This thesis investigates the importance of higher education for women of Babati, Tanzania. The research has been carried out by focusing three research questions; What does an education at the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) mean for the female students on a personal level? What is the female students’ perception on the importance of women’s higher education for development? How can the female students’ perceptions on the importance of women’s higher education be analyzed within the context of the term women empowerment? In order to answer these questions semi-structured interviews were conducted in Babati town, Tanzania in February 2012 with female students and graduates of the Open University of Tanzania. Out of these interviews is concluded that higher education has significant personal effects for the women interviewed such as increased happiness, independence and self-esteem, which in turn have effects on development. Also it can be shown that the definition of the term women empowerment is disputed and thereby insufficient as a mean for development.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The essential role that school management teams (SMTs) play in managing change has been debated for many years both nationally and internationally. Central to these debates has been the need to understand how to best empower SMTs through a process of continuous professional development. This research aimed to explore SMT members’ experiences of professional and personal development in three rural primary schools in the broad context of educational change in South Africa and specifically in the context of policy implementation. This aim was explored by asking the following research questions: 1. How did educational change in South Africa influence leadership and management in schools? 2. What professional development was experienced by the SMTs as they tried to embrace new roles and responsibilities within a new policy context? 3. What personal development was experienced by the SMTs as they tried to embrace new roles and responsibilities within a new policy context? 4. What are SMT members’ suggestions for enhancement of personal and professional development and support of SMTs in schools in South Africa? The literature review which grounded this study focused on three areas, namely, educational change, leadership and management in schools, and professional and personal development. An integrated theoretical framework was employed and provided the lens through which the data was collected and analysed. Key concepts within the framework included mental maps, reflexivity and authoring which were synthesised within change theory. The change theory employed emphasised the value of engaging with first, second and third orders of change to effect the facilitation of meaningful change on both a personal and professional level. SMTs from three rural primary schools in three different provinces, comprising of six educators each, participated in the study. The researcher conducted three focus groups and 18 individual interviews. The social constructivist -interpretive paradigm that framed this research study is a worldview that understands reality as being constructed when people engage with each other. Congruent with the social constructivist -interpretive paradigm is a qualitative research design, which was employed in this study to collect rich, comprehensive, in-depth data that explored the professional and personal development experiences of SMTs to illuminate the complexity of the issue being studied. The study encompassed three phases of data collection. Firstly, a detailed document analysis was conducted where policy documents, research reports and job descriptions were studied and analysed. Secondly, 18 SMT members were interviewed in three focus groups. Thirdly, the 18 SMT members were individually interviewed. Phases two and three of the data collection process employed semi-structured interviews to generate data. The data analysis employed a qualitative, thematic approach to analyse and interpret the data that emerged. A thematic approach was used to illuminate the professional and personal development experiences and challenges facing the SMTs. The thematic approach generated distinct categories that were used as descriptors to report on the findings of the research. The findings highlight the need for integrated professional and personal development, role clarification, school-based support, policy mediation and outlines implications for the development of SMTs. This research makes a contribution towards educational change in South African schools by providing insights and proposing a model of professional and personal development for SMTs. It illuminates the vital importance of first acknowledging developmental needs and then facilitating personal and professional development to effect practical implementation of change at schools as required by policy. The researcher demonstrates how three orders of change theory with related personal development concepts can be integrated into a single theory to understand and facilitate change at the level of the individual, group and organisation.

Causes of low employment of women in informational technologies and period of their origin. Description of the situation on the market of women employed in IT branch, identification of contemporary trends.

n recent years, self-knowledge and optimism have been considered phenomena helping men succeed. The diploma thesis was aimed at investigating whether selected successful managers possess self-knowledge and optimism, and whether these phenomena might help them be successful. The subjects were the finalists of the competition Manager of the Year 2014. Semi-structured interviews were used as a method in the research. The diploma thesis concludes that the selected managers possess high levels of self-knowledge in certain areas. They use methods for raising self-knowledge such as experience, behavior reflections, or raising self-knowledge through other people. The managers find self-knowledge important for reasons such as: setting a direction in life, setting goals, managing people, or developing self-control. The data analysis included the comparison of the managers in areas of self-knowledge, optimism and mindset.

This work is focused on the education of volunteers in Pionýr, which is organized within this association. The aim is to find out what the motivation of volunteers to take part in the education courses and what is the benefit of the courses for their work with children as well as for their personal development. In case someone does not participate in the course, there are reasons for not taking part in the course. The data are obtained through questionnaires that were distributed among volunteers registered within the Pionýr. Based on the data obtained, it is possible to improve the quality of education courses, focus on specific topics and make courses more attractive.

There is a rich body of literature that details the effects therapists have on their patients. Little attention has, however, been given to the impact of training and working as a professional psychologist on the close personal relationships (CPR) of practitioners. The aim of this study was to explore the subjective experience of the impact of clinical psychology training on trainee psychologists' intrapersonal development and subsequently their CPR in the South African context. Three key relationships the trainees' relationships with their family, friends and romantic partners were the focus of the research. Seven second year clinical psychology master's students were selected using non-probability, purposive sampling to participate in individual semi-structured interviews. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematic analysis was used to identify and analyse themes in the data both within and across the seven interviews. Six main themes were identified and the findings indicate the participants perceive the impact of training on their CPR to be primarily beneficial. This is despite experiencing difficulties in some of their relationships as a result of training. Relationships with romantic partners benefitted from improved communication and some became deeper and more meaningful, although two ended. Participants faced both gains and losses in terms of friends while the intensity and shared experience of training rapidly made classmate relationships extremely important and close. Some participants gained a better understanding of family members and their family's functioning. Training also opened up some relationships by providing a point of connection between certain participants and their parents. The participants rely significantly on all their CPR for social support but support from family is most salient. Finally some implications for training were evoked by the interwoven nature of personal and professional development demonstrated by the study. / Mini Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Psychology / MA / Unrestricted

There are a number of organisations offering Employee Wellness Programs (EWPs) to South African companies, while other businesses have established their own in-house EWPs. Broadly speaking, EWPs are designed to promote employee wellbeing in order to increase productivity. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to determine whether a music therapy intervention could address employee wellness needs. A single music therapy workshop was conducted with five participants who were employees at a South African Employee Wellness Organisation. The workshop comprised active and receptive music therapy techniques. Participants were interviewed in a focus group after the workshop. Data were prepared by means of thick description and transcription and were analysed using thematic analysis. The following themes were identified: ‘making and feeling connections’, ‘navigating boundaries, ambiguity and change’, ‘quality of group music-making’, ‘the workshop experience’, ‘personal development’ and ‘team building’. Findings indicate that the music therapy intervention addressed wellness needs associated with personal development and team building. Reflection was shown to have a significant relationship with both personal development and team building. Other notable relationships within these categories included stress-relief, acknowledging diversity and increased trust in the group. A model was proposed illustrating the embedded and interconnected conditions present during the workshop that addressed the employee wellness needs of team building and personal development. / Dissertation (MMus)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Music / MMus / Unrestricted

Skolverket (2019) always underlines the importance of implementing democratic values onto the students. But is this always easy to apply in the classroom? The purpose of this work is to examine how you can work with literature in different ways in the Swedish subject, with the focus of a multicultural and LGBTQ+ perspective. This work is for teachers and teacher students to create a bigger understanding around the possibilities of using literature. Our framing question is the following: “How can teachers work with literature texts from a multicultural and LGBTQ+ perspective, and how are the students affected?”. The method that has been used to produce this work has been by using databases to find information. Hence, there have been different selection methods to determine the usefulness and relevance of the different sources. The result showed that there are many different ways to use literature in the classroom, some with a better outcome than others. Furthermore, the lack of knowledge on how to work with or find multicultural and LGBTQ+ literature became visible. Nevertheless, it was noticed that both literature education from a multicultural and LGBTQ+ perspective is needed to create democratic values, since it develops the students critical thinking, their default natural setting, compassion and more. Through challenging students' default natural setting, the democratic society can be developed.

Personal development is a rapidly growing industry. Nearly half of the world’s population has met with a psychiatrist, psychologist or psychotherapist, which indicates that what these people say has an enormous impact on our society. In my study I will scrutinize the view of the world which is presented by four of the world’s most successful gurus in the industry of personal development: Steve Jobs, David Goggins, Denzel Washington and Tony Robbins. This will be done by analyzing their use of metaphors as well as the potential consequences these might have for the listeners. I have analyzed the metaphors in accordance with Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) and compared the results with each other. My results show that all of these gurus use the metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY, which can generate motivation. They also see motivation as fluent, that is, as something which comes and goes. This can also be considered to have motivating effects. Another interesting finding is that our results are described as consequences of our decisions, which the psychologist Julian Rotter calls internal locus of control. This has been shown to increase performance and responsibility.

The question as to whether to teach personality development as a separate unit or to include it as an integral part of the total homemaking program became a problem which required careful investigation. It became the purpose of this study, therefore, to determine whether more measurable growth in personality is achieved by teaching a special unit in personality than by including such subject matter as an integral part of the homemaking program.