This research aims to explore the experiences of counsellor educators and counselling trainees of teaching and learning group work. Group work is one of the core courses that aims to prepare trainee counsellors to be group work leaders. However, there is no specific research that explores the preparation of counselling trainees for group work practice from both trainees’ and educators’ perspectives. In this qualitative study, the counsellor educators’ and counselling trainees’ experiences of teaching and learning group work courses are explored. As a collective case study, in-depth exploratory data was collected from six group work lecturers and six groups of undergraduate counselling trainees from three Malaysian public universities and analysed using thematic analysis. The analysis highlighted three important components, which are: 1) experiential learning activities, 2) therapeutic factors in group work training, 3) personal qualities in relation to teaching and learning group work and 4) the interaction of experiential learning activities, personal qualities and therapeutic factors during the teaching and learning group work. These elements are interrelated in the process of understanding both educators’ and trainees’ experiences to promote the best practices in teaching and learning group work courses, especially for informing counsellor educators about the process of teaching and learning group work in counsellor education.

Bullying in schools is a widespread problem, attracting a great deal of interest and publicity in recent years. The negative impacts of bullying can have consequences for not just the victims, but also for the school, perpetrators and wider community members. Such consequences can be experienced instantaneously and/or at a subsequent time, often in later life. In recent years bullying has unquestionably moved into the spotlight as researchers and governments have investigated the phenomenon in greater depth. However, according to the NSPCC, it remains the top problem for children aged 11 and under contacting them and was the single biggest reason for boys calling CHILDLINE in 2015/16 (NSPCC, 2016). Bullying in primary school is, thus, of critical concern to educational policy makers and school leaders alike. Research would suggest that some schools experience more bullying incidents than others and that schools vary widely in both their approaches to and successes in dealing with the issue. Initiatives and approaches to bullying enter schools that serve particular communities, with particular experiences, individuals and histories, making them site specific. They are mediated by the practices of school leaders and are executed by staff with diverse levels of confidence, commitment and capacity. There is, thus, always variation in the ways in which practices are taken up. Even where schools profess to enact the same approaches they often meet with widely ranging outcomes for anti-bullying, as was evidenced through this investigation. This research, therefore, set out to understand what it is that more successful schools do in initiating and managing anti-bullying practices. It investigates the less frequently examined area of the effects of head teacher practices on the success of anti-bullying cultures. Set in the contexts of five diverse primary school settings, this thesis scrutinizes the approaches of head teachers as they facilitate and cultivate practices that enable or constrain anti-bullying cultures. It utilizes a mixed methods approach, where questionnaires, observations and semi-structured interviews and focus groups enable the voices and experiences of school community members to be heard. To facilitate this the methodological approach began as one that combined the lenses of Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological model (1979) and Lave and Wenger’s Communities of Practice (1991). However, it evolved to look beyond the latter and to incorporate the work of Kemmis and Grootenboer’s Practice Architectures which champions a dual purpose of education: to help people live well in a world worth living in (Kemmis and Gootenboer, 2008), suggesting a social justice approach to this research. This is an aspect that, until recently, was generally omitted in the discourses surrounding the nature, efficiency and sustainability of developing anti-bullying cultures’ in primary schools. I show that, in successful anti-bullying schools, although policy and targeted intervention are vital for providing focus and understanding, there is a culture of respect, care and collaboration that pervades the sayings, doings and relatings at every level. I argue that head teachers, in shaping the cultures of their schools, are fundamental to these aspects as they maneuver the intersubjective spaces of practice architectures (Kemmis and Gootenboer, 2008). This research reinforces the need for head teachers to build upon existing practices, taking account of the histories and social and political actualities of their schools. It suggests that, taking account of these, the perceptions of players within the field may be as important as the actuality of situated practices as they unfold.

This mixed-methods study investigates the teaching of Iinformation Technology (IT) subjects at polytechnics and community colleges in Malaysia as the policy for the medium of instruction for Science, Mathematics and Technical subjects at primary and seconday education sector changed from Bahasa Malaysia to English in 2003 and back to Bahasa Malaysia again in 2009. However, as polytechnics and community colleges are under the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE), they are guided by the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education) (2015). The higher learning institutions in Malaysia do not clearly define English or Bahasa Malaysia as the only medium of instruction due to factors such as internationalization and the needs to be able to produce globally competitive graduates. Due to these factors, the use of English or bilingualism at higher education sector becomes necessary. This research provides an insight into the transition period when the polytechnics and community colleges started receiving the first batch of students who had gone through ETeMS in 2008, and therefore, the lecturers were required to teach Technical subjects through English. The objectives of the study are to investigate the attitudes and motivation levels of the lecturers at polytechnics and community colleges in Malaysia with regards to the policy of teaching IT subjects through English, to examine the strategies the lecturers used to upgrade their English and to explore the strategies the lecturers used to teach their subjects through English. The quantitative data were collected via a survey during the first phase of the study. 211 out of 265 IT lecturers from polytechnics and community colleges across Malaysia had responded to the survey. The data from the survey provided information regarding the demography of the population, their attitudes and motivation towards the teaching of content subjects through English, as well as the strategies that they used in order to improve their own English so that they could teach their students better. The survey also gathered information regarding the lecturers’ experiences and the strategies they used when they had to teach their students through English. The findings from the survey were used to categorize the lecturers according to their motivation levels and teaching practice. In order to obtain lessons from best practices, a group of lecturers representing positive disposition were selected and finally, seven lecturers managed to participate in the observation sessions. The qualitative phase consisted of observation sessions and in-depth exploration of the lecturers’ background and experiences as well as the views concerning the teaching of IT through English. The teaching practice and strategies were then grouped, interpreted and rationalized through research lenses, which include CLIL, Multimodal approach and good teaching practices. The findings revealed that the majority of the lecturers had positive attitudes and moderate to high levels of motivation with regards to the policy of teaching IT subjects through English. The majority of the lecturers received little training to upgrade their English level, especially while in-service, and they were not self-driven to pursue the upgrading of English through their own initiatives. Learning to upgrade English was mainly obtained through incidental learning. For the teaching strategies, about half of the lecturers used only English for certain functions of teaching IT such as when giving instruction, advice, explanation and introduction or conclusion. Some other lecturers used code-mixing and translation when giving instruction, advice, explanation and introduction or conclusion. The majority of the lecturers also used simple English and English Technical terms, and they also had the freedom to adapt their teaching strategies. The majority of them did not teach English to make the students understand the lesson on IT. Teachers’ personality including years of experience play a role in effective teaching. Teachers with more years of experience were observed to be more able to conduct student-centred and dialogic interactive teaching compared to new teachers. Nevertheless, new teachers could also steer away from being teacher-centred while teaching if they had the initiatives to upgrade their knowledge and skills. Finally, recommendations were made in order to improve current teaching practices so that both lecturers and students were able to gain benefits. This requires not only the lecturers to be able to embrace change but also the commitment from MoHE, the polytechnic and community college policy makers and administrators as well as the positive attitudes of the students and the public. With the improvements in the teaching practices, it is hoped that polytechnics and community colleges will be able to produce quality graduates that meet the demands of the industries in Malaysia and worldwide.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation explores the contextual meanings of digital gaming for a group of children from the resource-constrained township of Ocean View, situated 45km outside of Cape Town. I document the domestication (Silverstone & Haddon, 1996) of mobile phones and PlayStations as technologies for gaming in this context, showing how the children appropriated the games technologies much as other household media are domesticated, in a process of double articulation.

This study critically analyses an alternative political economy framework to observe the decolonization of new media institutions in Africa. This is because "critically analysing media organisations and media processes in society have come from political economy perspectives." (Jansen, 2003, p. 90). This thesis has a specific focus on the decolonization of the film industry as a case study on new media institutions that are shifting given the fourth industrial revolution. A quantitative methodology was employed to conduct focus groups and interviews with key African film industry actors, this focus group took place at the Durban Film Mart, a Pan-African market for film and television content. The paper critiques the Marxist approach to the political economy of media. This is done to understand the extent that Western political economy frameworks, like Marxism, are relevant in analyzing ownership and media concerning racialized subjects as well as feminist and queer collectives. This paper posits that an Africa, Queer, Muslim, or Feminist political economy framework would explain the relationship between the film industry, industry players, and its audiences better than Marxist assumptions. In this instance, African Feminist, Muslim and Queer approaches to the political economy theory provide a subaltern lens. This study has the intention to investigate new ways in which the decolonization of the political economy of the new Media can create an ideological non-state apparatus or a consciousness industry as denoted by the Frankfurt School. This ideological apparatus would characterize and reflect societal discourses, outside of the nation-state, while creating a sphere for public engagement and deliberation that is equitable and ontologically sound. By ontologically sound, I ask what are the different assumptions about human nature concerning the political economy that can be deduced from a new lens into African media. The answer is that Africa collectives formed outside of class barriers display agency that explains media activity in the twenty-first century. Western ontology and epistemologies assume 4 that colonization robbed Africa of self-determination and agency. This ontological assumption is false. The focus group at the Durban International Film Festival provided the tightest fit to validate my claims that ideologically decolonizing the film industry is garnering public engagement and industry engagement. What are the solutions to the issues of the digital divide and geopolitics of difference that characterise limitations within the burgeoning film industry? This paper investigates to what extent do organic intellectuals, entrepreneurs or youth drive the need for capital and ownership in the industry given that the landscape is shifting. The study found that there is an impetus for decolonizing the industry and that alternative political economy frameworks are more appropriate in analyzing the new media landscape.

Three novellas exploring the short and long-term implications of Martian colonisation and an explication. The first part examines the necessity of a robust and mentally-fit crew along with the relationships between corporatism. The second, which happens a century later, explores the health effects of long-term living on Mars along with the Earth disconnect by Martian-born humans. In the third part, another century later, the long-term strains of sustaining such a project are examined on Earth and how Martians are used as scapegoats. The explication describes the scientific motivations behind some aspects of the novel, including how the conditions of Mars necessitates certain survival protocols.

Mobile communications have added an ever present layer to our personal communication through which social dynamics can be reconstructed. In youth culture specifically, instant messaging allows young people to achieve limited autonomy, explore peer groups and an evolving sense of self. This dissertation explores a model for understanding how instant messaging facilitates this. Theories of media ecologies provide useful ways of explaining media environments. Nonetheless ecologies are usually conceptualised in relation to mass media rather than networked media and tend to assume that ecologies are situated in a particular physical space. The theory is nonetheless useful in understanding the everyday experience of young people using media. By extending media ecology theory to account for the personal communicative ecologies of instant messaging, this study extends the notion of ecology to account for a sense of digital social space outside the constructs of physical space. Through taking an interactional epistemological stance, qualitative research was conducted. Two focus groups were conducted to explore how instant messaging channels meet the needs of a group of young people from middle class contexts in Cape Town. The resultant discussions are applied to the framework of a 'layered' communicative ecology, taking technology, social and discursive layers into account and establishing the centrality of social space within a new and expanded model of networked messaging ecologies. The central aim of this research is to explore how relevant the application of media ecologies would be to an exploration of digital spaces of communication and practice.

Includes bibliographical references (74-75). / This creative project offers three stories that explore the value and objectives of animal welfare using the genre of narrative literary journalism. The project required extensive fieldwork specific for each article, as well as the careful analysis of the style and history of narrative literary journalism. I have also written a short essay reflecting on the process of writing these articles which clarified for me the learning curve that I have experienced on this project.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / This research paper uses content analysis to analyse the subtext of Obama's campaign messages and virtual ethnography to analyse the way that information technology was used to further his campaign's goals. The findings suggest that while historic forces, such as economic turbulence and the unpopularity of outgoing President George W Bush, helped propel Obama to power, his campaign was nonetheless revolutionary. It will be argued that it contained several elements of trail blazing innovation that are likely to redefine political communications in the U.S and globally.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-93). / This thesis is an in-depth investigation into the weekly lifestyle/magazine programme Top Billing, aired on SABC3 (South African Broadcasting Corporation) – primarily in South Africa and in other surrounding African nations – to a total of over 6 million viewers. In its eighteenth year on South African television, Top Billing has entered the domestic lives of its viewers weekly, and has markedly become one of the country’s longest-running lifestyle and entertainment programmes. This study investigates the various meanings and pleasures that loyal viewers of Top Billing make of the programme, and how these "meanings" relate to their identities as middle class South Africans. Categorised as the "lifestyle" programme, it arguably has significant effects on the lifestyle and lives of its viewers. Studies on the "lifestyle" programme genre, especially in context to contemporary television studies, has not been widely written about. Further, as there is growing interest and a need for ethnographic and audience studies on the impact of television, particularly in Africa, this study thoroughly examines Top Billing in situ - in a media-saturated, post-modern, post-apartheid society in South Africa, while simultaneously locating the study in a larger, cross-disciplinary landscape. Since "meanings" are a cultural and social formation, the study examines the concept of "ideology" as a site of struggle; a place for the negotiation of race, gender, and other identities. The study brings to the fore the hegemonic ideology projected and "re-presented" by Top Billing, by taking an in-depth look at the makeup of the programme – both externally and internally, its relationship with its broadcaster and other social markers of society, and its audience. Through the use of content analysis, in-depth interviews and ethnography, this thesis examines issues of imbalanced representation of race and class, and the effects of commercialisation which take toll on the media landscape today. By further investigating the signifying role of the media and the ways in which Top Billing is constructed, the study determines ways in which identity is informed by Top Billing.