faculty of: Applied Sciences, Business Studies, Education, Engineering, Health and Wellness Sciences, and Informatics and Design. The high failure rate in the undergraduate nursing course in the faculty of Health and Wellness Science at CPUT, mooted this research due to the devastating impact student failure has on society as a whole. The academic selection criteria and its impact on throughput rates in particular as it pertains to undergraduate nurses enrolled for the 4 year B.Tech qualification, will become the subject of research scrutiny. Descriptive research will be conducted in this dissertation, which will take place in the social world, will be theoretical in nature using both phenomenological and positivistic research paradigms. Case study research will serve as the research method

Orientador: Raquel Salek Fiad / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-19T23:26:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Miranda_FlaviaDanielleSordiSilva_M.pdf: 5344515 bytes, checksum: 9dda85b18f8d163ec459455c553b46dd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: Neste trabalho, analiso enunciados publicados em fóruns on-line de quatro comunidades virtuais da rede social Orkut, a fim de investigar práticas letradas no meio digital e suas relações com/para contextos off-line, em especial, formados pelas instituições escolares. Para tanto, faço uso de metodologia qualitativa, de cunho etnográfico em que os registros foram gerados em navegações na Internet e abarcam o período de janeiro a dezembro de 2010, compondo um total de 499 enunciados selecionados. Com base nas concepções enunciativas sócio-históricas, de dialogismo e sobre os gêneros discursivos de Bakhtin, assumo que todo enunciado é elo de uma cadeia complexa formada por outros enunciados com os quais dialoga em uma atitude responsiva. Logo, não adoto posição taxativa que considere on-line e off-line como "mundos" separados e incomunicáveis. Pelo contrário, acredito em sua interconexão e continuidade, sendo essencial conjugar, portanto, alguns pressupostos ligados ao(s) letramento(s) e aos gêneros digitais, visto que o corpus foi formado por meio da web. Na busca por compreender os processos de produção escrita que se davam nos fóruns examinados, percebi que a publicação, correção e composição de textos no ambiente Orkut eram feitas como forma de treinamento para exames vestibulares, bem como concursos e tarefas escolares em sua maioria. Dessa forma, constatei que os gêneros produzidos em supremacia pelos internautas eram os mesmos praticados no Ensino Médio e que os principais critérios com que os textos eram analisados também eram similares aos empregados por professores, destacando-se a reescrita como estratégia fundamental. Por um lado, a retomada de práticas do letramento escolar no meio digital pôde evidenciar tanto o embricamento entre on-line e off-line, quanto lacunas no currículo escolar e a necessidade de repensar suas práticas mediante os multiletramentos colocados em foco, sobretudo, pelas novas tecnologias digitais. Por outro lado, pude identificar como as práticas de escrita na rede são favoráveis ao ensino-aprendizagem da escrita em função do maior número de pares que os orkuteiros têm, bem como devido ao fato de que, ao escreverem no computador, podem visualizar suas atividades, elaborando reflexões e percepções mais claras sobre o processo de escrever em uma meta-análise de suas produções escritas. Além disso, verifiquei como ideias sobre atividades de escrita carregadas pelos orkuteiros entrelaçavam-se a concepções de sujeitos que circulam ou já circularam na sociedade, revelando o dialogismo como (rica) propriedade da linguagem / Abstract: This research aims at examining published statements in on-line forums in four on-line Orkut's communities in which topics permeate the writing or rewriting of texts, in order to observe the peculiarities of literacy practices that circulate in the digital, as well as analyzing their connections with off-line and schools. It is a kind of qualitative research situated in the field of Applied Linguistics studies and ethnography. The registers were generated from a corpus formed by access of the Internet during the year of 2010. According to socio-historic Bakhtin's notion of dialogism and discursive genre, I believe that all statements are links in a complex discursive chain formed to other statements with which they dialog in a responsive way. This research doesn't take on-line and off-line like separated worlds, otherwise I believe that there is interconnection and continuity between them. This work is also based on studies on the literacy and digital literacy considering that the corpus was constructed in the web. In the study I realize that the textual production on Orkut was a kind of train for student's tests in examinations in general. The analysis of the orkuteiro's texts pointed out that the majority produced genres were the same that ones produced in High School as well as the way to make the corrections was similar to the teacher's action, in this way rewriting the text is the principal strategy. On this side, resume scholar practices on digital media shows the relation between on-line and off-line, as well as gaps in the scholar curriculum. It's time of thinking about scholar practices in relation with the multiliteracies on focus, especially, for the new digital technologies. On the other hand, I could identify how practices of writing on the network are good for the teachinglearning of writing in the light of the highest number of peer the people who use Orkut have. When they write in a computer they can display their activities drawing up reflections and perceptions about the writining process in a meta-analysis of their writing productions. Moreover this work examined the concepts of writing and language expressed by the members in the social network and in the society, indicating the dialogism like (rich) feature of language / Mestrado / Lingua Materna / Mestre em Linguística Aplicada

Internationally, the practice of admissions entry testing in Higher Education (HE) has gained momentum over the past few decades, sparking ongoing research on its effectiveness. On a national level, three factors have signalled a timeous evaluation of admissions practices at HE institutions. Firstly, changes in the school curriculum and the new format of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) have impacted on the admissions criteria of HE institutions. Secondly, with the merging of HE institutions an alignment in admissions practices between the institutions involved were necessitated. Thirdly, South Africa has embarked on the development of National Benchmark Tests (NBTs). The primary aim of this research study was to develop a set of recommendations to guide admissions testing practices in the South African HE context. These recommendations had to place special emphasis on the multicultural and multilingual context of this country. To achieve this aim a systematic review was conducted on HE admissions testing in Israel, as it was identified as a multicultural and multilingual country that had successfully implemented national HE admissions testing. More specifically, a retrospective systematic review was performed on research regarding the national HE admissions test, the Psychometric Entrance Test (PET), used in Israel. The systematic review also contained a narrative overview on the educational landscape in Israel and the specifications of the PET, from which themes were also extracted. Eight broad themes emerged through the systematic review and narrative overview as being of critical importance to an effective national HE admissions test. These were the components of the test, the implementation of the testing programme, the method in which the test results are used to make HE admission decisions, the reliability xi of the test, the validity of the test, bias inherent in the test, other psychometric aspects related to the admissions test, and the effect of coaching or specialized preparation on test results. These themes, together with their sub-components, were used to develop eight recommendations that can guide the development and implementation of the National Benchmark Test (NBTs) in South Africa. Both the themes that emerged during the systematic review and narrative overview as well as the recommendations that were made to guide the development and implementation of a national admission test, represent an important contribution to the field of admission testing and decision-making in South Africa.