This small scale case study focused on the difficulties experienced by the six Grade seven learners from a selected township school when they were writing their English homework. Literature suggests a gap in findings on the perspectives of learners. The study utilized six Grade seven learners who had failed to complete their English homework which they had been given the previous day by their English language educator. The participants had been given a comprehension test on the previous day that they had started in the classroom and they were expected to finish it at home as their homework. Three boys and three girls were chosen from three different Grade seven sections as participants for the study. The data for this study was obtained by the semi structured interviews. The semi structured interviews were informed by drawings which were used by the learners to help them remember some of the things that they might have forgotten if there were no drawings to broaden responses to the questions. These interviews were conducted in a secluded class to avoid disturbances by the other learners. The interviews took place during one week and they were conducted for thirty minutes after school. A tape recorder was used to record the data which was later to be transcribed and analyzed. This study revealed through its findings that the learners experienced a number of difficulties when they were writing their English homework and as a result they could not finish it. Some of the findings that emerged from this study were amongst others, the lack of space at home to write homework, lack of someone to help with homework, and the house chores that have to be done by the learners when they come back from school. Findings of this study suggest that as English educators we need to give our learners an opportunity to speak out about some of the challenges or difficulties they experience when they are writing their English homework. Moreover, we need to teach our learners to plan their time properly so that they have enough time to write their homework when they come back from school since there are things that they have to do when they come back from school which cannot take a backseat or be done by their parents like the house chores. Finally, findings in this study suggest the importance of the open lines of communication between the parents the educators. This open line of communication could help close the gap that is between the educators and the parents and it can also help everybody understand what is expected from them when it comes to the issuing and the monitoring of schoolwork. This may help the educators communicate with the parents about their children’s homework and what is expected from them. / M. Ed. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.

The recent increase in the number of reported incidents of political, domestic and criminal violence in the media, attests to the escalating violence in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), one of the nine provinces in South Africa. This situation highlights the desperate and urgent need for some sort of peace educational intervention which exposes people to alternative ways and methods of dealing with conflict, in socially acceptable, non-violent ways in an attempt to curb this cycle of violence. The training and development of peace educators is now more critical than ever. However, a review of relevant literature reveals that the field of peace education and peace educator development in the KZN and the broader South African context is marginal and seriously under-researched. This study focuses on the learning and development of peace educators, with a specific interest in how their participation in a network contributes to their learning and development as peace educators. This study is framed by Lave and Wenger's theory of Communities of Practice. It involves different data collection methods, namely document analysis, observation of network activities and in-depth interviews with six facilitators from the Alternatives to Violence Project-KwaZulu-Natal (AVP-KZN). The Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) network, which is the unit of analysis for this study, emerged as a space which facilitated opportunities for collaborative social learning where facilitators were able to share information, best practices, experiences, resources as well as the AVP's "organisational culture‟. This research explores the underlying motivations for participation in the AVP-KZN network, experiences encountered through participation in the network and the role of the network in terms of the learning and development of peace educators. In this study, the AVP-KZN network emerges as a rich site for the learning and development of both novice and experienced facilitators and a major contributor to acquisition of effective facilitation skills and techniques. The informal learning in the network appears to have concentrated on the pedagogy (facilitation styles, planning, flexibility, teamwork), self-development and identity development of the peace educator. The findings reveal the network as being a conducive environment for informal, social, experiential and transformative learning which involves the acquisition of increased knowledge and skills, changed practices, opportunities to observe, to be observed, plan, implement, review and write reports. The extent to which the peace educators were actively involved in their learning through their increased participation in a variety of network activities, was also evident in this study. Six distinct components of learning emerged from the analysis of the data: 1) learning from diversity; 2) learning through changes in community; 3) learning through changes in meaning; 4) learning through practice; 5) developing an identity as a peace educator; and 6) learning through the development of self. It is hoped that this study will contribute to the existing knowledge of peace education with a focus on the learning and development of peace educators in a community of practice.

The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions of teachers with respect to the intentions of the Developmental Appraisal Policy, how the policy was implemented at school level and its influence on Teaching. How this policy came to be understood and interpreted at school level during its implementation phase is the subject of this study, focussing on a teacher-union sanctioned policy aimed at Teacher Professional Development. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies characterise the data collection strategy. A survey questionnaire was administered to 181 teachers in the Verulam Circuit in KwaZulu-Natal. Indepth semi-structured interviews were conducted using a stratified random sample of 15 teachers in proportion to the three variables namely, gender, age and race. The study's findings reveal the following: 1) The implementation of the policy was largely executed in a technical administrative fashion which provide semblances of being well understood and accepted as a new form of appraisal replacing the former "judgemental approach" to Teacher Appraisal. 2) In the actual practical operation of the proposed teacher professional appraisal procedures, teachers at the institutional level were seen to be using the Developmental Appraisal Policy in not so different a fashion as the former judgemental model, which promoted nepotism and a superficial attention to deep teacher professional changes. An important question needs to be borne in mind: Does a union-driven policy lead to deeper changes in Teacher Professional Development in a democratic ethos? 3) Most of the teachers claimed that sharing of resources and assessment techniques had positively influenced their Teaching- Practice. However, these activities had been in practice long before the introduction of the Appraisal policy. There were also conflicting views whether the Developmental Appraisal Policy or Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) Policy had caused an influence on Teaching Practice. There was very little to no evidence to suggest that the appraisal policy had influenced the teachers' Teaching Practice. 4) The study revealed that the different genders, ages and races interpreted the impact of the Developmental Appraisal Policy in relation to their unique expectations of their school context, their lived! executed experiences of teaching and their stages of development as professionals. A "one-size- fits-all" Developmental Appraisal Policy is thus discouraged. The results suggest three broad implications for school-based Teacher Professional Development viz.: • changes needed at the policy landscape (at the Department level), • changes needed at the school landscape (at institutional level), • and changes needed at an individual level. Firstly, the Department of Education as the employer tries to regulate the school from the "outside". Changes at this level include for example, the need for Department officials to rethink the way they perceive and communicate with the broader constituency of teachers. The gap between the Department as "bureaucrats" and teachers need to be narrowed. Both Department officials and teachers need to realise that they are "partners" towards improving the quality of teaching and learning. Secondly, the thesis argues that there are many changes necessary at an institutional level to engage with Teacher Professional Development. For example, school personnel such as teachers and managers need to design a flexible school timetable to accommodate time for teachers to engage with Teacher Development. Thirdly, personal factors such as love for children, passion and dedication towards the profession emerged as important factors in engaging with Teacher Professional Development. Thus, the thesis argues that Teacher Professional Development entails developing also the "inner qualities" of the teacher. Teacher Professional Development cannot be confined to faithful compliance to delivery of state-designed curricula. Finally, the thesis argues that we need to integrate harmoniously the changes at these three levels i.e. the Departmental, institutional and individual levels so that effective Teacher Development can take place. This study contributes to understanding more qualitatively and quantitatively the Teacher Development landscape of post-apartheid educational transformation from the perspective of teachers within their institutions engaging with policies targeting their professional growth. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

The South African 'helping' profession of Speech and Hearing Therapy (SHT) is unable to train sufficient numbers of Black African First-Language (BAFL) speaking graduates to support claims of equity in service provision to the population as a whole. The first part of this study presents a model of professional development that argues for the profession's epistemological foundations to be significantly implicated in creating a training programme that is both structurally racist and resistant to fundamental change. Set against this, however, is the socio-political context of South Africa that is demanding educative parity. This study, therefore, attempts a re-problematisation of the professional curriculum by firstly re-locating the research approach away from the problematic epistemological foundations of the discipline, and secondly, by introducing the historically marginalised voice in professional curriculum debates: A BAFL-speaking student who has experienced significant difficulty in negotiating the professional curriculum. This life-history study is, therefore, aimed at revealing a student's interpretations of her training through the lens of her past life experiences. Nolwazi's story points to a fundamental difference in conceptualising the nature of 'help' or 'care', from that of her professional training programme. As a result, and while claiming that the rational, objective discourse of the training programme teaches separation of therapist from client, she experiences significant alienation from the teaching and learning process. On the basis of her analysis offering a significant resonance to the arguments put forward in developing the current model of professional training, an alternative model of curriculum process for a therapeutic discipline is presented. Realistically, however, it is suggested that a curriculum founded on 'care' will not supersede that based upon 'separation' - because of the interests served in maintaining the latter. It is concluded that the professional training programme will be able to resist change to its epistemological foundations, and that issues of inequity will become obsolete, once South African schools are able to provide a sufficient pool of BAFL speaking students who have been educated to accept western rationality as the legitimate basis for the expression of a health profession's 'care.' / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Durban-Westville, 2002.

This study explores principals’ experiences of school leadership. Through synthesis of varying definitions of leadership, the conceptualisation of the three foci of leadership namely, “person, practice and context” offers an initial organisational framework for this study. The democratic South Africa provides the context of change which is operationalised around issues of the pass rate, desegregation and democratic school governance. The existing landscape of leadership theory is then grafted with the South African context of change to set up the theoretical framing of this study. This study is positioned differently from dominant leadership studies in that the leader (principal) is fore-grounded rather than the “practice” of leadership. An interpretive paradigm is invoked to facilitate the acknowledgement, activation and inter-woveness of the researcher’s dual positioning as researcher and as school principal. This ambivalent positioning creates a methodological paradox that simultaneously privileges and imprisons the production of knowledge. Coherent with the methodological choice of narrative methodologies, an award winning literary play “Copenhagen” is used as a creative representational device. This play highlights issues of “personal, political, moral and scientific” challenges which become key pivotal points with which to connect all the chapters of this study. Six principals of previously disadvantaged schools, facing similar challenges of leadership participate in this study. Narrative methodologies guides both the data production and data analysis strategies. It also intentionally focuses on “personal, political and moral” challenges. Lengthy interviews produce richly detailed co-constructed mindscapes of leadership. The voices of principals and their stories are represented as individualised “reconstructed career narratives”. These provide complex, themed and descriptive understandings of leadership at the first level. At the second level, the researcher’s voice becomes dominant while meshing together data, theory and first level analysis to provide cross-case analysis providing deeper insights into experiences of school leadership. These insights challenge the dominant theoretical landscape of leadership. The main finding of this study suggests that principals “personal” experiences re-define relationships between key components of the context of change and in this way determine understandings of leadership. Principals consider the pass rate to be most important at a systemic level. However, their “personal/biographic” experiences with regard to “validation” and “professional experience” mediate that consideration and influence particular understandings of leadership. Similarly, principals’ “personal” experiences together with institutional histories play a significant role in understanding leadership in relation to issues of desegregation (geography). Principals’ “personal” experiences also determine how democratic school governance is understood with regard to accountability, consultation and agenda constructions. Finally, leadership is understood to be intricately linked to the concept of reward. The “scientific” construct of a Trefoil knot is used to develop an explanatory model and posit the basis of a “Relational Reward Theory” of understanding leadership. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications of pushing back contextual, methodological and theoretical boundaries in understanding school leadership. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

This study explores the experiences of oppression Lesotho students studying at the University of Natal (Durban). The study explored the experiences in relation to oppression in relation to racism, xenophobia and sexism. Interviews and observation were the research tools used in this study. The results reveal that most of these students experience a vertical racism in the same way black South Africans experience it and they also experience xenophobia from black South African students. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2004.

The University of KwaZulu-Natal introduced a part-time Post-Graduate Certificate in Education programme in 2008, to enable graduate teachers to study part-time in order to become professionally qualified. To date, there has been very little academic research on how these professionally unqualified student teachers acquire professional knowledge informally on the job and from the formal Post-Graduate Certificate in Education programme. This study addresses such a gap in the academic literature by exploring the acquisition of professional knowledge through informal learning from their schools where they are teaching and formal learning from the Post-Graduate Certificate in Education. Given that the Post- Graduate Certificate in Education programme may continue to play a pivotal role in the training of teachers, this study has gone some way towards enhancing our understanding of how part-time teachers acquire professional knowledge through formal and informal learning. This study, which is located in the interpretative paradigm, used 10 in-depth interviews with Post-Graduate Certificate in Education students (aged 25 to 42), who were purposively sampled to solicit their views on the acquisition of professional teaching knowledge. Grossman’s model of teacher professional knowledge domains proved to be the appropriate lens and heuristic tool for this study, as it offers insights into the acquisition of general pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, content knowledge and knowledge of the context by these student teachers. The findings from the study suggest that teacher learning occurs in both formal and informal places. Drawing from a teacher knowledge model, it can be argued that propositional knowledge is acquired through academic institutions of learning and practical knowledge is obtained in different school situations of learning. Professionally unqualified teachers can learn general pedagogic knowledge and knowledge of context on the job, with the help of dedicated mentors. These findings could possibly be valuable for lecturers who are involved in teaching and preparing learning materials for Post-Graduate Certificate in Education programmes at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and other universities. In brief, the findings of the study could perhaps inform the curriculum and delivery of the part-time PGCE programme. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

Recent literature on mathematics education, and more especially on the teaching and learning of geometry, indicates a need for further investigations into the possibility of devising new strategies, or even developing present methods, in order to avert what might seem to be a "problem" in mathematics education. Most educators and textbooks, it would seem, do not address the need (function and meaning) of proof at all, or those that do, only address it from the limited perspective that the only function of proof is verification. The theoretical part of this study, therefore, analyzed the various functions of proof, in order to identify possible alternate ways of presenting proof meaningfully to pupils. This work further attempted to build on existing research and tested these ideas in a teaching environment. This was done in order to evaluate the feasibility of introducing "proof" as a means of explanation rather than only verification, within the context of dynamic geometry. Pupils, who had not been exposed to proof as yet, were interviewed and their responses were analyzed. The research focused on a few aspects. It attempted to determine whether pupils were convinced about explored geometric statements and their level of conviction. It also attempted to establish whether pupils exhibited an independent desire for why the result, they obtained, is true and if they did, could they construct an explanation, albeit a guided one, on their own. Several useful implications have evolved from this work and may be able to influence, both the teaching and learning, of geometry in school. Perhaps the suggestions may be useful to pre-service and in-service educators. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1998.

This study investigates the nature of teacher violations of a group of grade seven pupils' rights at a primary school in Phoenix, North of Durban. The South African Constitution and the Bill of Rights forms an integral part of Curriculum 2005 which was introduced among grade 7s at the study site in 2000. Forty pupils, comprising boys and girls participated in the Human Rights Learning Programme which was conducted by the researcher. Part One outlines personal and professional motivations for conducting the study, the critical question to be researched and the importance ofthe study. Part Two examines human rights and education, focusing on South Africa's obligations under international and national law. This is followed by an interrogation of the role played by democracy in bringing about changes and the effects of these changes on South African youth and children. Part Three describes the study site, the sample, the Human Rights Learning Programme, the methodology used for the collection and analysis of data as well as the ethical guidelines adhered to. Data was obtained mainly from pupils' participation in activities in the Human Rights Learning Programme. These activities included interviews with pupils, pupils' writings, artwork and worksheets. Using the data, profiles of pupils were drawn up highlighting the categories and nature of the violations experienced. This facilitated an analysis of the data. Part Four focuses on the data findings and analysis. Four main themes and sub-themes together with pupils' stories were examined: violence, racism, religious intolerance and sexual harassment. A reflection of some key findings and recommendations regarding the respecting of pupils' rights concludes the study. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Durban-Westville, 2001.