M.A. / The Myers Briggs Type® Indicator is a personality assessment instrument, which is based on the ideas of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, and was developed by a mother-daughter team. Isabel Briggs Myers and Katherine Briggs dedicated their lives to type watching and perfecting their instrument. The notion of type became a focal point in the lives of these two women but especially Isabel Briggs Myers whose wish was that people recognise and understand their own, as well as others' uniqueness. By appreciating each other's "gifts", it was her deepest desire that people would be happy and effective in what they did. The MBTI® is used extensively throughout the world in many fields such as education, career guidance, family therapy, conflict resolutions in the business world, team-building etc. In South Africa the MBTI® is relatively new but has secured a very strong position amongst therapists, counselors, educationalists and business. With the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, opportunities were open to all race groups. The South African society is both complex and diverse, bringing with it difficulties in adaptation, making sound career choices and developing mature career identities. The loss of opportunity and exposure during the apartheid era has created contradictions and uncertainty for many young black adolescents who must make career choices. In completing the MBTI® and the SDS questionnaires it is hoped that the young adolescent will have a better understanding of him or herself and that he or she would be guided in making sound career choices that will lead to a fuller and satisfying life. The purpose of this study is to validate the MBTI® in the context of career guidance against the Self-Directed Search; an instrument developed by John Holland as a means of operationalising his theory of Careers. There were 125 subjects in this research sample who were chosen from a group of predominantly black school children who came from a disadvantaged background and who were recognised as having the potential for tertiary education, specifically at university level. The study discusses the findings of the MBTI® types and SDS. The results are elaborated in terms of the influence of other possible variables.

Recognizing the importance of context with regard to youth agency, this study explores how 8 Black LGBTQ+ youth understand their practices of agency in ballroom culture, an underground Black LGBTQ+ culture. Ballroom was chosen as the backdrop for this scholarly endeavor because it allowed for the study of the phenomenon — Black LGBTQ+ youth agency — in a space where the youth might feel more able to be themselves, especially given that the 2019 Black LGBTQ+ youth report published by the Human Rights Campaign revealed that only 35% of Black LGBTQ+ youth reported being able to “be themselves at school” (Kahn et al., 2019). Thus, instead of asking what is wrong with schools, this study inverted the question to explore what is “right” about ballroom culture in which Black LGBTQ+ youth might practice different kinds of agency due to their intersectional racial and LGBTQ+ identities being recognized and celebrated. Framed by the youth’s understanding of their own agency across different contexts, my research illuminates the complex interrelationships between youth agency, social identity, and context. Extending the literature on youth agency and Black LGBTQ+ youth, the findings of this study suggest that in many ways these youth are always already practicing agency to work toward different ends, and that these different end goals are greatly mediated by the contexts in which they find themselves. In making connections between the ways Black LGBTQ+ youth feel liberated within ballroom space to use their agency to explore and affirm their identities outside socially constructed norms, the findings of this study point to new opportunities for education research, practice, and policy to learn from ballroom culture about how to better invite Black LGBTQ+ youth into schools in humane and educative ways, encourage their agentive imaginations within education spaces, and promote liberatory school environments that recognize and embrace these youth’s intersectional identities.

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Adolescent sexual health has been identified as a significant health and development problem facing South Africa. Limited amounts of research on sexual interactions have been undertaken, with information on adolescents’ romantic relationships being particularly scarce. Qualitative research needs to foster an understanding of the dynamics of sexual interactions in specific settings, and with emphasis in the past on cognitive health psychology models, very little is thus known about how adolescents negotiate and make sense of their sexual experiences. This highlights the need to investigate the complexities of human sexuality in a contextual manner. In response, this study explores the lived experiences of four young black women as they negotiate their agency and sexuality in a local context. By way of in-depth qualitative interviews, which were analysed for recurrent themes using interpretative phenomenological analysis, this project examines the participants’ experiences regarding sex, relationships, communication, sexual health care, as well as HIV and pregnancy prevention. The results reveal that communication about sexuality in the participants’ homes was limited if not absent altogether. When seeking sexual health care, they found clinic nurses to be judgemental and rude. Regarding sexuality and HIV education, the participants stressed the need for outside educators to teach in more practical ways to increase efficacy. In their dating relationships, most participants revealed their boyfriends had a great deal of influence over their sexual initiation. Unwanted pregnancy surfaced as a greater fear than HIV in their accounts due to pressure to finish their education and attain well-paying jobs in the future. The participants felt unable to stop their boyfriends’ infidelity and had limited agency when facing sexual demands. Their accounts revealed that they negotiate their agency in an atmosphere of coercion and the threat of rape. However, areas of agency included their consistent condom use even when facing pressure to have unprotected sex, and their active accessing of sexual health services for hormonal contraception. These insights serve to better inform sexual and reproductive health education and intervention programmes for young women. Moreover, educators, researchers and programme developers alike may gain useful insights from the personalised accounts derived from this study.

Text in English, Appendice 9 (pages 253-264) the isiZulu version of the corresponding English version. / The discourse on youth in South Africa’s post-apartheid era attempts to explore black African youth as agents for social change in their locale. Various perspectives define methods that are utilised by the youth to overcome the social challenges in this era. A case study approach was adopted in conducting this research. The role(s) played by the youth to influence social change were also investigated. The term youth in this research, refers to black African youth between 18 and 29 years of age, living in the township of KwaMashu in the KwaZulu-Natal Province. This investigation attempted to unravel the contributions made by youth towards community development, as well as the strategies that they adopted to secure their day-to-day livelihoods. In addition, various stereotypes and attitudes connected to youth were examined and were also documented. This study also investigated the role played by social agencies such as government institutions, education sector and also non-governmental and faith-based organisations in relation to the empowerment of young people in defining their futures. This investigation enabled the exploration of the impact of contemporary cultural value system(s) in shaping youth’s identities and their perceptions. The findings revealed that there is a need for relevant stakeholders and policy makers to consider interventions that will ensure support of youth initiatives, to curb the scourge of unemployment and poverty. It also recommends that the academic sphere needs to consider the decolonisation of the curriculum towards an Afrocentric Indigenous Knowledge orientation to enhance the aspirations of the Constitution of South Africa. The study also discovered evidence that suggests that the youth have a critical role to play in the development of their locales. Finally, the findings of this research acts as the baseline that could assist future studies in identifying possible themes that can provide [a fuller] understanding of the role played by black African youth in different social settings, i.e. township life, academic and political spheres in the post-apartheid era. / Sociology / D.Litt.et Phil. (Sociology)

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The lack of jobs in South Africa and eMalahleni has caused many young people to seek their own job opportunities in the form of setting up their own business. Despite this, many young business people fail in their ventures due to low capital. In response to this, organisations such as the National Youth Development Agency have created support structures to support young business owners in their local area. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent to which the structures and programmes to support youth development – as far as entrepreneurship is concerned – help to cultivate the creation of businesses among the black youth in eMalahleni. Thirty participants who are young entrepreneurs (under 35 years) participated in interviews that helped to elucidate qualitative information about the support structures. They were asked how the support structures had helped them if they participated, or the reasons why they chose not to use the support structure. They were also asked to identify potential bottlenecks or issues with the support structures that may be preventing them from being fully accessible. The results showed that a lack of trust in the support structures, particularly those created by the National Youth Development Agency, was a major reason for non-participation or choice not to use. Additionally, many felt that the hierarchy and unwelcoming atmosphere of the support structures prevented young people from applying. Other reasons given were the fact that the support structures may not always be geographically accessible and the fact that staff members were not fully trained to be as helpful as possible. There are several ways in which these support structures could be improved that are detailed in this research document. The most important recommendation relates to ensuring that the red tape is removed to make the support structures more helpful to a larger number of young black entrepreneurs. Creating a more local atmosphere may also help the support structures to reach their full potential.

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of the Witwatersrand December 2016 / Within a narrative paradigm, this research project had two elements. Firstly, the project aimed to enable the researcher to gain an understanding of the construction of adolescent identity from the perspective of a cohort of first-generation, post-Apartheid adolescents as members of an NGO’s after-school support programme. Secondly, a participatory action element aimed to provide the participants with an opportunity to reflect upon their own lives in a positive, empowering way thereby providing an understanding of their past lives, strengthening a realistic power of agency for their future lives, balanced between self-identity and self transcendence in the present (Crites, 1986). Within this research, the self is theorised psychosocially, presented as both a narrated and narrating subject in which identity construction is consolidated through story-telling and the adaption of these stories to different audiences and cultural contexts. 12 volunteer participants were provided with disposable cameras and asked to take photographs of people and objects that were important to them. Using these photographs, the participants then constructed art timelines of their lives in the narrative format of ‘past’, ‘present’, and ‘future’. Each participant was then narratively interviewed twice, four months apart. The two datasets (the art timelines and the interview transcripts) were subject to three levels of analysis. Firstly, the construction of each participant’s descriptive narrative portrait was analysed across the time zones of ‘past life’, ‘present life’, and ‘future life’; secondly, thematic analysis was horizontally conducted across the narrative portraits identifying the similarities and differences between the participants, extending the specific experiences discussed by the participants into generalised themes; and thirdly, the vertical analysis of portraiture was re-invoked in greater depth, examining how the different theoretical dimensions of narrative identity identified, coalesce in one case history. The first level of analysis focused specifically on the imagoes, or personified concepts of the self, identified within the narrative portraits of three participants. It was found that these imagoes had significant effects on the identity construction of these young people, specifically on those whose parents had died. In the second phase of analysis three different dimensions of, or ways of thinking about, narrative identity were distinguished: relationality and the sense of belonging or alienation experienced by the participants in their interaction with others; the consolidation of life stories at adolescence and the participants’ social positioning within the systems of structural identity markers of race, class, gender and sexuality; and lastly the participants’ hopes and dreams, their narrative imaginations and future-orientated lives. In the third level of analysis, one participant’s narrative was selected to illustrate the theoretical concepts that underpin the construction of narrative identity, particularly constructionist intersectionality (Prins, 2006) and cultural creolisation (Glissant, 1989). These young people’s narratives indicate a patent tension between their lives to date, the histories of their families marked by insecurity and feelings of being unsafe as the effects of racism, disease and poverty, and their future imagined lives characterised by the promise of freedom and agency, education, employment and health. Through listening to and analysing these young people’s past, present and future stories, this study gained an insight into the ambivalence that exists in their lives, the contradictions they face between their moments of belonging and their moments of alienation, and how all these experiences inform and contribute to their identity constructions. / MT2017

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2017 / This thesis examines how the political subjectivity of black youth took shape within the violent period of late colonialism in South Africa known as apartheid. As a historico-philosophical inquiry that aims to understand the historical modalities of subject formation and political practice, the thesis is grounded in extensive original research on black youth politics in the townships of the Vaal region south of Johannesburg during the 1980s and early 1990s. At the same time, the thesis interprets the findings of that historical research through a critical engagement with the philosophical work of various thinkers (including Hegel, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Foucault, Fanon, Mamdani, Mbembe, Zizek and Maldonado-Torres, among others) in an effort to address the problem of freedom in relation to the black subject under colonial and post-colonial rule. The thesis shows how colonial authority and governance both posits and aims to reproduce what I call the ‘permanent juniority’ of blacks generally, and of black youth in particular. Key sites for the exercise of such authority and governance in the townships under apartheid included the street and the school, where blacks were subjected to social, infrastructural and disciplinary violence. In examining one ‘Bantu’ high school in depth, I show how black youth were subjected to what I call a ‘pedagogy of offence’ – a mode of socialisation and discipline based on the premise that black youth, merely by virtue of being black, are always already guilty of breaching the socio-political order and are therefore addressed as delinquents. The thesis shows how a collective black youth subject constituted itself in revolt against this disciplinary regime. In the course of this revolt, the figure of the outlaw comrade, or ‘com-tsotsi’, emerged, occupying an ambiguous position between political resistance and illegal criminality. This figure is shown to have a genealogy originating in slavery and the Frontier Wars in the Cape, and extending to the early period of mining and industrial capitalism in Johannesburg. In the concluding chapters, which explore the underground activities of Self-Defence Units as violence on the Vaal reached its apogee in the early 1990s, the thesis probes the ethical ambiguity that emerges when violence is used in the service of a politics of love and emancipation. Here, I argue that the constitution of a collective black youth political subject in revolt also suggests a theory of black emancipation: of subjectivity beyond object-hood, of political love and everyday life beyond colonial violence and death, and of a political optimism oriented toward freedom. / XL2018

Using lessor's psychosocial framework of risk behaviour, this study examined the impact of variables within a number of risk domains on condom use at last sex. The sample was 587 sexually active male and female black youth between the ages of 16 and 20 years old from the township areas of Soweto (Johannesburg), Umlazi (Durban) and Khayelitsha (Cape Town). Binary logistic regression models were used in the analysis. Within the biological risk domain, gender was a significant predictor of condom use at last sex. None of the proximate social context variables, viz. parental education, family structure, and parent-adolescent communication, were significant predictors. Health services' promotion of condom use was a significant predictor within the distal social context. Within the perceived environment in relation to the self, perception of risk and perception of barriers were significant predictors of condom use at last sex. None of the variables within the perceived environment in relation to peers domain, viz. perceived peer attitudes to condoms and peers suffering the negative consequences of unprotected sex, were significant. The personality domain contained measures of self-esteem, future time orientation, locus of control and fatalism. Locus of control was the only significant predictor within this domain of condom use at last. Engagement in other risk taking behaviour, such as smoking cigarettes, alcohol and drug use, was a significant predictor within the general behaviour domain. Within the sexual behaviour domain, partner discussion and contraceptive use were significant predictors of condom use at last sex. 2 In the final model, the significant predictors in order of importance, were the perception of risk, the promotion of condom use by a health professional, locus of control, discussion with a partner, the perception of barriers, the use of contraceptives, and risk taking behaviour. The only interaction in the final model of condom use at last sex was between the promotion of condom use by a health professional and concurrent use of other forms of non-barrier contraception. / Thesis (M.A.)- University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2001.

AIDS is a syndrome that affects millions of South Africans. Adolescents have been regarded as a potential high-risk group with regard to HIV infection due to their increased sexual activity. Changing behaviour, even that of adolescents, who are just beginning to experience and experiment with their sexuality is perhaps the biggest challenge facing HIV / AIDS prevention in South Africa. There is an urgent need for more knowledge and information on adolescent sexuality, and their knowledge of and attitudes towards HIV / AIDS that can impact intervention programmes. The aim of this research was to examine knowledge, attitudes and behaviours regarding HIV / AIDS among adolescents at a rural Junior Secondary School in the Eastern Cape. The study used both qualitative and quantitative methodology. The participants were grade 7 to 9 learners at the school; 46 males, and 74 females (n=120). The research instrument used was an anonymous self-report questionnaire. Data on behavior was gathered through 9 open-ended questions. Findings revealed that adolescents had higher-level knowledge about AIDS although there were also misconceptions. Their attitudes were both negative and positive. Data on reported behaviours revealed that most learners have changed their behaviours, 90% reported that they would use a condom to prevent the spread of the disease and, they indicated that a person should have one partner. It is recommended that a programme be developed to educate adolescents about sexuality in an objective and factual manner. Outsiders, not necessarily teachers should be used to implement such programmes, and the programmes should be adaptable to any circumstances, as not all schools have the facilities to their disposal like videos and films. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2004.