Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / People with disabilities do not face the same circumstances, in their journey through tertiary education, as do people without disabilities. Studies have revealed that learning disabilities are often invisible and not identified at an early stage. Generally, the move to university could be challenging for students with disabilities, but very stressful to the students with learning disabilities, in particular. The principles of inclusive education, where people with disabilities and those without disabilities are educated in the same setting, have been the main focus for policy makers in this era. However, scant research has been conducted on the experiences of students with disabilities in accessing tertiary education, particularly, students with learning disabilities. The focus of this current research was to explore the accessibility of tertiary education to students with learning disabilities, in all the faculties at the University of the Western Cape. The researcher aimed to explore and describe the experiences of students with learning disabilities, to inform recommendations for policy and practice. The study was guided by the anti-discriminatory practice and social inclusion theory. The research methodology involved a qualitative approach, using an exploratory descriptive design, with nine students and three staff members, sampled purposively and through snowball sampling. The researcher employed in-depth interviews and email interviewing to gather data, which were transcribed and analyzed qualitatively. All research ethics were considered and adhered to. The students with learning disabilities disclosed how their disability was diagnosed and how they experienced schooling. These experiences influenced the way they coped with teaching and learning at university. Most of them acknowledged that the university was supportive, in various ways, such as, assistive technology, support staff, extra time, as well as a separate examinations and testing area. However, they had difficulty disclosing their disability to lecturers, which made learning more challenging. They were of the opinion that, in order for learning to be inclusive, the university needed to do more to make this a reality. For example, the training of lecturers and staff on the realities of learning disabilities, as well as employing holistic approaches to educate students with learning disabilities.

<p> <p>&nbsp / </p> </p> <p align="left">In this minithesis the researcher explores the experiences of recipients of the HIV/AIDS peer education abstinence programme at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), with a particular focus on their perceptions of the extent to which, and the manner in which, the programme influenced their knowledge, attitudes and beliefs regarding sexual risk behaviour, HIV and abstinence.</p>

<p> <p>&nbsp / </p> <p align="left">&nbsp / </p> </p> <p align="left">In addition to football and basketball, volleyball has become a very popular sport globally over the last 30 years. The International Federation of Volleyball represents about 150 million players in approximately 170 countries. While a large body of research has been conducted regarding the nature and prevalence of volleyball injuries internationally, very little has been done locally or on the African continent to assess the status of injuries incurred at professional or amateur levels. The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of injuries sustained by professional volleyball players of a club in the WPVU in one season. An exploratory, descriptive, nonexperimental approach was used for this study on 42 volleyball players at the University of the Western Cape Volleyball Club. A self&ndash / administered questionnaire that was based on a questionnaire used in a Dutch national volleyball study was used in the present study. A response rate of 89.4% was obtained. The collected data were captured and analysed by means of the Statistical Package for Social Science version 14.0 (SPSS). The associations between variables were evaluated by means of the chi-square test and a 5% level of significance was used. The results were displayed using tables, bar chart, and pie chart. Most of the volleyball players sustained one or more injuries in the season, giving a prevalence rate of 88.1%. The incidence rate was 1.2 injuries per player. Injuries prevalence was higher among male players 54.1% than female players 45.9%. Among the injured players, ankle and knee injuries showed the highest injury prevalence with 25.5% for each followed by 19.6% for shoulder injuries. The study revealed 69.2% injury prevalence with a higher significance (p=0.04) that players who are injured in the ankle were in contact. Half of the injuries (50%), which occurred gradually, were prevalent in the shoulder, followed by the knee (28.6%), then the ankle and fingers (14.3%). Players in the left and right front row were significantly (p=0.008) more prone to be injured during spiking. Awareness programmes highlighting prevention strategies and physiotherapy intervention are required for coaches and players at the University of the Western Cape Volleyball Club to assist in the prevention of volleyball injuries.</p>

<p>In the thesis, I endeavour to create a platform on which to construct an understanding of &lsquo / integration&rsquo / in a multilingual and multicultural setting, post-apartheid. I have selected UWC as the research site as it is an institution of higher education and an inherently South African one which houses a large number of diverse ethnicities, cultures and languages. I appeal to the poststructuralist approach as it is one that explores the possible sociopolitical, economic and historical influences on which I argue and which forms the backdrop to understanding integration amongst the various groups. I am especially drawn to the topic of integration as there is to date no well-defined definition of what that means in the &lsquo / new&rsquo / South Africa. Different identities are explored in relation to how students identify themselves within their social networks, across various cultures and through language choices. In particular, I look at the three dominant &lsquo / South African&rsquo / groups, namely: Indians, Blacks and Coloureds and also two international student groups, the Batswanas and Chinese. use a qualitative approach and undertake focus groups and one-to-one interviews as well as participant observations and analyzing documentation. Data analysis is achieved through Discourse Analysis of transcribed interviews. One of the conclusions is that integration will not occur overnight. However, the broadening and exercising of linguistic options could be seen as a step in right direction to integration across the various ethnic groups. The study ends with recommendations and gives an overall view of integration at UWC. One of the recommendations is that UWC needs to give students more opportunities to practice their multilinguality and thereby broaden their linguistic repertoire which could in turn facilitate integration.</p>

<p>It is not mandatory for the student to declare a pregnancy to her educational institution. It does however become more complicated for the student nurse, because she has to provide a health service while she is a student during her clinical placement. The researcher has noticed that student nurses do fall pregnant during their undergraduate studies at the University of the Western Cape. The researcher was unsure why this phenomenon is occurring amongst undergraduate nursing students. He identified the need to measure the level of knowledge of pregnancy prevention amongst undergraduate nurses, their level of utilization of such services and their attitudes towards falling pregnant during their studies. This study is of a quantitative nature whereby the researcher made use of a descriptive design. The method of data collection utilized was an anonymous self administered questionnaire form. The population under study was the registered undergraduate nursing students in 2008 at the University of the Western Cape. This population consisted of 1031 individuals. Their ethnic background represents the South African demography. An exhaustive sampling approach was used and 401 individuals gave consent to participate in the study. Through this research the researcher hypothysed and proved that the level of knowledge of contraception amongst undergraduate student nurses is indeed inadequate and that this low level of knowledge on the subject area leads to incorrect and inconsistent and non use of contraception in their own lives.</p>

<p>This research is interested in the linguistic choices people use to express and negotiate subjective, inter-subjectiveand ideological positions through the graffiti within the confines of selected men's and women's toilets on the UWC main campus. The focus is on attitudes, one aspect of appraisal theory. The aim of investigating the attitudes inherent in the toilet graffiti is to obtain an insight into the evaluative discourse of men and women with regard to their emotional, judgmental and evaluative stance in their writings. This form of analysis is on the level of meaning. Differences with regard to the attitudinal content in terms of occurrence (quantitative) and content (qualitative) are investigated. The data shows that &lsquo / male&rsquo / (gender) are implicit when expressing emotions, whereas female is explicit in its expression of emotions. In addition, in terms of the evaluation of emotions, the data indicates that &lsquo / females&rsquo / are insecure in terms of their emotional disposition, whereas males mostly express emotions of unhappiness in the toilet graffiti analysed. Both males and females have a tendency to judge each other with regard to their capacities. In terms of judgement of behaviours and things, males can be said to have interesting and even creative ways of evaluation, which include punctuation, taboo varieties and pictures.</p>

<p>Advancement in education has ensured that there is parity in terms of enrolment for both females and males at tertiary institutions. However, women students continue to face challenges to advancing in education. Given that South African society remains highly gendered and that universities are historically male-dominated sites that do not necessarily cater for the particular&nbsp / needs of women (or children), one area of challenge may relate to having to balance parenting roles with the demands of being a student. For example, at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), students with children are prohibited from access to the residences, leaving them with no option but to seek alternative accommodation, where they can remain with their babies or look for childcare support from their relatives. While there is a growing body of work on the experiences of school-going pregnant and parenting learners, there is little work in the South African&nbsp / context of the experiences of women who are both parents and students at tertiary institutions. Since the national education system clearly supports and encourages life-long learning, an investigation into the conditions and experiences of learning for parenting students is important. The focus on women students was motivated by existing findings that show how normative gender roles persist and that women continue to be viewed as the primary nurturers with respect to the care of children. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of&nbsp / motherhood among young female students at UWC. The study was situated within a feminist social constructionist framework and a feminist qualitative methodology was employed. Two or more interviews were conducted with a group of eight participants, selected by convenient sampling, and aged between 18 and 30 years, each with a child or children under the age of five&nbsp / years. Interviews were conducted at the participants&rsquo / choice of location and at a time that was convenient to them. All interviews were audio-recorded and the tapes were kept safely in the researcher&rsquo / s home. All standard ethical procedures for research with human subjects were followed. Data was transcribed verbatim and a qualitative thematic analysis was conducted. Key themes were elucidated and data presented thematically. The key challenges cited included time management, self motivation and the social demands of being a mother. These tend to have&nbsp / adverse repercussions on academic excellence. The analysis revealed that though the young women are allowed to return to universities after becoming mothers, they face many challenges&nbsp / in trying to balance motherhood and the demands of schooling. Furthermore, the findings highlight the tension and ambivalence experienced by participants as they negotiate the social and cultural expectations of motherhood and their personal reality, in meeting the demands of motherhood as student mothers. In their struggle to meet the social and cultural expectations of&nbsp / motherhood, they placed tremendous emotional and physical stress upon themselves which manifested as guilt, physical exhaustion, psychological stress, physical illness and the desire to&nbsp / &nbsp / leave studies notwithstanding the value they attached to it. Although the participants challenged these expectations in various ways, the underlying nuances when they recounted their&nbsp / experiences, remain embedded in these societal and cultural expectations. However, in voicing their experiences, it was clear that they were not always simply accepting the status quo but at&nbsp / &nbsp / &nbsp / times challenging it, and thereby deconstructing the myths of motherhood that are so salient in current social and cultural contexts. The study also found that student mothers at UWC, at least&nbsp / &nbsp / on the basis of this small sample - do not appear to receive sufficient support on campus (physically, materially and emotionally). The study&nbsp / concludes that this group of student mothers face serious challenges as mothers and&nbsp / students and, further, that these challenges are exacerbated by the continued social expectations of women to be &lsquo / perfect&rsquo / mothers which, together with the material gender inequalities in sharing parenting care, could impede effective academic studies. The study recommends that universities play a stronger role in alleviating the challenges for&nbsp / &nbsp / such students. In addition, it recommends that more research be conducted in the area, possibly longitudinal studies, as well as studies that may be more generalisable.</p>

<p> <p>&nbsp / </p> </p> <p align="left">In this minithesis the researcher explores the experiences of recipients of the HIV/AIDS peer education abstinence programme at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), with a particular focus on their perceptions of the extent to which, and the manner in which, the programme influenced their knowledge, attitudes and beliefs regarding sexual risk behaviour, HIV and abstinence.</p>

<p> <p>&nbsp / </p> <p align="left">&nbsp / </p> </p> <p align="left">In addition to football and basketball, volleyball has become a very popular sport globally over the last 30 years. The International Federation of Volleyball represents about 150 million players in approximately 170 countries. While a large body of research has been conducted regarding the nature and prevalence of volleyball injuries internationally, very little has been done locally or on the African continent to assess the status of injuries incurred at professional or amateur levels. The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of injuries sustained by professional volleyball players of a club in the WPVU in one season. An exploratory, descriptive, nonexperimental approach was used for this study on 42 volleyball players at the University of the Western Cape Volleyball Club. A self&ndash / administered questionnaire that was based on a questionnaire used in a Dutch national volleyball study was used in the present study. A response rate of 89.4% was obtained. The collected data were captured and analysed by means of the Statistical Package for Social Science version 14.0 (SPSS). The associations between variables were evaluated by means of the chi-square test and a 5% level of significance was used. The results were displayed using tables, bar chart, and pie chart. Most of the volleyball players sustained one or more injuries in the season, giving a prevalence rate of 88.1%. The incidence rate was 1.2 injuries per player. Injuries prevalence was higher among male players 54.1% than female players 45.9%. Among the injured players, ankle and knee injuries showed the highest injury prevalence with 25.5% for each followed by 19.6% for shoulder injuries. The study revealed 69.2% injury prevalence with a higher significance (p=0.04) that players who are injured in the ankle were in contact. Half of the injuries (50%), which occurred gradually, were prevalent in the shoulder, followed by the knee (28.6%), then the ankle and fingers (14.3%). Players in the left and right front row were significantly (p=0.008) more prone to be injured during spiking. Awareness programmes highlighting prevention strategies and physiotherapy intervention are required for coaches and players at the University of the Western Cape Volleyball Club to assist in the prevention of volleyball injuries.</p>

<p>This research is interested in the linguistic choices people use to express and negotiate subjective, inter-subjectiveand ideological positions through the graffiti within the confines of selected men's and women's toilets on the UWC main campus. The focus is on attitudes, one aspect of appraisal theory. The aim of investigating the attitudes inherent in the toilet graffiti is to obtain an insight into the evaluative discourse of men and women with regard to their emotional, judgmental and evaluative stance in their writings. This form of analysis is on the level of meaning. Differences with regard to the attitudinal content in terms of occurrence (quantitative) and content (qualitative) are investigated. The data shows that &lsquo / male&rsquo / (gender) are implicit when expressing emotions, whereas female is explicit in its expression of emotions. In addition, in terms of the evaluation of emotions, the data indicates that &lsquo / females&rsquo / are insecure in terms of their emotional disposition, whereas males mostly express emotions of unhappiness in the toilet graffiti analysed. Both males and females have a tendency to judge each other with regard to their capacities. In terms of judgement of behaviours and things, males can be said to have interesting and even creative ways of evaluation, which include punctuation, taboo varieties and pictures.</p>