This study aimed to describe the stressors perceived by a group of Health Science lecturers in a School in a South African University, and to describe the coping strategies these lecturers used. The sample consisted of thirty, full-time lecturers in the three Disciplines that constituted the School. Three focus groups, one in each of the Disciplines, were held to gather the research material. The study reveaied that change in Tertiary Education and organisational issues such as the image of the institution, lecturing to a diverse student group, curriculum transformation and leadership issues were perceived as enduring stressors. An increased workload, brought about through the training of future health professionals, trying to stay abreast both professionally and as an academic and the nature of their academic appointments were further identified as potential stressors. Role conflicts in terms of juggling home and work responsibililies and role ambiguity with respect to being both a teacher and researcher were presented as additional stressors, as were certain day-to-day occurrences. Lastly, the lecturers identified a number of personal issues that were perceived as stressors. The study failed to highlight meaningful differences in the three Disciplines within the School, which is in keeping with other published research. The study also showed that the lecturers in each of the Disciplines had access to, and knowledge of, a wide range of coping mechanisms, both problem-based and emotion-focused. The lecturers in the three Disciplines used very similar coping strategies, and once again meaningful differences were not reported. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.

Evolution is considered a controversial topic and has been met with much debate, concern and conflict in its inclusion in the school curriculum. The aim of his investigation was to determine what conceptual change occurs when learners are taught evolution and what factors influence this change looking in particular at learners’ conceptual ecologies and the role that religious beliefs play. The attitudes of the learners, teachers and school community towards evolution were also investigated. A mixed methods approach was used because it obtains a fuller picture and provides a deeper understanding of a phenomenon by combining the strengths of qualitative and quantitative research. Learners were given a pre-and post-instruction survey and concept mapping task, and a sample of learners were interviewed post instruction. Results showed that learners made significant conceptual changes and that religious beliefs are the main contributing factor to learners’ conceptual ecologies and the conceptual changes that occurred. An overall negative attitude was initially experienced from learners, but this developed into curiosity and interest. Teachers had a positive attitude towards teaching evolution. This study also highlights the notion that conceptual change theory is not sufficient in explaining how all learners learn evolution. Learners that experience cultural conflict follow various other learning paths explained by collateral learning. Collateral learning is considered because it more accurately explains how religious learners learn evolution. Collateral learning puts emphasis on the importance that learner cultures have in learning and highlights the importance of teaching for cultural border crossing / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

This study was based upon a concern about the quality of education in South Africa and a concern about the quality of NGO and other INSET interventions. Many organisations purport to address the issues of education, most of them doing so from the very comfortable position of the moral high ground (the position adopted where the political - correctness of the intervention outweighs the quality and impact) rather than from the position of having the capacity to deliver a quality service (a position from which they can effect genuine educational transformation toward quality education for all). With the rapid social, political and educational changes taking place at present, it is necessary for most organisations to assess their positions in respect of their ability to effect quality changes within the broad educational terrain. This study is an attempt to investigate the influence of one particular programme, that of the Centre for Cognitive Development, as it effects changes in teacher cognitions. It is argued that teachers are the catalysts for and agents of educational and social change and that these changes require the thinking and beliefs of individual teachers which inform their practices and behaviours, both personally and as professionals, to be addressed. These beliefs need to be critically reflected upon by the teachers themselves and through this process of reflection, teachers need to be empowered to take responsibility for the quality of teaching and learning. This concern was addressed by selecting a sample of teachers from within one such INSET intervention and through the use of a questionnaire, investigating whether teachers cognitions had changed, as a result of the INSET programme. It was hypothesised that changes in teacher cognitions would occur as a result of the INSET programme and that these cognitive or gestalt shifts could be categorised as Attributional shifts, Efficacy shifts, shifts in teachers perceived Locus of Control (Control Beliefs) and changes in general Pedagogic Beliefs. The statistical analysis of the data indicated varying degrees and trends of significant change. However, the complexity of the social context of teaching and the impact of this on teacher beliefs and cognitions, especially those of teachers who have been most affected (disempowered) by social and personal oppression, cannot be under-estimated and even minor shifts reflected in this investigation should be seen as positive changes none-the-less.

M.Ed. / 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. / This research essay focuses on the empowerment of educators as adult learners with a view to develop a positive attitude towards inclusive education. The philosophy of inclusive education has become more prominent in the education fraternity worldwide with the turn of the century and has been applied with great success in countries like the USA, United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries. Education White Paper 6 passes new regulations on the implementation of special needs education and inclusive education in South Africa Inclusive education as an education system is part of actions taken and reform supported by the National Education Department in South Africa to render education more accessable for all learners with their diverse educational needs. These new regulations are to be implemented by educators in South African schools. The problem that arises in South Africa is that educators do not have a good grounding in the philosophy and values of inclusive education, which leads to negative attitudes. These negative attitudes are seen by various South African researchers as an obstacle to implement inclusive education in South African schools. The statement of the problem in this essay is: How can a workshop for educators as adult learners be designed to empower them with positive attitudes to eventually successfully implement and apply the philosophy of inclusive education in South African schools? The aim of this research was to develop and design a workshop for educators to promote and enhance positive attitudes towards the implementation of inclusive education. Without the positive attitudes of the educators on ground level the implementation is doomed to failure. The philosophy of inclusive education is based on democratic values of freedom, equity and the acknowledgement of human rights. A paradigm shift towards learners who experience barriers to learning must be developed and those learners should be experienced as valued citizens of society. It must therefore be noted that inclusive education does not only include learners with dissabilities but all learners that have barriers to learning and those that were previously deprived of or denied access to education.

South Africa has been in a process of far-reaching restructuring and currently is still experiencing a bombardment of many educational change policies. Education policy for educational change only becomes reality once it is implemented at the micro (classroom) level. Teachers indeed are the key role-players in this implementation phase and are unfortunately, more often than not, the silent voices in this process, ignored and discounted in this stage of educational change. How they experience and understand the policy change, or how the human side of policy change is contextualized, remains a mystery to be explored and explained. Furthermore, despite the growing literature on educational change and policy change, relatively little has been done on the experiences of primary school teachers and policy change in the context of developing countries such as South Africa. Available international literature on teachers’ experiences of policy change relates mostly to educational practices that are well-resourced, where teachers are highly qualified, and teacher-student ratios are low. It appears reasonable to assume that teachers’ experiences of education policy change in developing South African circumstances would be influenced and constructed by the contexts in which they work. The broad purpose of this inquiry is to describe and explain primary school teachers’ experiences of education policy change in South Africa. The immediate objective is to obtain new, deeper and more complex understandings of the less obvious issues that influence teachers’ roles as implementers of education policy change. This study was conducted in an interpretive or qualitative mode. The following key question guided this investigation. How do primary school teachers experience education policy change? Semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and open-ended questionnaires were utilized in this study. This data was transcribed, and analysed using computer-aided qualitative data software, Atlas.ti. The data was analysed inductively, using open coding and a grounded theory approach. This approach facilitated the coding process of the data. The data was interpreted on the basis of the literature, and presented in the last two chapters of this report. The findings from this inquiry revealed four significant and interdependent themes, with a variety of sub-themes, which appear meaningful in understanding education policy change from the perspectives of teachers. These include the affective domain, emotional responses and contestations, issues relating to discipline and control, outcomes-based education, and lastly matters of values, teacher roles and their view of professionalism. While the contributions of this inquiry are not original in the sense of a prototype, the findings could add to the knowledge base of the complexities of education policy change. Some further questions are raised, which emerged during the inquiry and which might contribute to additional investigations on a wider spectrum and launch some critical debates on education policy change. The inquiry yields some concluding thoughts, which may inform policy change and its implementation. / Thesis (PhD (Education Management))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

This study constitutes a theoretical and qualitative investigation into the meanings and locations of social cohesion in dance education. Theoretical connections between culture, dance education and social cohesion are explored. The empirical investigation is designed as a qualitative case study interrogating pre-service student teachers’ experiences and perceptions of a particular dance education course in a culturally and politically diverse university classroom in post-apartheid South Africa. Open-ended questionnaires, reflective journals and focus group interviews were employed to generate data. Findings indicate that involvement in creative movement and ethno-cultural dances raised awareness of the Self and the Other, engendering perspective and personal transformation, important requisites for social transformation and subsequently social cohesion in a formerly divided society, such as South Africa. In addition, these dance education experiences provided participants with unique encounters with the Other’s culture. These occurred through embodied experiences of the culture of the Other, as well as through bodily negotiations with the Other. These findings lead me to argue that dance education, as pertaining to this particular course, can facilitate spaces conducive to cohesion amongst culturally and politically diverse participants in post-apartheid South Africa.

I hereby certify that this dissertation is my own unaided work. It has been submitted exclusively to the University of the Witwatersrand in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Industrial Psychology). / Despite the increasing concerns regarding the levels of stress expenenced by teachers, and the potential resultant effects of this stress, relatively little is known about the potential effects of coping strategies and perceived social support in coping with teacher stressors. This study aimed to investigate whether both general and specific ways of coping (namely, problem focused, emotion-focused and escape-avoidance coping) heve the potential to moderate the relationship between stressors and strain experienced by individuals within the teaching profession. Furthermore, attempts were made to establish which of these types of coping strategies are most effective for coping with the typical stressors faced by teaching professionals. Similarty, this study investigated whether perceived social support has the potential to moderate the stressor-strain relationships experienced by teachers, and examined which types of social support (namely. perceived social support from famify, friends, supervisors, or colleagues) have the potential to effectively moderate this relationship. The data were collected using questionnaires, which were distributed amongst seventeen elementary schools within the Gauteng region, The sample for this study consisted of 188 English-speaking,elementary school teachers, employed on a full-time basis. Moderated multiple linear regressions were carried out in order to investigate whether coping strategies and social support have the potential to moderate the stressor-strain relationships, and analyses of variance were used to determine which of the three ways of coping (that is, problem-focused, emotion-focused, or escape-avoidance coping) has the potential to be the most effective for coping with teacher stressors. Generally, the use of coping strategies was found to Significantly moderate the investigated stressor-strain relationships of teachers, while the potential of specific ways of coping to moderate particular stressor-strain relationships appears to be specific to the situation. Similar results were found with regards to perceived social support. Problem-focused coping strategies were generally found to be the most effective method for coping with a range of teacher stressors. but its efficacy was also found to be situation-dependent. / Andrew Chakane 2018

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / Information technology (IT) rapidity, and the pervasive implementation of new technologies in the education system, has tremendously improved the way teaching and learning is conducted. Institutions are being reshaped by the rapid provision of education services anytime, anywhere regardless of the constraint of space and geographical boundaries. This has enhanced collaboration among educators as well as their learners by sharing and disseminating of knowledge. However, this sharing of knowledge is still limited as educators have not fully exploited IT to share knowledge. The major objective of this study was to develop a framework for utilizing IT to enhance knowledge sharing for mathematics and science teachers.