Access to the textual world of academia requires that learners are familiar with the critical open-ended questioning stance demanded by textuality. Questioning is one of the most important learning-teaching tools available to both learner and educator. Due to the crucial role questioning plays in knowledge construction in the university, this study focuses on questioning strategies used by tutors and learners during tutorial interactions. This focus on questioning aims to: 1) Identify common learner question and response strategies across tutorials, ascertaining what kinds of questions learners ask in help-sessions and what kind of responses tutors' questions elicit from learners, 2) identify common question and response strategies employed by tutors, ascertaining which strategies facilitate active learning, with a particular focus on the kinds of questions used to provoke (open) or inhibit (close) learning and 3) compare the questioning strategies of tutors and learners, uncovering different epistemic bases informing their engagement with text. This study adopts a developmental-process approach to research. Two basic premises informing this research follow from this particular developmental approach: 1) an awareness of learning as a process of change and 2) an appreciation of the socio-historical and discursively constructed nature of cognitive processes. It was found that learners and tutors appear to ask the same types of questions regarding the content of the course with both groups primarily asking closed questions. Qualitative analysis, however, indicated that tutors and learners use these types of questions in very different ways. While tutors' ask open questions in order to provoke enquiry, indicating their reliance on a critical questioning epistemology, learners' borrow open questions from various sources, indicating only that they can imitate the kinds of questions that characterise academia, without evidencing a questioning stance to knowledge construction. Similarly, while tutors' ask closed questions in order to initiate a narrative line of enquiry, learners' asked closed questions in order to elicit a closed response. Further, learners' made no use of process type questions and responses, such as metacognitive and group cohesion questions and responses. Consequently, one may conclude that tutors' use of these types of questions and responses indicated that they control the tutorial process. Further this finding indicated that learners need this kind of structured guidance. The study concludes that tutors and learners use ostensibly similar questioning strategies in very different ways, indicating different epistemic bases informing their engagement with the textual task of academic study. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.

This study examined three perspectives on ethical dimensions of South African professional psychology. These perspectives were derived from three data sets. The first data set comprised a series of public complaints against psychologists; the second a series of ethical dilemmas reported by psychologists themselves, and the third comprised a study of the training of South African psychologists in professional ethics. Clear patterns emerged in the analysis of each data set, and efforts were made to integrate the findings. Psychologists in particular registration categories, trained at particular universities and working in particular practice contexts were disproportionately more likely to attract complaints. Similarly, patterns of dilemmas experienced by psychologists also emerged. Comparison of complaints with dilemmas suggested that there were significant differences and some similarities in the ethical issues and contexts associated with public complaints and psychologists' own ethical dilemmas. The study of ethics training suggested general dissatisfaction with the relevance and quantity of ethics training nationally. The main findings were integrated to make recommendations for improving the ethics training of South African psychologists. The limitations of the data are described, along with suggestions for future research to examine in greater depth and specificity several dominant patterns described by the present study. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2002.

Training and pastoral supervision in Christian ministry has been in existence prominently since the 1920s, when the development of pastoral education as a distinct discipline and function of ministry arose out of Clinical Pastoral Education. Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) has as it focus the professional education for ministry. This brings students of theology, ordained clergy, qualified laypersons and members of religious orders into supervised encounter with "living human documents" in order to develop their pastoral identity, interpersonal professional competence, and spirituality; including the skills of pastoral care and counselling, pastoral assessment, integration of theology and ministry, group leadership and pastoral theological reflection. The founders of Clinical Pastoral Education, Anton Boisen, William Keller and Richard Cabot, all from the East coast of the United States of America, adapted the methods of professional education in psychiatry, medicine and social work respectively. Some years later Seward Hiltner established a primary identity with theological education and ecumenical Christianity. A survey of literature from the 1960s shows a vitality and variety among CPE supervisors along with research and publications of theologians of note. These influential theologians are Don Browning, John Patton, Charles Gerkin and Steven Pattison to name a few. CPE originated in the USA and spread to Europe and Australia, but does not fit easily into the culture and methods of ministry training in South Africa. For CPE to be valid it must incorporate the cross-cultural customs and traditions in its context. The difficulties with CPE in South Africa centre on some components at the core of the process, and its paradoxical nature within the learning experience with regard to language, gender issues and questions of length and context. These and other specified difficulties open the discussion on the need for adaptation if CPE is to be successfully implemented in the South African context. Important as CPE is in pastoral ministerial training, it is recognised that it is not the only method of training and education in a cross-cultural context. This thesis explores and critiques the methods of CPE and argues that transplanting a process of education, albeit apparently successful, from overseas is not necessarily acceptable in a cross-cultural society. It is suggested that transformation along with a new model for the South African CPE process is necessary, taking into account the diversity of local African cultures. Existing theories, beliefs of CPE and current literature have been explored and applied to and tested in the South African situation. This thesis presents the results in the form of a design of a new model. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2001

The aim of the present study is to investigate the role of questioning in the learning-teaching process, with particular reference to English second-language students studying the disciplines of the Human Sciences. The broad context for the study is the imperative for higher education institutions in South Africa to meet the learning needs of those students previously disadvantaged by the Apartheid schooling system. The focus of the research is on how particular kinds of questioning may serve to mediate between the historically constituted disciplines of textual knowledge characteristic of the Human Sciences and the worlds of knowledge and understanding of new, underprepared learners. The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, the subjects were students (n=117) admitted to the University of Natal through an alternative selection process, the Teach-Test-Teach Programme. The selection procedure was designed to reveal the academic potential of students who did not meet the standard academic criteria for admission. In order to develop and consolidate their identified potential, selected students were required to participate in a foundation course. The data for this first phase were drawn from aspects of students' performance on the foundation course, in particular, their responses to tasks designed to elicit different kinds of questioning engagement. The second phase of the investigation was situated in a context of curriculum development in the Department of Psychology, necessitated by the changing learning needs of substantial numbers of underprepared students. The primary subjects in this phase of the study were the second-language students of the first-year psychology class (n=274). The study explores the nature of their engagement with the task demands of different kinds of examination questions. In addition, the task engagement of these students was compared with that of a group of failing first-language students (n=88) in order to establish whether the academic difficulties of the two groups could be explained in the same way. The framework of analysis incorporated a combination of quantitative and qualitative elements. However, given the textual nature of the tasks in the Human Sciences , the usual relation of the quantitative and qualitative modes of analysis was reversed , with established general quantitative trends providing the context for more detailed qualitative analysis . Categories for analysis were derived from the data drawing on theoretical analyses of the mediated nature of both tasks and cognitive functioning. Tasks conducted in the first phase of the study were of three kinds: questioning text; modeling appropriate questioning of text; and analysis of academic questions. Contrary to the received view that students are passive or inactive, analysis of their responses to these tasks reveals a highly active process of cognitive engagement. The data show that because underprepared students do not understand the implicit questioning epistemology of text, the question posed by a textual task is transformed and reconstructed . This reformulated question then provides an inappropriate framework for the construction of a possible answer. In the second phase of the study, the investigation focuses on students' engagement with conventional academic assessment questions. The transformation of given questions was again evident; inadequate answers could be interpreted as very effective responses to entirely different questions than those posed. The analysis of engagement with different kinds of academic questions (factual, relational or conceptual) reveals that the particular formulation of the question provokes varying kinds of inappropriate engagement. This finding provides a strong indication of the mutually constitutive nature of tasks and cognitive processes. Finally, a comparative analysis of students from different educational backgrounds reveals that the phenomenon of underpreparedness can be distinguished from other sources of failure. The study concludes that the nature of academic tasks, the process of instruction, and the cognitive engagement of students are all implicated in the problem of underpreparedness and must, therefore, be addressed in the design and implementation of effective intervention strategies. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, 2000.

Three sets of experiments were designed to test Marcel's (1983ab) claim that backward pattern masked word primes are processed automatically and without awareness to a level of representation where the meaning of the word is identified. In the first set of experiments, Marcel's critical SOA procedure for determining an awareness threshold was found to be unsatisfactory. There was no evidence for semantic priming effects when more trials were used to determine the critical SOA. In the second and third sets of experiments, awareness of backward pattern masked primes was determined by subject's report of the prime. Conconscious priming effects from prior presentation of the target word in a lexical decision task, and the solution in an anagram solving task, were substantial and robust. Nonconscious semantic priming effects were small but were significant in both tasks when presentation was dichoptic. Nonconscious semantic priming effects in the anagram solving task were obtained under some conditions of binocular presentation. Priming effects are discussed with reference to word perception, reading, and theories of consciousness. One conclusion is that nonconscious automatic priming effects are "selective" and are far from being ubiquitous. This view of heterogeneous nonconscious selective priming does not support Marcel's (1983b) claim that nonconscious processing produces homogeneous activation to the highest level in all representations connected with the stimulus event.

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M.Ed. (Psychology of Education) / The training of psychologists in South Africa is currently under scrutiny. A request from the South African Association for Psychology as well as the Professional Board for Psychologists is to broaden the terrain of psychological services. Therefore, new structures regarding registration have been discussed and will be implemented by the year 2004 (Professional Board of Psychology, minutes 15 September 1999). In South Africa the need far outweighs the supply: both in terms of psychologists and services available in the different communities. The cost to see a professional psychologist -is far greater than what the ordinary man in the street can afford (Kriegler, 1993; Richter, Griesel, Durrheim, Wilson, Surendorff and Asafo-Agyei, 1998). The crime rate in South Africa is one of the highest in the world (Grimbeek, 1998; van Niekerk, 1996). Millions of people, of whom a great percentage are children of school going age, have been traumatised by crime, poor housing, poverty and domestic violence. Unemployment plays an integral part in these problems. People are struggling to find work as well as to remain employed. Stress which is affecting all of us is a serious problem, and needs to be addressed by psychologists in all the realms of life. If we look at these problems that are currently part of our lives in South Africa, it becomes clear that more people with trained counselling skills are needed. The training of therapists and counselors is of great importance if we wish to place people in our communities to assist the vast number of those who experience problems in their lives.

Negative attitudes and stigmas against those diagnosed with mental illnesses have been found to prevail in modern society, despite the availability of effective treatments and attempts to educate people about mental health. Numerous studies have been conducted on the attitudes of various groups of people and communities towards mental illness. There is, however, limited research about student populations, particularly students registered for courses in the “allied health professions”. This study aimed to explore and describe the prevailing attitudes towards mental illness of a sample of the undergraduate Psychology student population (registered between 2nd and 4th year of study) within the Faculty of Health Sciences at a South African University. The procedure followed was an electronic intranet based survey, utilising the Community Attitudes to Mental Illness (CAMI) scale. The survey was accessed via the university’s student portal and links were sent via email to students to complete. A total of n=51 student responses were recorded and analysed. Data were quantitatively analysed using t-tests and Analyses of Variance (ANOVA). No statistically significant differences on the CAMI scales were found between the students in relation to the various student demographic variables such as age, gender, race or year level, and the CAMI findings. Overall, the sample of undergraduate Psychology students were shown to have favourable attitudes towards mental illness, which is potentially accounted for by their chosen field of study of Psychology. Education and knowledge about mental health were acknowledged as being most important in reducing stigma towards mental illness.

M.A. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M. Ed. / This instrumental case study explores the preferred psychotherapeutic interventions used by a purposive sample of Black-African educational psychologists and intern psychologists who had graduated from the same university between 1998 and 2008. The sample also includes the therapeutic interventions lecturer at the university since previous research carried out at the university revealed that Black Educational Psychology students are at a much higher risk of dropping out of the master's course (Holmes, 2006). This research inquiry aims at gaining a better understanding of the therapies that Black-African Educational Psychologists use in their practice of Educational Psychology. The research is done within a critical paradigm using a social constructivist theoretical framework to seek an understanding of the world in which these educational psychologists live and work (Creswell, 2007). The researcher uses an interpretive approach to explore the data on the psychotherapeutic interventions used by the group of Black-African educational psychologists in their respective practices. The research sample comprises eleven Black-African educational psychologists and intern psychologists and the therapeutic interventions lecturer at the University. Once informed consent was obtained, data were generated by means of eleven incomplete sentence questionnaires and six semi-structured interviews which were captured using an audio-recorder. Data were analysed according to the steps outlined by Charmaz (2006; 2008) in her grounded theory approach to qualitative research. Thus, initial data sets were coded using initial and selective coding and then analysed simultaneously using the constant comparative method which generated findings which fall under four sub-themes namely: 1) Using psychotherapeutic interventions trained in, 2) Adapting Eurocentric interventions, 3) Using Indigenous Knowledge and the 4) Need to advance learning. These sub-themes were integrated to form a Culture-sensitive African perspective to psychotherapeutic intervention in South Africa, which became the overarching theme of this study. The themes were confirmed by sending a verification concept map to five participants.