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This thesis evaluates how equitably market efficiency education reforms deliver the public good of education. It critiques extreme market education initiatives for prioritizing efficiency above equality and for neglecting matters of equality, and then conducts a case study on the McKay Scholarship Program, a voucher designed for students with disabilities, evaluating the program against a framework of educational equality. Overall, study finds that this voucher program seriously neglects its students equality, comments on the challenges of efficiency-based reforms being able to equitably distribute public goods such as education and calls for further research to be done on this issue.

This study was located within the critical research paradigm. It examined the ways a secondary teacher of English Home Language conceptualised and interpreted social justice imperatives in the English Home Language Curriculum Statement for Grades 10 to 12. It further examined how these conceptualisations and her understandings impacted on her pedagogical practice. The aim of the study was to initiate a discussion and engagement with critical pedagogy and critical theory in education and to recognise the powerful role of the teacher in the classroom. The study used a qualitative case study method. Data generation included document analysis, interviews and lesson observation. The methodology used for the analysis of data was Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in view of its critical perspective and its focus on power and discourse, and the identification of oppressive discourse/s in social interactions. The participant in the study was a white, female teacher with ten years teaching experience at a fairly well-resourced school in the KwaZulu-Natal area. The study found that this teacher‘s conceptualisation of social justice, and the implications of this on her classroom pedagogy, was influenced by her own social realities. Overall, her conceptualisation of the social justice imperatives in the curriculum was rather narrow and limited to understandings that could be linked to traditional multicultural education. Four discourses of social justice embedded in the teacher‘s assumptions and pedagogical practices, emerged from the analysis: the discourse of academic excellence; the discourse of inclusivity and diversity; the discourse of affirmation and validation; and the discourse of critical thinking. The study highlighted the need for further research to support teachers in adopting a social justice approach to teaching. In order to address the social justice imperatives identified in the curriculum, South African teachers need to become critical agents of change. This could only be done by identifying their understandings about what it means to teach critically and to examine their assumptions about teaching for social justice. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

This thesis looks at the problem of channel estimation and equalization in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) dispersive fading environments. Two classes of MIMO receiver structure are proposed with integrated channel estimation and tracking. One is a symbol-by-symbol based receiver using a MIMO minimum mean square error (MMSE) decision feedback equalizer (DFE), and the other is a sequence-based receiver using a partitioned Viterbi algorithm (PVA) which approaches the performance of maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE). A MIMO channel estimator capable of tracking the time and frequency selective channel impulse responses, known as the vector generalized recursive least squares (VGRLS) algorithm, is developed. It has comparable performance and a similar level of complexity as the optimum Kalman filter. However, it does not require any knowledge of the channel statistics to operate and as such it can be employed in a Rician fading channel readily. A reduced complexity form of the estimator, known as the vector generalized least mean squares (VGLMS) algorithm, is also developed. This is achieved by replacing the online recursive computation of the VGRLS algorithm's 'intermediate' Riccatti matrix with an offline pre-computed matrix. This reduces the complexity of the algorithm by an order of a magnitude, but at the expense of degraded performance. The estimators are integrated with the above-mentioned equalizers in a decision directed mode to form a receiver structure that can operate in continuously time-varying fading channels. Due to decision delays, the outputs from the equalizer are delayed and this then produces 'delayed' channel estimates. A simple polynomial-based channel prediction module is employed to provide up-to-date channel estimates required by the equalizers. However, simulation results show that the channel prediction module may be omitted for a very slowly fading channel where the channel responses do not vary much. In the case of the PVA- receiver, the zero-delay tentative decisions are used as feedback to the channel estimators with negligible loss.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 268-279). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xii, 279 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Thesis (MSocSc (ApplSocRes))--University of South Australia

Includes bibliographical references / xi, 355 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Education, 1993?

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of North Texas, May, 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Technology, Sydney, 2005.

Thesis (M. Ed. )--Edith Cowan University, 2006. / Submitted to the Faculty of Community Services, Education and Social Sciences. Includes bibliographical references.