The Grahamstown Tertiary Education Bridging Project (GRATEP) was formed in 1991 by a group of post-matriculants from Grahamstown who had not been accepted into any tertiary institution for 1991. The overall aim of GRATEP was to prepare these students for tertiary education. The Academic Skills Programme at Rhodes University offered a programme in English Language Development. The present study aimed to research the design, implementation and evaluation of the GRATEP English Language Development programme which was implemented from May through to October 1991. A multimethod approach has been used to assess the progress made by the students in terms of developing communicative competence in English and to evaluate the course itself. The data included writing samples, questionnaires, exercises in hierarchical organization, a clozetest, comments made by the students and the participant observers. The programme appeared to have been most effective in terms of building confidence, developing academic skills and encouraging the students to take greater responsibility for their own learning. Statistical comparisons of the first and final writing samples revealed no overall significant improvement in communicative competence in English. However, comparisons of the scores in the categories and sub-categories of communicative competence revealed that students had improved in their ability to structure and organize their writing. The research raised questions about the design, implementation and assessment of non-formal language courses of this kind and made suggestions for improvement and further research.

This project arises from recent initiatives aimed at transforming Shakespeare studies in South African high schools, so as to make those studies more learner-centred and interactive, as well as a more useful communicative language-learning experience for second-language (L2) students. It is this interactive methodology that the present project seeks to extend to the relatively neglected area of Shakespeare's figurative language. Drawing on schema theory and response-based approaches to literature teaching, the project shows that figurative language is especially conducive to interactive treatment, whereby students might be encouraged to make sense of metaphors and similes out of their "background knowledge". Guidelines are indicated for putting this into practice in the L2 classroom; and on the basis of these guidelines, materials are developed for an interactive approach to Shakespeare's figurative language. The central phase in this development process involves trying out the materials in five African high schools and then analysing the data collected from them. The classroom try-outs were profitable in so far as they raised issues that had been overlooked in the earlier, theoretical, stage of the development process. A good overall response to the materials' learner-centred approach was indicated, although students experienced difficulties with certain essential tasks. Most seriously, while the materials were successful in accessing students' background knowledge in the form of associations, they were less successful in getting students to use this knowiedge in interpreting metaphors for themselves. Reasons for this feature, and others, are considered and solutions posited. Recommendations for implementing the materials in a larger teaching programme are made.

M.A. / The institutionalisation and rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents has always been a contentious issue, generating much research and differences in opinions. What to do with youngsters who are too young to be criminals and too violent to be youth, remains a complex dilemma in a society where the incidence of juvenile delinquency is increasing by the day. The South African phenomenon of a marginalised generation who readily takes part in criminal behaviour, necessitated the development of a co-ordinated strategy involving formal and informal support groups in the training and development of this group. The establishment of e ,e first Youth Development Centre in Newcastle, named Ekuseni, was initiat ,* by President Nelson Mandela, in response to his concern that the conditions in South African jails are not conducive to transforming and developing young prisoners. The Ekuseni project was aimed at providing young convicted persons with appropriate life skills, education and training, to enable them to pa cipate fully in society. The aim of this study was to develop a psycho-educational programme to facilitate leadership competencies in young prisoners. The leadership programme constitutes one of the development programmes in the holistic rehabilitation model, developed specifically for the Ekuseni project by the Rand Afrikaans University. The leadership programme is aimed at developing various leadership competencies, grounded in leadership competency theory. The competencies included in this study were more specifically based on the research and the development of a unique leadership model for the South African organisational context by Charlton (1993). These concepts were adapted and integrated with theory on juvenile delinquency to develop a leadership program= suitable for South African youth in prison. The first step in the programme was to help students to create a vision for themselves and for the Ekuseni Youth Development Centre, and to take responsibility for attaining that vision. This included a shift from an external to an internal locus of control. Through learned communication skills, e competency to communicate this vision to other prisoners, to enlist them in dedicated action towards a constructive future, was facilitated. The development of conflict management skills as an essential competency for leaders in a youth prison, were facilitated in order for leaders to constructively resolve conflict between prisoners and staff, as well as between prisoners themselves. This is especially necessary in conflict between youth gangs in prison. Trust, earned by leaders through reliable and consistent behaviour is a fourth competency facilitated through IP is programme. Students were taught the art of interpersonal trust, which in turn enabled them to help others and empower themselves. The evaluation of the effectiveness of this programme did not fall nV in the parameters of this study. It is therefore recommended that this study be evaluated in future, before it is implemented in other youth prisons in South Africa.

M.Cur. / Innovative and revolutionary changes in Nursing Education in South Africa have resulted in significant changes in student accompaniment. To give effect to these changes, two important aspects emerged. Firstly a facilitative process in the form of accompaniment of students and secondly the presence of a significant person to aid development of the student. THE AIM OF STUDY The overall aim of the study was to describe guidelines for effective student accompaniment during Community Health Nursing Science Clinical Practice. OBJECTIVES: to explore and describe students' needs for accompaniment during Community Health Nursing Science Clinical Practice to explore and describe the Community Health Nurses' perceived role in the accompaniment of students during Community Health Nursing Science Clinical Practice to describe guidelines for effective student accompaniment during Community Health Nursing Science Clinical Practice The study was explorative, descriptive and contextual and it used qualitative methods. The study was conducted in two phases. During phase 1 students' accompaniment needs were identified through written narrative sketches by forty second year students. Data analysis was done according to the protocol by Tesch. An interview schedule was developed from the results of phase 1 and used to guide the focus-group interview in phase 2. In phase 2, a focus-group interview was conducted with twelve Community Health Nurses to identify their perceived role in student accompaniment. In the first part of the interview an open question was asked, followed by questions based on the interview schedule. Data analysis in phase 2 was done according to the protocol by Tesch. Guidelines for effective student accompaniment during Community Health Nursing Science Clinical Practice were described based on the results of phase 1 and phase 2 namely identified students needs for accompaniment and perceived accompaniment roles by the Community Health Nurses. Trustworthiness was ensured throughout the study by adhering to Lincoln and Guba's model of trustworthiness.

M.Ed. / A research team from the Department of Educational Sciences at the Rand Afrikaans University has recently engaged in a group project to establish to what extent the school has educated children towards democracy by the time they reach std.10. Statements by various educationists and politicians, alluding to the fact that a democratic attitude has to be taught because it is not an innate human characteristic, prompted the researchers to select this theme. Each member of the team did research on a specific aspect of democracy. This study focuses on "freedom, tolerance and the rights of minorities in a democracy. It was decided that a questionnaire would be an appropriate research instrument. It was compiled on the basis of literature studies of the different aspects of democracy. Six of the 37 questions related to the aspects of freedom, tolerance and the rights of minorities in a democracy. Std.10 pupils and teachers representative of all secondary schools in the Witwatersrand area were deemed to be best qualified to respond to the questions posed in the questionnaire.

Traditional healing is one of the most trusted methods of healing in South Africa, especially in rural areas, where health-care infrastructure is inadequate. People have depended on this method of healing since time immemorial. That belief has been strengthened by the fact that this method keeps people in touch with their ancestors. Traditional healers are trusted and believed to be the link between people and their ancestors. The Dwesa community is amongst the areas that still have strong belief in traditional healing. Traditional healers have a variety of methods of healing that they use, these methods have been trusted for people of all age groups. These methods are ukugabha, ukufutha and ukucima. Traditional healers prescribe them for both major and minor illnesses. They are believed to play a role in cleansing people from inside and outside. These methods together with other methods that are used in traditional healing are being explored in this study. This exploration is based on the fact that this information will be integrated into the teaching of isiXhosa to Pharmacy students at Rhodes University. This is an initiative to create awareness amongst health-care practitioners about traditional healing methods, so that they can caution and advise their patients about medicine taking behaviours, also to make them approach the subject in a sensitive manner. An isiXhosa course has been taught to Pharmacy students, as a pilot in 2007 and as an elective in 2008 onwards. This course deals with cultural issues in a broad manner, the issue of traditional healing specifically, and these methods of healing are outlined in the course, such that students have an understanding first of what a traditional healer is and their role in providing health-care services.

Matriculation pass rates in South Africa, especially in Mathematics, have been poor. The literature and personal experience suggests that a problem with homework may be a factor in this. In order to discover how Port Elizabeth learners from ex-DET schools perceived and experienced Mathematics homework, and the nature of such homework, ten case studies of Grade 11 learners were done. While conducting and analyzing the case studies, a pattern emerged from the findings, which together with some new questions, needed to be explored on a larger sample population. In order to do this and to be able to generalize the findings, four follow-up studies in the form of surveys on Mathematics homework were conducted at nine schools. These studies involved a learner questionnaire, a teacher questionnaire, the timing of learners as they did set Mathematical problems and the analysis of common errors made by the learners while doing the problems. The findings revealed that learners received too little homework too infrequently and did it inefficiently and ineffectively. The learners worked too slowly, did not complete the homework, left out the difficult problems and made numerous unnecessary mistakes. However, most of the learners claimed to have enough time available to do their homework and spent approximately one hour on Mathematics homework when it had been assigned. Many of the misconceptions and the resultant errors originated from work that should have been well covered in previous grades. However, parts of the syllabi were omitted in previous grades and completion of the syllabus and homework was only seriously considered in Grade 12. Some implications of the findings for educational practice and further research are discussed.

The area of discourse acquisition and writing in higher education has become a much researched field. In South Africa the interest in discourse acquisition and writing has been partly in response to the change in student profile, particularly over the past ten years. While South African researchers and academics are increasingly focusing their interest in discourse acquisition and writing on the unique circumstances here, they rely on theories based on research done in very different social contexts. These theories are not necessarily universally appropriate. South Africa is currently undergoing a period of transformation in higher education aimed at greater access and equity for black students and academics. The accompanying sense of frustration and disillusionment among students and academics underlines the need to reappraise all aspects of higher education. Much of the research on discourse acquisition and writing is undertaken in arts programmes: vocational fields - such as engineering education - tend to be neglected. If the envisaged growth in science and engineering education is to be realised, it is essential that research in discourse and writing be undertaken in engineering programmes. This study investigates discourse acquisition as experienced by students in a South African engineering faculty. The experiences of six final year technikon students are investigated to gain a better understanding of what it means to acquire the discourse of engineering. The phenomenological method used requires that the researcher suspends or brackets a priori theoretical notions or pre-conceptions so that that which the students experience, rather than what the researcher expects in terms of theory, can emerge. What emerges from the students' experiences is partially congruent with established discourse and writing theories. However, some of the student experiences of discourse acquisition differ in significant ways from what is described in mainstream writing and discourse acquisition theory. The differences in the manner in which these students experience their acquisition of engineering discourse leads to a new understanding of the phenomenon. The students do not experience the alienation or struggle described in mainstream theoretic accounts of discourse acquisition. Students' approaches to writing are affected by their awareness of their multiple identities and the different locations in which they learn. Their approaches to writing are significantly different in some respects from descriptions in mainstream theories in some respects. The description of their experiences gives a different understanding of what it means to acquire the discourse of engineering, and may contribute to the reappraisal of engineering education in a contemporary South African context.

My involvement with mathematics education amongst township educators and learners over the past seven years has highlighted the absence of sustained meaning and meaning making of mathematical concepts. It appears though that this instrumental rather than relational understanding of FET mathematics is not unique to township learners but is encountered amongst learners of all socio-economic classes and is representative of many FET mathematics learners. Given that the language of learning and teaching is a major contributory factor in the South African education system, it appears that the language of mathematics itself is a greater exacerbating factor for many learners of mathematics. The exclusive algorithmic approach to classroom mathematics further seems to alienate many learners from the essence of the meaning of mathematical tasks. This research undertakes to determine whether metateaching and metalearning as forerunners to metacognition facilitates the acquisition of the sustained meaning of mathematical concepts. Metateaching and metalearning refer to the acute and deliberate awareness by educator and learner as to what constitutes concepts. Teaching and learning therefore presupposes the deconstruction of concepts into its subsumed derivative roots. It also assumes an awareness of the tacit degrees of abstraction that characterise tasks and the content of tasks. This in turn has implications for the educator's adopted sequence of topics for instruction. Metacognition implies awareness on the part of the learner (and educator) as to how material is learned and a further awareness as to how that learning can be sustained. Whether we ascribe meaningful learning to radical or social constructivism, or to associationist didactive approaches, or a combination of these, we are making assumptions about how learners acquire and sustain mathematical meaning because mathematics is, by and large a symbolic language often devoid of affective connotation. Furthermore our assessments of learners' tasks amount to clinical corrections of austere formulae wrapped in algorithmic procedures which manifest nothing of a learner's experience of mathematics or the deeper understanding (or misunderstandings) which characterise a learning and/or assessment episode. To this end the research design of this interpretive case study requires learners to expound in textual accounts their thoughts as they describe the evolution of a mathematical process as they approach a solution and eventually interpret it. The textual account exposes the concept definition for what it really is in a learner's understanding of it and it is the expressiveness of language that indicates whether the understanding of a learner is approaching the concept image. The textual accounts vary in richness in terms of mathematical register and this in turn reflects the conceptual depth. The mechanism which seems to promote the conversion from concept definition to concept image is the graphical representation of the mathematical task or procedure, possibly because of its greater concreteness as opposed to the abstraction of its algebraic form.

An adequate understanding of the nature of science (NOS) has become increasingly important for science teachers in South Africa as comprehensive curricular reforms over the past decade include promoting informed understandings of the ontological and epistemological bases of scientific knowledge and the methods of science. The main objective of this study was to explore the NOS understandings held by a sample of science teachers in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Data were generated via questionnaires (n=136), semi-structured interviews (n=31), and classroom observations (n=8). The teacher interviews, which were informed by the questionnaire data, enabled further interrogation of the teachers’ philosophical positions. Their classroom practices were examined within the framework of these philosophical positions and the requirements of the new curriculum. The effect of implicit and explicit instruction in NOS on these teachers’ beliefs and classroom activities was also considered. A mixed-method approach informed by positivist and interpretivist perspectives was used for the collection and analysis of the data. The data suggests that explicit instruction in NOS resulted in more informed conceptions of science and the scientific enterprise, and that these conceptions were reflected, to a degree, in their classroom behaviours. However, it was noted that the teachers in this study often held philosophically eclectic views of the nature of scientific knowledge and how scientists develop ideas. Similarly, the South African National Curriculum Statement portrays science in contrasting ways, i.e. often within a modern/realist framework, but in other instances within postmodern/relativistic understandings (particularly in terms of indigenous knowledge systems). As such, an approach which aims at providing a firm foundation for understanding NOS ideas within a modern/realist perspective before emphasising the postmodern/relativist aspects of the scientific enterprise is suggested for teacher training and curriculum development.