M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract.

M.Ed. / Academic staff development is seen as a vehicle of empowerment that focuses on assisting individual members of staff to acquire knowledge, understanding and skills needed to teaceffectively. A great number of South African Higher Education institutions have made inroads and advances with regard to academic staff development programmes. However many such programmes are usually general to all staff members including administrators and professionals and do not address the specific needs of academics. Managers often plan these programmes without consulting the envisaged participants or conducting any needs assessment despite the literature on academic staff development emphasising the importance of conducting a proper needs assessment. As a result academic staff members in these institutions still feel left behind when it comes to academic issues affecting them directly, such as an absence of continuous staff development and the development of their research and academic writing skills. Many academics feel that such programmes are irrelevant and boring and do not attend. Based on the above the aim of this study was to explore the needs of academics within the Education Department of Vista University Soweto Campus in order to arrive at an informed understanding of such needs for the purpose of informing future academic staff development programme planning. For the purposes of this study qualitative research was conducted using semi-structured interviews with a purposefully selected sample of eleven academics within the Education Department in order to ascertain their academic staff development needs. Data were analysed using the constant comparative method. The findings of the research reveal that the majority of the academics were dissatisfied about the manner in which academic staff development activities are planned and conducted. Among the factors mentioned, the following feature prominently: the need for continuous staff development; the necessity of conducting a proper needs assessment prior to planning academic staff developmental programmes, the needs of the academics in acquiring the skills for research and academic writing, and the availability of more funding for staff development activities. This report concludes with a number of recommendations for planning with regard to academic staff development programmes.

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / The Rand Afrikaans University College for the promotion of Learning and Leadership (RAUCALL) was founded to address a specific educational need in the Republic of South Africa. Many children with academic and leadership potential from the less fortunate communities are never given the opportunity for tertiary education once they leave school. RAUCALL provides secondary school children with an opportunity that prepares them academically and develops their leadership qualities in order to ready them for tertiary studies. The College caters for children from disadvantaged communities who manifest academic and leadership potential and the primary aim is to identify these candidates who are most likely to fulfil these requirements. Initially, in the selection process many problems were experiencedand it became clear that possible candidates were not being identified. Improvement of the selection processes and procedures became necessary to target the group which would benefit most from the enriched education RAUCALL provides. The study focussed on three main areas. A literature study provided a background on the problems that could be experienced when selection takes place in a multicultural setting. Secondly an analysis was made of the RAUCALL selection procedures followed during 1992 and 1993. Thereafter a Human Resources selection model was described in order to make a comparison between the two models. This procedure provided an indication of where specific problems existed in the RAUCALL model. Improved selection procedures were described in chapter 4. The improved selection procedures were based on the Human Resources selection model. This model provided the framework for the proposed selection guidelines for RAUCALL students. Suggestions were made to improve the recruitment procedures with the object of targeting a wider group of potential candidates.

M.Ed. (Curriculum Studies) / Dozens of Teaching Science practitioners and educational administrators are asking fundamental questions today about the objectives of teacher education programs, the content of programs, instructional methods and quality of education of teachers. They recognised that current Teaching Science practices must be examined, evaluated, and in some cases, developed. There are obvious limits to the effectiveness of these Teaching Science programs to give prospective teachers skills necessary to be successful in their classrooms. This study investigates the guidelines for the improvement of Teaching Science at Colleges of Education that can ensure prospective teachers with ways of understanding the culture of classrooms and schools. The research was based on the assumption that, for prospective teachers to learn to teach effectively, they should be inculcated with an enriched structure and content of the subject Teaching Science curriculum, and valuable teaching knowledge should be communicated to them during their professional training process. In order to understand this problem in its total context an in depth study of the literature survey on the process of teacher education in the Republic of South Africa and the selected areas in the world was done. Data was collected from the interviews with the Heads of Education Department and beginner teachers and questionnaires were administered with principals of schools, Teaching Science lecturers and second and third year student-teachers. The data corpus includes case observations from prospective teachers on Teaching Practice. Their lesson plans, presentation of the teaching skills and post class reflection notes were analysed. Their subject expositions were also audiotaped to provide contextual descriptions. Findings indicate that there are many areas in which the subject Teaching Science curriculum needs improvement if it is to maintain its high degree of producing school teachers which the community will recognise and respect. The findings corroborated the hypotheses that the subject Teaching Science curriculum helps prospective teachers to be autonomous and active agents in their classrooms. The following are some of the most important findings: With regard to their lecturing, the majority of students claimed that many Teaching Science lecturers are ineffective classroom practitioners. It is revealed that Teaching Science lecturers who are less qualified are unfamiliar with the subject Teaching Science lecturing strategies whereas the highly qualified staff is always satisfied with its lecturing. Many student-teachers regarded Teaching Practice as a stressful time because they were not guided effectively by their Teaching Science supervisors on how to write genuine lesson preparations and schemes of work. Teaching Practice sessions are usually held at the beginning of the professional course. At that time students do not have maturity and knowledge of the theory on which teaching is based. Overall it appeared to show that theory and practice at Colleges of Education are still far apart and student-teachers are not given direct experience with the children they are going to teach. -In all Colleges of Education, Teaching Science facilities such as micro-teaching laboratory. dark room and media centre, are inadequate, -The study also revealed that the subject Teaching Science curriculum at Colleges of Education is more boring, less fun, more repetitious, discouraging, unattractive and less competitive. Students are not equipped with the subject Teaching Science curriculum to present interesting lessons. Beginner teachers are incapable of controlling their classes. marking registers and writing accurately on the chalkboard. It is because of this and other reasons that most student-teachers were always absent for Teaching Science periods. -The survey further revealed that the majority of beginner teachers are shy, self-centred and unable to establish good order in the classroom. -The traditional lecturer/teacher-centred approach in which the educator transfers information to learners is outdated, It was found that new approaches to assist prospective teachers may have important potential which needs to be explored diligently. -Based on the data collected and literature review the researcher provides proposals for the improvement of the subject Teaching Science curriculum at Teachers' Training Colleges. It is the wish of the researcher that this set of recommendations be effective tools in helping preservice teachers become successful teachers

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

M.A. (Psychology) / The growing trend towards marital disruption and divorce over the past decade has already roused concern in the helping professions. Statistics indicate that, in the past 50 years in South Africa, divorce has become an increasing phenomenon. It appears that the most important causative factors in marital disruption are an absence of effective communication skills and poorly developed conflict handling skills. However, the communication and conflict handling skills, necessary for a successful marriage, can be acquired prior to marriage.

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

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / The purpose of this study is to determine whether parents can be classified as a facet determining or influencing educational standards. The researcher aims at describing the importance of the parent as determinant of educational standards by means of: a literature study, which confirms the importance of the parent, as well as an empirical study, based on a questionnaire which was submitted to respondents closely involved with schooling aspects. The literature study describes the parent and its role with reference to specific aspects like personality development, cognitive development, moral development, motivation, socialization, biographical and milieu aspects. Validity and reliability of the empirical components of the investigation was ascertained by means of Factor Analyses and Item Analyses. The identified variables (ie parents and their colloquial usage, their expectations, educational qualifications, handling of discipline, moral attitude, child motivation, involvement in school affairs, socio-andeconomic status, studyfacilities offered to the child and parents' marital state), constituted the multi-dimensional role used to investigate this specific facet. Multi-variate Analyses (MANOVA and HOTELLING T-SQUARE) as well as Singlevariate Analyses (ANOVA, Student t-test, Scheffe test) were used in the statistical analysis of the data. Hypotheses on gender, home language, educational qualification, professional capacity, involvement in either High School/Primary School, school model involvement, age, place of residence, religious commitment, marital status, size of family, language medium ofschools of own children and income category were set. The most important findings were: • parents are generally regarded as positive determinants of educational standards; • specific respondents, grouped according to biographical data, eg home language, involvement in either High School or Primary School, marital status, size of family and place of residence, indicated no differences in perceptions regarding the parent as likely determinant of educational standards. • parents' motivation and assistance offered to children; their moral beliefs and attitude; parents' discipline and study guidance and facilities offered at ho.,me were rated most important by the respondents. Recommendations are: • positive training of parents in eg. child motivation and study guidance can afford them psychological backup to support and motivate their children in a structured way; • orientation towards a sound moral belief system can influence children in a positive way; • parental involvement should be promoted intensively at school level as their involvement may stimulate their children's education and schooling (ie educational standards of a high level).

M.Ed. (Curriculum Studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.A. (Language Teaching) / Please refer to full text to view abstract.