Presently, there is a national focus on the industry-benefitting skills developed through undergraduate education. The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of an experiential learning course on building three ability-based transferable skills: communication, emotional intelligence, and professional qualities. These skills have been determined to be important components to the skill set of graduates intending to enter any career, including one within the hospitality industry. Results from an examination of three related instruments led to conclusions that an experiential learning course positively impacts self-perceived skill development among the three aforementioned skills as well as perception of overall performance. In addition, it was determined that experiential learning courses benefitted interns irrespective of self-reported learning style preference and that such courses may aid in narrowing the perceived gap between intern and employer perceptions of intern skill levels and thereby prepare graduates with increasing success for societal productivity

In my eleven years of teaching graphic design at Tshwane University of Technology, I have come to realise that education is more than just teaching a student the fundamentals, techniques and new technologies, it is also about their personal development. I conducted this study to ensure that my educational practices challenge my graphic design students to acquire the essential characteristics – or more profoundly, the essential human qualities -­‐ required for a contemporary graphic design career through which the quality of life for all will be enhanced. The study is a participatory action research study involving the second and third year graphic design students at Tshwane University of Technology. It involved five action intervention cycles. In the first cycle I explored the current graphic design education practices in order to determine whether these practices ensure the acquisition of such essential human qualities that a graphic designer should posses. The acquisition of such human qualities has become paramount because of the ethical imperative that graphic designers can change the world (Berman, 2009). I found that my current graphic design education practices as they relate to the commonly most dominant practices are not sufficient to accomplish this purpose. During the research I was exposed to a paradigmatically innovative education practice that focuses on maximizing human potential and it was adopted to improve my existing education practice. Through four additional action intervention cycles I provided evidence that indicated that my improved education practice contributed to my students’ acquisition of an identified four sets of essential human qualities: the artistic quality of creativity; the professional quality of continuous, independent, increasing expertise in creativity within an interdependent, co-­‐operative value based community of graphic design practitioners; the personal quality of maximizing human potential; and the leadership quality of an enlightened change agent. The primary focus on the acquisition of these essential human qualities through the proposed method of graphic design education, also allows for the gaining of the necessary graphic design knowledge and skills (Barnett, 2007:101). / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2013 / Humanities Education / Unrestricted

The aim of this thesis is a theoretical level summary of the formal and other requirements that are placed on the contemporary teacher of primary school. It covers concepts such as teacher competence, teaching role, various pedagogical knowledge and skills and teacher job requirements. Description of the legislative regulation of the teaching profession is also included. Part of the theoretical work is concerned with other components of teaching such as professional ethics, professional standards, pedagogical tact and personal qualities of the teacher. At the practical level the work deals with real requirements on teachers imposed by parents based on assessed questionnaires to parents of pupils. In the comments on the individual items of the questionnaire, the author relies on the experience of her own teaching practice. The result of both parts of the thesis is a summary of the knowledge, skills and character qualities, which is the teacher supposed have today. .