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published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Curriculum Studies / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This report reflects the results of and conclusions and recommendations arising from an investigation into the demand for, composition of and financial viability of a new, specialized, or niche MBA in Nature Conservation Management, to be offered by the Pietermaritzburg section of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Graduate School of Business. The report finds that nature conservation, whilst almost universally recognized as a highly desirable, if not crucial element of government responsibility, is increasingly being expected to pay its own way. This dichotomy is forcing nature conservation and protected area managers into a dual role encompassing both the science and practice of nature conservation and protected area management on the one hand and business management on the other, at least at the very highest levels of management. It is submitted that the report provides clear evidence of the need for such a programme aimed at providing senior nature conservation and protected area managers with a suite of relevant business skills including financial management; resource economics; human resource management; project management; ecotourism development, marketing and management and the like. Whilst the report ultimately recommends the implementation of the niche programme, it recognizes two concerns. • Given the very small pool of nature conservation professionals in the region and the chronic underfunding of nature conservation agencies, it is not certain that programme would, on its own, be financially viable. • The reaccreditaion process undertaken by the Department of Education has set back the university's MBA programme by several years and now is clearly not the time to attempt to launch a new offering. / Thesis (M.Bus.Ad.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2004.

This report reflects the results of and conclusions and recommendations arising from an investigation into the demand for, composition of and financial viability of a new, specialized, or niche MBA in Nature Conservation Management, to be offered by the Pietermaritzburg section of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Graduate School of Business. The report finds that nature conservation, whilst almost universally recognized as a highly desirable, if not crucial element of government responsibility, is increasingly being expected to pay its own way. This dichotomy is forcing nature conservation and protected area managers into a dual role encompassing both the science and practice of nature conservation and protected area management on the one hand and business management on the other, at least at thevery highest levels of management. It is submitted that the report provides clear evidence of the need for such a programme aimed at providing senior nature conservation and protected area managers with a suite of relevant business skills including financial management; resource economics; human resource management; project management; ecotourism development, marketing and management and the like. Whilst the report ultimately recommends the implementation of the niche programme, it recognizes two concerns. • Given the very small pool of nature conservation professionals in the region and the chronic underfunding of nature conservation agencies, it is not certain that programme would, on its own, be financially viable. • The reaccreditaion process undertaken by the Department of Education has set back the university's MBA programme by several years and now is clearly not the time to attempt to launch a new offering. / Thesis (M.Bus.Ad.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2004

The purpose of this case study was to examine the effectiveness of a technique known as re-creation on student writing abilities in ENG 104 section 95 during the spring semester of 1992. Re-creation, already used almost exclusively in England and Australia, invites a writer to divulge his or her personal interpretation of a literary text by rewriting given aspects of it. In section 95, the instructor devoted the entire range of assignments to re-creative writing tasks, using four dramatic scripts and the motion pictures that had been adapted from them as literary texts. The instructor carefully developed re-creative writing assignments and a reasonable criteria with which to grade them. He closely monitored how the students adapted to re-creative writing, and discovered that four students exemplified the main different styles of writing that emerged from re-creation. The case study does indicate that all of the twenty-one students coulddo the work that re-creation involves; some experienced only minor successes with it, but other students, including some top achievers who would probably have done well in any writing class, found broad new avenues for creative expression of their personal responses to literature. / Department of English

The goal of this creative project was to develop a unit to be incorporated into an environmental education general studies course at Ball State University. The unit was developed as a hands-on experience activity manual.The goals of the unit were:1. to increase student awareness of the effect vegetation and water have on human comfort in the urban environment.2. to engage students in hands-on activities that relate methods for manipulating the microclimate of a space.3. to develop a pre-test/post-test containing questions which relate to the activity topics and which determine the topic knowledge of students.The manual contains an introduction, four section activities and activity subsectionexercises to combine all techniques learned in the four activity sections. Each of the four sections contain a list of objectives for the activity, explanatory text, an activity procedure, and discussion questions. Illustrations accompany the manual in order to augment the learning process for each activity. / Department of Landscape Architecture

This dissertation investigates the expression of contrastive transitions in the ESL/EFL (English as a Second Language/English as a Foreign Language) writing of university students of Arabic language background. For this purpose, an experimental group of 30 freshmen at Sohar University in Oman whose native language is Arabic served as the experimental group. They did three tasks, two writing activities and a cloze test, ranging from semi controlled (free writing) to the highly controlled cloze test. A control group of 30 Ball State University freshmen in Muncie, Indiana who speak English as a native language performed the same three tasks.For the first task, the subjects wrote about one of 15 possible topics. They then performed the second task, which was writing about a different topic, and were also provided a list of 35 contrastive transitions to use at their discretion. For the third task, the subjects inserted contrastive transitions in the blanks of the doze test, marking the confidence in their choices on scales provided in the margins.This study indicates that the Arabic ESL/EFL students use contrastive transitions when writing contrastively in English. However, the expression of these contrastive transitions is relatively inadequate and limited compared to that of their native-English speaking peers. The Arabic students show a high rate of success in their expression of but as a contrastive transition. However, they show a lower rate of success in their expression of other contrastive transitions. Furthermore, the difference in the levels of confidence in the choices between appropriate and inappropriate contrastive transitions used in a controlled context shows they have little or no idea if their choices are correct or not. / Department of English

The objective of this study was to determine if trends were present in the longitudinal treatment of concepts of plate tectonics in introductory college-level physical geology textbooks. In addition, a method was designed to convey the structure of these concepts of plate tectonics by determining the location in the textbook where they occur.Eighteen textbooks were selected from the time period of 1975 through 2004. The total narrative area was determined by measuring the height and width of each column of text in each textbook. Individual concepts of plate tectonics were determined using the constant comparative method. Nine concepts were identified. The treatment of each concept was expressed as a concept's percentage of the textbook's total narrative area. The structure of plate tectonics in each textbook was determined by creating scatterplots and pie graphs of the location within the text and the area devoted to each concept. Furthermore, a measure of the structure of the textbook over the study period was determined by comparing the proportion of chapters containing concepts of plate tectonics with the publication date.A strong positive correlation (r=.638) was found between the treatment of the theory of plate tectonics and the publication date of the textbook. This correlation was significant to the 0.01 level. Two of the nine identified concepts of plate tectonics were also found to have significant correlations.Similarly, a strong positive correlation was found between the proportion of chapters containing concepts of plate tectonics and the publication date. Thus, concepts of plate tectonics are found in more chapters in textbooks published during the latter parts of the study period.A concern arising from this study is the treatment of the concept identified as "The evidence for and the development of plate tectonics." This is the only identified concept of plate tectonics that showed a marked decrease during the study period. Furthermore, this concept corresponds with other studies that found many of America's textbooks reporting the end results of science while omitting the nature of science. / Department of Geology

Are there differences among freshman, sophomore, junior and senior baccalaureate nursing students in levels of critical thinking skills? What demographic variables are related to critical thinking?Critical thinking was equated with the problem-solving process in the nursing process and defined as the ability to collect and interpret facts, develop problem statements, identify interventions and evaluate the outcomes.A stratified random sample of nursing students (N = 114) from freshman, sophomore, junior and senior classes completed the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal and a demographic questionnaire.No significant differences were found among the four grade levels in critical thinking skills (F = 2.506, p = .0628). Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) verbal and quantitative scores and grade point averages (r = .55, .30, .41 respectively) were positively correlated to critical thinking (p = .05). Age, total number of credit hours completed, credit hours completed In physical/earth/life sciences, behavior and social sciences, humanities and fine arts, professional nursing and general electives were also statistically significantly related (r < .30, indicates little practical significance) to critical thinking. SAT verbal, grade point average, humanities and fine arts entered a regression equation to collectively account for 41% of the variance in critical thinking (p = < .001).Either (a) critical thinking skills are not increasing, (b) the WGCTA does not measure the critical thinking skills used by nurses or (c) nursing curricula may not develop critical thinking skills in nursing students. using an analysis of the uniqueness of the nursing process, nurse educators should develop an instrument that measures the critical thinking "process" component of the nursing process as well as the "logic" component with items specific to the nursing knowledge base.If critical thinking skills are important to nursing practice, then curriculum content, teaching methodologies and learning experiences should increase critical thinking skills in nursing students. Longitudinal studies need to be conducted to determine what curriculum content, teaching methodologies and learning experiences are most effective in increasing the critical thinking skills in nursing students. / Center for Lifelong Education