This study explored the career awareness of learners in grade 9 and their selection of school subjects for their subsequent years of study in the secondary school. This was based in a remote rural setting with a sample of 71 respondents made up of 34 females and 37 males. Their ages ranged from 13 to 24 years old. Questionnaires and interviews were conducted with this group of learners. The findings indicated that some of these learners lack information on careers and are not adequately aware of what the world of work entails. It was found that r when they have to make selections of subjects for their subsequent years of studYr they make choices that are not in any way related to their anticipated careers. SecondlYr they are found not yet ready to think and decide about their future in the world of work indicating a lack of career maturity. Learners were not aware of the link between their work at school and ~vhat they wish to become in future. Lea.rners r/llere not able to account reasonably for their selected subjects and (iii) how they hoped to build a career path from those subjects.Of all activities in which the learners were engaged at school, much emphasis was placed on academic performance and achievements. The significance of the findings of this study as well as its implications are discussed and recommendations are made for research and practice. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1998.

The aim of this study was to focus on tertiary students' perceptions of career education which they received at secondary school level. It will try to determine the extent to which the role of the guidance teacher is known and also determine whether guidance as an auxiliary service is considered helpful by students. The,:sample consists of 92 male and female respondents drawn from the university and the technikon in Pietermaritzburg. The measuring instrument used is the questionnaire constructed by Skuy et al (1985) revised by Haffajee (1991) but included a number of questions were devised by the author to address the needs of her study. As a number of the questions in the questionnaire were constructed by the author, it was realised when analyzing the questionnaire that questions on parental influence were not included. Therefore, the results of this study must be interpreted with caution. The results of this study indicate that students received inadequate exposure to career guidance at school. This is linked to the fact that most of the guidance teachers themselves did not have adequate training in guidance and career guidance. The guidance periods were also used for examination subjects and also used by students as self-study or free periods. It is also indicated that most students changed their secondary school choice because the career assistance received at school was not adequate. Visits to tertiary institutions by pupils were " found helpful as it helps one in career decision-making. The results of this study indicate that guidance and career guidance should be enforced at school as this will help students to make responsible career choices. If career guidance is made compulsory at school, students will realize that uninformed career decisions made can be costly in time and in money. The results of this study also suggest that friends and guidance teachers are considered to be the most important helping agents in relation to career choice. The parents are found to have had little influence on their childrens' career choices in this study.1t is also indicated in the results of this study that environmental influences affected the respondents career knowledge. Since some limitations of this study were found, these results must be interpreted with caution and one should be cautious in applying them to a wider population. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg.

The child's role as an eye witness has received a great deal of attention over the last decade. The current debate regarding the competence and credibility of child witnesses is being addressed by both the Legal and Psychological fields. This research focuses on establishing if a relationship exists between the order of the questions and the accuracy of recall. Children aged six and seven were questioned using a variety of protocols about an incident which they had witnessed. The research question is discussed within the broad theoretical area of children as eye witnesses. Highlighted is the burgeoning research in the area, which evidences conceptual confusion and conflicting results. The processes involved in memory, encoding and retrieval are discussed in relation to the broader area. Factors affecting reliability such as suggestibility and vulnerability of the child as a witness are discussed: Methods of interviewing children are investigated within a developmental framework. Suggestions are made as to how the reliability of children's testimony may be enhanced by the interviewing process. The results of this study indicated that the order in which questions were asked did not have a significant effect on the accuracy of recall of this sample of children aged six and seven. The limitations of this study were noted and a descriptive account of the children's responses was discussed. This discussion concludes that a need for further research still exists in this area. In addition particular emphasis should be directed towards how children, within the broader context of the interviewing process, respond so that future research may produce more rich and reliable information about child witnesses. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1996.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1996.

Apartheid education practices have left an indelible mark on Black students in South Africa even after 16 years of democratic rule. For many years tertiary educational institutions have striven to improve throughput and retention rates of Black students who have met the entry requirements for higher education yet seem unable to succeed because of the disadvantaged backgrounds from which they come. Many programmes have been initiated at institutions of higher education throughout South Africa to address this problem; the Humanities Access Programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal is one of these. This study has investigated the impact of the Humanities Access Programme on the institution, by considering throughput and retention rates, and on the student, through their perceptions of the programme and, by combining the results of these two investigations, has tried to suggest an explanation for the results emerging from the data. A mixed methods research approach was used in this study. Quantitative data was collected to conduct a cohort study of student retention and throughput for students in the programme from 2001 to 2004 and qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with students from this cohort was used to obtain student perceptions. Using Tinto’s Student Integration Model tentative explanations of the throughput and retention results were formulated from the students’ perceptions. This study concluded that students from the Humanities Access Programme outperformed their mainstream counterparts and that students perceived the programme in a positive light and felt that the programme contributed to their success. The social and academic integration to university life that the programme provided appears to be a major contributing factor in these students’ success. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

This thesis brings together my two study and work interests, postcolonial theory and classroom-based research, in order to explore how teacher identities are constructed within the tensions between policy and practice. I begin by arguing for the usefulness and value of postcolonial theory in interpreting empirical findings because it foregrounds the politics of representation and provides good theoretical tools for examining how modernist policy discourse constructs traditional, rural teachers as subjects of difference. I use a postcolonial view of identity and agency as being always strategic and provisional, arising out of the subject's attempts to negotiate the contradictions in western modernity's false claims to universality. This view of the subject is linked with the interactionist concept of teacher strategy as arising within sites of contradiction and constraint that are generated within the wider social structure. In my attempt to identify the primary contradictions and constraints with which teachers work, I draw on empirical work carried out in local schools and argue that for rural teachers the tensions between policy and practice hinge around the disjuncture between tradition and modernity. I use Giddens (1990) to argue that, due to its origins in the West and its history of colonialism under the guise of rationality and enlightenment, modernity . cannot be integrated with tradition but can only displace or shallowly assimilate tradition. In light of this theory, I question the assumption that an imported modernist policy discourse can be contextualised and made appropriate to South African conditions. To explore this question further, I use Durkheim (1964) and Bernstein's (1971) concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity to map the features of these two different forms of solidarity onto case studies of South African schools. These case studies reveal that policy requires traditional rural schools to undergo fundamental changes that threaten the foundations on which their cohesion and effectiveness is built, leaving many schools with a profound sense of displacement. Turning to the question of the strategies teachers use to negotiate the contradictions that arise within these "displaced" schools, I find further evidence of modernity's attempts to appropriate and shallowly assimilate traditional subjects in what I perceive as a strategy of mimicry. Arguing, with Bhabha (1984), that the strategy of mimicry is a response to, and disruption of, the western modernist discourses of rationality, democracy, meritocracy and equal opportunity on which all of modernity's promises of progress rest, I examine the particular mimetic strategy of "false clarity" (after Fullan, 1991) and suggest that the often unfounded confidence of "new outcomes-based teachers"is partly a mimicry of the false clarity of policy, and the false clarity teacher development programmes which attempt to "transfer" the abstract principles and "best methods" put forward by policy by means of "generic" skills and values which are not generic at all to rural teachers in traditional contexts, and which they then tend to shallowly and mechanically mimic. In light of this discussion, I recommend that teacher development needs to pay more attention to "the singer, not the song" (Goodson in Jessop, 1997: 242) by shifting the focus from methods and principles to teachers' subjective understandings of their own work and contexts, and by strengthening teachers' grasp and enjoyment of the formal, conceptual knowledge they teach. I also suggest that, to avoid the risk of trying to prescribe and reform teacher identities, how teachers establish their own "sense of plausibility" (Prabhu, 1990) in their own contexts should best be left to them. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1999.

The dissertation describes a project to employ two young African trainees in the Centre for Adult Education at the University of Natal in Durban. The intention was to develop them as possible community adult educators, and a list of objectives relevant to such a role was developed. The trainees worked for ten months part-time, employed mainly on administrative and clerical tasks, as opportunities for directly educational work in fact proved to be limited. The project did not achieve the objectives for the most part, at least to the desired extent, and the trainees progressed not to further community involvement but to tertiary education. It nonetheless assisted the trainees in clarifying their career goals and acting on them with considerable success. The particular frustrations and difficulties of trainees from a radically different social environment are recorded, as well as their growing confidence and changed perspectives as they began to form their own understandings of a tertiary context, and to reevaluate their own role as employees and later students. The nature of the learning that did take place is described in some detail, and the reasons are explored for the partial success and noteworthy failures of the project. The study points to the need for understanding clearly the distinction between learning in formal education and informal and incidental learning in the workplace. It explores the differences between the two kinds of learning, and points to the need for further work to describe and analyse adequately learning that takes place outside formal education. The project demonstrated the specific difficulties of the university as a site of workplace learning. It exposed the issue of content in adult education as an area which demands far greater consideration, especially in the training of adult educators, and the study underlines the need for learning of content to parallel learning of teaching method. The major adult education needs of South Africa call for flexibility in developing adult educators, and the study aims to inform ways in which internship can be used to help meet those needs. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1996.

This study investigated the nature and extent of the pastoral role of lecturers at two colleges of education in KwaZulu-Natal. A questionnaire was constructed based on the published findings of Easton and Van Laar (1995) and of Hart (1996). The sample comprised 32 lecturers at College 1 and 42 at College 2. This was a response rate of 62 per cent. The following issues were investigated: the perception of lecturers of the importance of and need for providing pastoral care to students, the types of problems on which students have been counselled by lecturers, their confidence in dealing with particular problems, the importance they attach to certain helping skills, and their use of counselling skills. The data was analysed statistically and a comparison made between College 1, College 2 and the published findings of Easton and Van Laar (1995) and Hart (1996) where applicable, using appropriate methods. All of the respondents stated that during the previous year they had "counselled" students on problems, the most frequently encountered being financial and health problems, examination anxiety and lack of confidence. More than 70 per cent of the respondents considered helping students with problems to be an important and valuable part of their work, but more than 75 per cent were dissatisfied with the help they gave and less than 20 per cent were very confident in dealing with problems. The need for trained counsellors was expressed as well as for training in counselling skills to be given to lecturers. Given that the pastoral role of the lecturer has been neglected, recommendations for further research were made. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1999.

This research focuses on the development of the concept images of the derivative concept of students enrolled in the in-service programme 'Advanced Certificate in Education' at University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg campus. In addition, two qualified teachers not enrolled in the programme were included. A theoretical framework which describes the derivative as having three layers - the ratio, limit and function layers - that can be represented by a variety of representations - graphical, rate, physical and symbolic - is used to analyse the development of the students' concept images. This framework was adopted from previous research, but expanded to allow for situations where a student's concept image did not fall into any of the layers or representations. In those cases, the concept image was classified into the non-layer section or the instrumental understanding section. The findings of this research show that of the five ACE students who were interviewed, only one had a profound concept image in all the three layers of the derivative, with multiple representations as. well as connections among representations within the layers. This one student also passed the calculus module with a distinction. The other four students had the ratio layer and graphical representation profound in their concept images, while the other layers and representations were pseudostructural with very few connections. Two of these students passed the calculus module while the other two failed. All the students showed progression in their concept images, which can only be credited to the ACE calculus module. However, it is clear that even upon completion of this module, many practicing teachers have concept images of the derivative which are not encompassing all the layers and more than one or two representations. With the function layer absent, it can be difficult to make sense of maximization and minimization tasks. With the limit layer absent or pseudo-structural , the concept Itself and the essence of calculus escapes the teachers - and therefore also will be out of reach of their learners. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

This study explored patterns of conceptual knowledge organization using a word association task among Grade 8 learners at an Ex-Model C school. The goal was to show links between conceptual knowledge development and the social and political context of learners, their individual characteristics and preferences, and the ways they individually went about their learning and thinking.This study was undertaken in the Pietermaritzburg area at a school that draws the majority of its student population from its immediate vicinity, the surrounding townships, the Eastern Cape and a small number from the surrounding communities. A quantitative and qualitative research methodology was employed in this study using an experimental research design. Three experimental tasks were replicated from Ross and Murphy (1999) with learners across Grade 8 in a developing context. This study explored how Grade 8 learners represented, accessed, and made inferences about a real world category; food, that is complex multi-dimentional and multi-hierarchical, and cross-classificatory. The learners were selected randomly and included a good representation of the schools demographics. Different sets of learners were used in each task. The learners’ groupings and rationales for the category generating, rating, and sorting experiments were recorded on data schedules. The researcher utilized an experiment used by Bernstein (1970), Holland (1981) and Hoadley (2005) in their studies to show how working class and middle class children differently organized knowledge at the conceptual level. Other than the above research there have also been further, perhaps even more sophisticated, food classification experiments that have been completed. I focus on these latter experiments to grapple with some of the main claims provided in gthe above works. Experimental research was used to gather data. The experimental research design included the following experimental tasks: category generating, category rating and category sorting. Interviews were carried out to obtain a deeper understanding of why the learners made certain choices and to clarify responses offered in the experiments. No strong conclusions were drawn from this limited sample. Nevertheless there was a notable insufficiency in the learner’s usage of taxonomic categories. A small proportion of the subjects were able to categorise and organise food items by their macronutrients, suggesting a taxonomic chain. The study also revealed that there were categories that did show groupings of foods of the same consecutive kinds. However, they pointed instead to the situation of the event, or healthiness of the food item. Food items were found to be typical members of both taxonomic and thematic categories. The default (non-directed) group results showed that its sortings were heavily influenced by script or thematic categories. Hence, the subjects in this sample displayed a weakness to organise knowledge taxonomically. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.