Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / Investigations in the field of Fashion design education have not taken into account that students need to negotiate three very different subjects. In particular the technical side, namely pattern making and garment construction have not received enough attention. Over the years I have found the same difficulties among students as they negotiate the three main subjects. Their encounter with the technical subjects, presents particular difficulties. In order to explore these difficulties, this study investigates the meaning-making processes of beginner students as they move from drawing and designing to production of a garment. By identifying and analysing the practices of a beginner, I examine how students become multimodally literate across the three subjects.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / Universities of Technology have traditionally prepared students for the world of work and their close ties with industry directly impact on vocational curriculum, which has to impart subject knowledge and specialized knowledge valued by industry, whilst simultaneously encouraging the acquisition of vocational identity. This study of a Design Foundation Course’s curriculum is located at a University of Technology which is currently undergoing a process of re-curriculation, which has initiated a process of examining subject knowledge and its structuring in various course’s curricula. In the light of these developments, an examination of the nature of design knowledge and the role of the foundation curriculum in the transfer of core disciplinary knowledge to underprepared students appeared both timely and necessary.

In South Africa (SA), access to the accounting profession is characterised by inequality, resulting from a multitude of socio-economic and historical issues. Assessment serves as the primary gate-keeping mechanism of the profession. However, more than twenty years after the end of apartheid, pass rates remain skewed by factors such as language and race. Accounting education research offers some quantitative studies which investigate diversity in academic performance by school-leaving results or by race, for example, and a number of studies which consider language in the accounting curriculum. The quantitative studies, however, do not provide insight into the complex socio-cultural issues operating in accounting education, and the work on language in accounting education is largely focused on action research projects and the documentation of communication interventions. While some accounting education studies acknowledge that specific disciplinary conventions exist, these practices are not analysed or described. This study asks the question: how do students negotiate undergraduate accounting assessments? To explore this problem, the academic communication practices in a second-year accounting assessment at a wellestablished, English-medium university in SA are investigated by analysing what is valued in accounting assessments, what students are doing in the assessment event, and why. Academic literacies research and a theory of language as social practice, including the work of Theresa Lillis and Norman Fairclough, are used to develop the theoretical framework of this study. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used to analyse the assessment texts, explore the dominant disciplinary practices in accounting higher education and explain the power behind professional accounting education discourse. This study outlines elements of the valued disciplinary literacy, such as the genres of accounting assessments and the accounting discussion answer, and specialised test-taking reading practices, including how to identify the valued task response. The overarching feature of the dominant disciplinary practices is its linguistic complexity, largely shaped by professional accounting institutions. To investigate students' literacy practices, the answer texts of three students from different backgrounds are analysed using CDA, together with ethnographic data from "talk around text" (Lillis, 2008: 355) and "literacy history" (Lillis, 2008: 362) interviews with students. This study shows that students with language practices aligned to the valued professional education discourse have power in the assessment, while English additional language students from poorer schooling backgrounds in particular struggle to grasp and demonstrate the valued discourse. This study contributes to research on language practices and student experiences in a professional curriculum. It is my hope that the insights offered by this paper can be used to improve teaching and learning by encouraging educators to be aware of, and facilitate access to, the dominant accounting disciplinary practices. Educators need to acknowledge the diverse language practices of students, make explicit the complex elements of the valued disciplinary practices in the teaching and provide opportunities to develop students' knowledge of business and legal concepts, for example, which are recontextualised in the accounting curriculum. Until these steps are taken to make the epistemology of the discipline clearer, access to the accounting profession will remain unequal.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-117). / This thesis represents an instance of my engagement as a reflective practitioner to explore how access opportunities into a web design Discourse can be enhanced. The study is located in the Multimedia Skills subject which is part of the Certificate in Multimedia Technology at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. In describing student entry into a web design environment, insights into academic literacy practices within the multimedia and web design environment are provided. The theoretical concepts of Discourse, interest, intertextuality, literacy, acquisition and learning are used to ground the conceptual framework of the study, while an interpretative case study is utilized as research methodology. Using the notion of recontextualisation, how the professional Discourse of web design was appropriate into the curriculum of the Multimedia Skills subject and the Multimedia Technology programme is described. This analysis identifies a core identity distinction between web designers (who have a strong visual focus) and web developers (who foreground technical competencies) which is supported by the subject focus in the programme. The research considers two key data sources, personal websites and semi-structured interviews. These account for student performances in and meta-knowledge of the web design Discourse and reveal evidence of how Discourses were reflected in student design decision-making in their personal websites. The differential experiences of student access to the web design Discourse prompt the consideration of how learning and acquisition activities could be used in the classroom to facilitate more balanced performance and meta-knowledge expression.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-93). / This study investigates and describes the practices of academics in Departments of Accounting at South African universities in order to identify and analyse pressures on educators of professionals. The strong control exercised by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) on the curriculum of undergraduate and post-graduate programmes offered at South African universities leading to the Chartered Accountant (CA) qualification and the requirement by research-led universities for academics to produce quality research together create tension between the academic titles of research and teaching, in the context of educating for a profession.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-75). / The aim of this thesis is to qualitatively explore how international students navigated the social and academic practices of a South African university. A sample of thirteen students was selected from the Humanities faculty at the University of Cape Town, each of whom was a visiting student for either one semester or a full academic year. Participants volunteered for one-hour, face-to-face interviews which were tape-recorded for later analysis. The interviews were semi-structured, as the author hoped to elicit particular critical moments in the student's study-abroad journey. Two groups of students were sought for purposes of validation and comparison: Group 1 consisted of nine American students; Group 2 consisted of four students from other countries. The focus, however, was primarily upon the experiences of the students from the U.S. The theoretical framework for the study was drawn from the work of social theorists James Gee and Pierre Bourdieu. Their interest in the differential distribution of power in the social world - particularly within academia - and in how the individual gains or loses power as s/he moves in that world provided helpful frames for exploring how international students negotiated often unfamiliar contexts encountered while studying abroad. To operationalize the theoretical framework, Anthony Giddens' concept of "fateful moments" was utilized. Following other researchers, the concept was altered to "critical moments." Critical moments are moments in a subject's narrative which cause disjunctures to arise in the life journey; they are moments of crisis which demand navigational choices to be made. In analysis of the data, these moments were located either by the interviewee's identification or the author's interpretation. In order to aid analysis practices were split into two domains: social and academic. Data was then clustered according to themes which arose in the interviews. In relation to social practices, common themes were related to "with whom to socialize" and to national and racial identities. American students in particular were deliberate in stating their intent to meet "local" students and to create distance from other Americans. Issues related to national and racial identity arose strongly across all of the interviews and influenced both their practices as well as those of "local" students. In relation to academic practices, themes related to academic support, academic expectations, and tacit academic procedures were predominant. When faced with unknown practices students often engaged in a compare-and-contrast activity, drawing upon known practices from their home institutions to serve as the standard by vhich ncv practiccs were judged. However, although splitting practices into two domains was helpful for analysis, students' practices often cut across them. For example, issues related to national and racial identity often occurred both in and out of the classroom. Based on the findings of this thesis as well as the literature, the author concludes with suggestions for future study-abroad programmes. Specifically, hc focuses upon the pre-orientation component of such programmes, suggesting that students may be more fully prepared to engage their study-abroad experience by being introduced to a particular perspective of the social world based on the social theories of Gee and Bourdieu.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-95). / This thesis is an exploration of assessment with particular focus on the marking of essay assignments and the validity or soundness of that process.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-101). / The aim of this study is to investigate the implications of the expansion and diversification of public and private higher education institutions in Mozambique. There are two distinct stages of that expansion. The first stage is characterised by the establishment of two public higher education institutions, namely, the Higher Pedagogic Institute (ISP) in 1985, and the Higher Institute for International Relations (ISRI) in 1986, joining the University Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) founded in 1962. The second stage is characterised by the emergence both of more public higher education institutions, but particularly by the emergence of a new type of higher education service supplier, the private higher education institution. An accelerated process of expansion and diversification of higher education institutions begins in the mid 1990's. The first non-governmental higher education institution to open was the Higher Polytechnic and University Institute (ISPU), and the second was the Catholic University (UCM), a religious institution, both established in 1995. ISPU and UCM were followed in 1998 by Higher Institute of Science and Technology of Mozambique (ISCTEM) , a technological institute, and by the Mussa Bin Bique University (UMBB), an Islamic university. In 2000 the Higher Institute of Transport and Communication (ISUTC) was also established. Currently; there are 23 legal higher education institutions both public and private. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of social field, this study analyses whether the constellation of higher institutions is functioning as a field. I hypothesise that as a result of the expansion and diversification of higher education institutions a very specific constellation is taking place leading to constitutive patterns and forms of interaction which resemble those identified by Bourdieu as typical of a field. The empirical work takes the form of an exploratory study designed to establish the structure of positions of higher education institutions in a social space of capital. The dissertation finds that institutions can be positioned in a hierarchical and structured space of capital on the basis of the differential distribution of different form of capital (cultural, economic, scientific, and social).The findings also suggest that well-established institutions are likely to have more capital and thus to be positioned in a dominant position in terms of symbolic capital. This is the case of UEM amongst the public institutions, displaying a high level of cultural capital (highly qualified academic staff), with significant number of its academic staff in higher positions in the academy, as also having a relatively larger number of income sources compared to Pedagogic University (UP), Higher Institute of International relations (ISRI) and the Police Academy (ACIPOL).

Objective: Communicative competence is recognised as essential for establishing an effective doctorpatient relationship. A Primary Health Care-led curriculum places this established relationship at the heart of all interactions and interventions between the patient and the health professional. Medical students at the University of Cape Town are taught in the Clinical Skills Department how to communicate and interact with patients in the pre-clinical years of training using primarily role play. This study examines how medical students transform classroom-based teaching into authentic clinical practice that follows Primary Health care principles in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the Clinical Skills strategy for teaching communicative competence. Methodology: Video recordings of three authentic clinical interviews conducted by medical students taking their first comprehensive biopsychosocial interview in a clinical area were analysed. This data was supported by scrutiny of the intended learning outcomes of all pre-clinical courses in which aspects of communication competence was taught as well as teaching observations made of the students within the classroom Conclusion: The study revealed that although the students could structure a biopsychosocial interview the nuances of building a professional relationship with the patient as envisioned in a Primary Health Care-led curriculum proved difficult for them. These findings suggest that using a single pedagogical method in the Clinical Skills department, namely role play, may not be sufficient for teaching medical students how to place the needs of the patient first above their need to learn, diagnose and treat the patient.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-63). / In order to determine two distinct engineering qualification levels for an existing University of Technology (UoT) programme, empirical evidence based on the current diploma is necessary to inform decisions as to qualification-appropriate curriculum design. This evidence needs to shed light on the nature of and the relationship between the contextual and conceptual elements underpinning a multidisciplinary engineering curriculum.