It has become a fairly common practice in Natal to borrow ideas from the English educational scene. No doubt this is to our advantage but perhaps not necessarily always so. It is possible that an idea is copied and pursued diligently here yet meanwhile, back at its source of development in England, the idea is fast loosing favour. It is necessary to sift the good from the bad before we borrow, and that can only be done by surveying the field thoroughly. The author of this thesis after spending a number of years in primary education was fortunate enough to receive a study grant from the Natal Education Department which enabled him to visit England and other countries, and study at first hand the primary schools there. The primary aim of this thesis. is, therefore, to examine some of the recent developments in primary education in England, to evaluate them and to consider the feasibility of adapting and utilising them in the primary schools of Natal. These developments offer an alternative approach to education and one that is closer to what we now know about children and the nature of the learning process. The English primary school offers hope to those who believe that because change is difficult, it is either an impossibility or it takes generations to bring about. This study should supply the answer to the question: "What is happening in British primary schools?", which Brian Young poses in Children At School - Primary Education in Britain Today (1). It may in addition minimise the chances of the merely faddish aspects being slavishly copied and avoid change for the sake of change. It may also be of assistance to those concerned with policy making in primary education, particularly in Natal, especially if they are seriously interested in exploring alternatives to existing patterns of instructions. The basic assumption underlying the whole study is that each child is an unique individual who is characterised by an unmatched set of gifts and limitations. While the approach adopted is a child-centred one, a confrontation with exclusive choices is avoided. It is not a question of the child or the teacher, children or subjects, subjects or an integrated programme, the individual or society, or freedom or discipline. The question: "How far do we need a concept of the educated man as well as the notion of the educated child?" (2), is very relevant to this study. Part One of this thesis is a discussion of. the various factors from which present-day practices have evolved. No historical account of the developments is undertaken, but a brief survey of the old elementary school is followed by a resume of the changing educational demands of a society which has undergone extensive changes in the last 75 years. Immense scientific and technological developments and the concomitant social and economic upheavals have called for new curricula, subject content and teaching methods. The role played by the progressives, a small group of avant-garde educationists whose views were considered eccentric in their time, is discussed in detail. The direct and indirect influence of educationists, philosophers and psychologists is more difficult to establish. This and the impact of official educational reports and Acts are also studied. Part Two concerns the purpose of English primary education. It is no theoretical dissertation on the aims of education. It rather attempts to establish what the primary school seeks to achieve for its pupils. The concept of 'being educated' is analysed and is followed by a discussion of what are termed immediate aims. Here attention is focused on the belief that primary education is to serve solely as a preparation for the education that is to follow and on the acquisition of skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic, and the ability to speak properly and listen attentively. Next follows a discussion of so-called long-term aims. Particular attention is given to the preparation of children for the society in which they will one day be adults; prerequisites such as adaptability and a critical mind are highlighted. The freedom of the individual and his place in society is examined. Finally, the opinions of teachers as reflected in a Schools Council exploratory study of aims, influences and attitudes, are briefly analysed. A comprehensive survey of every primary school in England by Her Majesty's Inspectorate revealed certain trend-setting schools. Part Three is a study of some of the recent developments that reflect the ethos prevalent in these schools. the blend of freedom and support where teachers and headteachers are relatively free to decide what to teach, how to teach it and the support they receive from a variety of sources, is discussed in detail. The move to what has become known as open or informal schooling and other features of these schools, such as the integrated day, team teaching and open plan schools are described. Part Four of this study concerns those aspects of English primary education that could with success be adapted and introduced into the primary schools of Natal. The features that are considered are the introduction of a more child-centred approach, the appointment of experts in primary education to decision- and policy-making positions, the in-service education of teachers, the fuller utilization of teachers' centres and the building design of primary schools. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of Natal, Durban, 1976.

The purpose of this research is to explore the perceptions of educators who teach learners with autism, on their own emotional well-being. The eight educators who participated were from special schools in KwaZulu-Natal. These schools cater for learners with autism and the participants work hands-on with learners with autism. The research design and methodology employed is qualitative in nature, and adopts the phenomenological approach, which incorporates focus group interviews, individual interviews, and lesson observations of some educators after the interviews. The following questions were asked at the interviews: 'Tell me about teaching learners with autism' and 'How does it influence your well-being?' The research methodology selected elicited rich responses that led to the emergence of three main themes namely: first, these themes are everyday challenges working with learners with autism, second, educators' perceptions of the support of other role players and third, the impact that teaching learners with autism has on the workplace wellness of the educator. Conclusion and recommendations are presented, as well as recommendations for future research. Drawing from the themes, a conclusion is made that teaching learners with autism is stressful, that educators need training and support to cope with the demands of autism, and to help manage workplace wellness. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2008.

Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) has been used successfully in many States in the United States of America, New Zealand and Denmark. Much of the information contained in the theoretical literature relates to America. In South Africa, OBE is incorporated in Curriculum 2005 - the new national curriculum for the twenty-first century. Curriculum 2005 proposes to be a major step forward in ensuring quality education for all people in South Africa. It aims to equip learners with the knowledge, competencies and orientations needed for success once learners leave school or complete their training. OBE shifts the focus from a content-based education to one that is based on outcomes achieved by learners. This research examines how the Foundation Phase educators, in the North Durban Region of KwaZulu-Natal, perceive the implementation of OBE and its implications for the entire school community. The study examines the advantages that OBE proposes and the related constraints. The researcher concludes that in its infancy in South Africa, OBE with all its uncertainty of change, is being implemented with various degrees of success. This research study aims to highlight that the major burden of fulfilling the promise of OBE falls on the shoulders of the OBE practitioners. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2000.

Students have a tendency to skip steps in reasoning and miss facts when drawing conclusions during problem solving. Seeing that this poses a problem, it was thought that vocalizing thinking, using the method of pair problem-solving, would help ensure that students do not make these mistakes, but rather improve their ability of solving problems systematically. The basic problem which the researcher addressed was: To what extent will the pair problem-solving method improve the students' ability in solving physical science problems? The people involved in the research were : i) Matric pupils from the secondary schools in Osizweni ii) Teachers of the schools involved. The interviews were done during one period per week for six weeks. At first pupils were given a pre-test and at the end of the interviews were given a post test. The two tests designed to be equivalent and the questions given to the experimental groups were the same as those given to the control group. Interviews carried out were tape recorded and also written down. The interviews and the tests scores were analyzed in order to determine to what extent the problem-solving skills of students improved as a result of the experiment. The results found showed that there is great improvement in the ability to solve problems with experimental groups and insignificant improvement with the control group. The statistical analysis showed that the improvement was great at at least 0,01 level of significance. There is also evidence of students solving problems systematically after they have done these interviews, and that there are other significant differences between the behavior of good and bad problem solvers. The implications of these results for classroom teachers is that the think-aloud pair problem-solving method does improve the ability of students in solving physical science problems. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1992.

Sexual abuse of children has been a problem for decades not only in South Africa, but internationally. There is little evidence that any preventative measures are working effectively. In this study the focus was not on the victim but on the perpetrator of sexual abuse. The researcher aimed at enabling eight adult male sexual offenders to describe explicitly their lived experience of child sexual abuse. The study used a method in which offenders were asked to describe their feelings prior to, during the process and after sexually abusing the child. The researcher believed that verbalisation of how it feels to sexually abuse the child would augment the available knowledge about perpetrators. This information may be used in devising ways and means of minimising the occurrence of sexual abuse. It might serve as a springboard for professional people working with offenders to uncover cognitive skills for sexual offenders to use whenever having thoughts of sexually abusing the child. Respondents were Blacks, Indians and Whites who had been sentenced and were in treatment programmes either at the Correctional Supervision Centre or at Childline in Durban. Treatment at these rehabilitation centres was a condition of sentence for all of them. Their ages ranged from 25-48 years. Five of them were married and three were single men. Svensson"s (1986) phenomenological method was used in analysing data. The findings of this study revealed that for these offenders the major contributing factors to this behaviour was a conflictual adult heterosexual relationship and the fact that other females have more than one sexual partner. Findings also revealed that children are experienced by sexual offenders as being satisfying sexually, non-judgemental, non-threatening and accepting. These findings were examined in relation to theory, their implications for future research, the strengths and shortcomings of the study were also described. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1999.

This study investigated attitudes of students, parents and teachers towards the use of corporal punishment in three senior secondary schools. The sample consisted of 360 students, 175 parents and 60 teachers (n = 595 respondents). Parents' and teachers' ages ranged between 23 and 79 years, whereas students' ages ranged between 13 and 29 years. Three researcher-designed questionnaires and an interview schedule were used to collect data aimed at measuring attitudes of respondents through the Likert Scale as well as open-ended items requiring opinion. Having been granted permission by the Education Department to administer questionnaires in schools, a pilot study was carried out on a relatively small scale, with respondents roughly similar to those of the final study. This was followed by the administration of questionnaires to each school in turns. Parents' meetings created an opportunity of administering questionnaires for parents and an audiotape was used for recording interviews. This study presents the first step in the development of a measuring scale, the validity of which will only become apparent after extensive use by subsequent researchers, subjecting their data to meta-analysis. The collected data were analyzed through the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The crosstabulation of raw data was used to investigate differences among subjects that fall into different categories. To find the significance of differences, the chi-squared test was used. Only items reflecting significant differences were discussed, with the level of significance set between 0.01 and 0.05. This findings of the study suggest support for the view that corporal punishment should be retained as it is believed to instil good discipline which produces good results: provided there is proper supervision, which was lacking with the past education department. Some teachers, and even principals, have been found guilty of sexually abusing schoolgirls. Teachers, when on strike, pledge solidarity with students. Some students assault teachers and hold them hostage. All this points to the collapse of authority and morals for both students and teachers, and thus some respondents feel that even if caning is retained, for as long as teachers' behaviour is not monitored and scrutinized by the Department of Education, it would be dangerous to allow students to be caned by such irresponsible people (teachers), hiding under the protective cover of the unions. The study recommends that, now that corporal punishment in schools has been banned, there should be an in-built mechanism in schools to monitor caning to protect children from victimization. History has warned that even if 'official' caning ceases, but 'unofficial' caning will never stop. The code of conduct for both teachers and students should be in place, and strictly adhered to, in order to restore sound morals and mutual respect. Rigorous in-service training and work shopping to empower teachers with alternative management skills which could render corporal punishment unnecessary, should be conducted. Caution should be taken as alternatives have their limitations and shortcomings, more especially in the South African context, with its multi-cultural characteristics and diversification. It is not sufficient to conclude that respondents in this study seem to be satisfied with the retention of the cane as these results may not reflect the general view of the students, teachers and parents country-wide. An urgent country-wide research on caning should be embarked upon to get the general and different views, as the decision to ban corporal punishment seemingly does not reflect any prior nationwide research which, in turn, should inform practice and benefit changes. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1997.

This study attempts to provide conceptual clarification around the concept of whole school development in South Africa. It does so through examining the approaches to school development of five non-government organisations in South Africa as well as the literature and research in the areas of school effectiveness, school improvement and educational change. The concept of whole school development emerged in South Africa in the 1990s. It was seen as the way to develop quality schooling where individual teacher inservice programmes traditionally offered by NGOs had failed. The literature review presents two different ways of approaching school change: namely school effectiveness and school improvement. It locates the South African concept of whole school development within the international paradigm of school improvement because it has a clear commitment to understanding the process of school change. International research suggests that there is a need for school change processes to deal with school culture and not only with changing school structures and procedure. A focus on changing culture seems to suggest an understanding of change which is normative-re-educative. School development planning is the most common strategy for school development and this study suggests that it needs to be implemented in an holistic way. These themes are conceptualised as continua. After presenting the data from the interviews, the study then maps the work of the five organisations onto these continua. Common themes which emerge are that all the organisations make use of school development planning to some extent: all organisations rely on well-skilled facilitators and all acknowledge the imperative to build the capacity of teachers within the school to lead their own development process through a school development committee. The study ends by suggesting three principles of procedure which can be used in school development. These are that school development needs to focus both on structure and culture; that an organising framework is needed to help schools prioritise the issues and that a systemic way of approaching problems is useful. Some of the challenges facing whole school development, particularly around issues of replicability. sustainability and the role of the community are explored. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1999.

This retrospective exploratory study examined demographic variables in a sample of anorexia nervosa patients hospitalised from January 1987 to December 1996. The researcher undertook an extensive literature review of the history and epidemiology of anorexia nervosa, and found that, while changes in the demography of anorexia nervosa patients are evident in industrialised and developing countries, there is a paucity of equivalent data for South Africa. The archival records of 254 anorectics admitted for the first time to an in-patient tertiary referral centre were reviewed. Descriptive and inferential statistics were computed to determine the demographic profile of the sample, to ascertain changes in demographic variables over the ten-year period of study, and to explore the relationships between these variables. Results reflect the typical anorectic admitted to the hospital of study as a white, female, between the ages 15 to 20, and from the upper to middle social classes. The mean weight at admission for the sample was 39.24 kilograms, while the mean body mass index was 14.78 kilograms/metre2. While no significant increase in admission rates within the ten-year period was found, a marked increase in admission rates is seen when the present study's findings of 254 first admissions over ten years (averaging 25 admissions per year) is compared to a previous study's findings of 54 admissions over a three-year period (averaging 18 admissions per year) at the same institution. Over the ten-year period of study, no significant trends or relationships were found with regard to the following variables: sex; race; age at admission; and socioeconomic status. However, a significant decreasing trend in weight and body mass index was found from 1987 to 1996, and a significant relationship was found between mother's socioeconomic status, and subject's weight and body mass index, respectively. Results also show evidence of an increasing number of males, Indians, children, and individuals over the age of 40 becoming vulnerable to anorexia nervosa. The extent to which these findings are generalisable to a broader-based South African cohort are questionable, due to the fact that the study was conducted in a single setting, and due to the influence of the historical context of the setting. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1999.

This study aimed at investigating the methods used by teachers to assist the acquisition of numeracy skills by Standard 10 Geography learners. The problem of high failure rate in these skills was considered in terms of Perkins' (1992) minimum conditions for learning which, according to him, could assist and improve learner performance. These are : clear information, thoughtful practice, informative feedback and strong motivation. This investigation also draws upon Gallimore and Tharp' s (1991) means of assisting performance in the zone of proximal development, which include modeling, contingency management, feeding back, instructing, questioning and cognitive structuring. Data was collected by means of a number of lesson observations in three senior secondary schools in the Eastern Cape Province. This data was analysed in terms of whether or not teachers included Perkins' (1992) minimum conditions for learning in their methods of teaching and whether or not teachers used Gallimore and Tharp's (1991) means of assisting performance in their teaching activities.The overall result of the investigation indicated the overuse of the lecture method and the "recitation script" which denied learners opportunities to participate actively in the lesson. This research indicated, therefore, that the methods used by teachers in teaching Geography numeracy skills did not contribute towards the improvement of the learners' performance. A number of suggestions are made regarding initial and in-service teacher education and the encouragement of research by teachers into their own professional practice. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Pietermartizbrug, 1998.

The aim of my research is to explore the experiences of women in student leadership at the University of KwaZulu- Natal (UKZN). My research tries to understand challenges that are faced by women who are in student leadership positions and to understand obstacles that hinder women from participating in student leadership The research answered three critical questions: How do the women students describe their leadership experiences? How do the women students learn to lead? How does the environment in which the women lead and learn to lead, affect their leadership experiences? To achieve the above I have drawn on the theory of oppression to understand women student leaders’ experiences as outlined by Young (2000) and Hardiman & Jackson (1997). Young and Hardiman & Jackson suggest that a group of persons are oppressed on the bases that they are different from other groups. The dominant group is privileged in the process while the subordinate internalise their subordination and perpetuate it by conforming to it. The study is qualitative. I used semi-structured interviews as an instrument for data collection. I used purposive sampling. I interviewed women student who have been leading in the SRC in the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. Findings for study revealed that women student lead and learnt to lead under the oppressive environment. Although the environment where women learnt to lead is oppressive women were able to learn to lead. Further more the environment where women lead had a negative impact on women leadership experiences. Some women chose their traditional gender role over leadership positions. Some because of the hostile environment in the SRC internalised their subordination and became silence. Some women student leaders became aggressive. The study thus recommends the following strategies to be employed by the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal to enhance women participation in student leadership. (1) Leadership program to be included in the curriculum. (2) There should be leadership development program for all first year women students across all faculties. (3) Student parliament to be revived and be monitored. (4) Review of the SRC constitution regarding gender representation / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.