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There is no abstract available for this thesis.

This study investigated the personality differences between collegiate sprinters and long-distance runners. The top 10 sprinters and the ton 10 long-distance runners at both Ball State University and Kent State University, as nominated by their respective head coaches, comprised the sample of subjects used in this study. The instrument used to assess the personality differences between these two groups of athletes was derived from various subscales selected from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and the Cattell Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire. An analysis of the data showed significant differences between the two inventory, the following significant differences were revealed: sprinters are outgoing, happy-go-lucky, venturesome, tough-minded, and less-intelligent, while long-distance runners are reserved, sober, shy, tender-minded, and more-intelligent.The results of this study ray be of future value for track and cross country coaches in the selection and recruiting of athletes in these two specialty fields.

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

Learning and assessment are inextricably intertwined, since assessment not only measures learning, but future learning is also dependent on assessment. The purpose of this two phase sequential mixed-methods study was to examine the interplay between informal and formal assessment in Grade 9 EFAL classrooms in order to gain a better understanding of teachers’ assessment practises. Argued from a constructivist point of view, the study endorses continuous assessment (CASS), which balances informal and formal assessment. In order to direct the study towards the stated purpose, the researcher embarked on a literature study to contextualise English as First Additional Language against the background of educational developments in South Africa since 1994 and to examine assessment of English First Additional Language in an OBE framework. The literature study was followed by an empirical study. By applying a sequential mixed-methods research design, 66 conveniently sampled EFAL teachers in the Johannesburg-North District of the Gauteng Department of Education participated in the quantitative phase of the empirical study. By means of a survey as strategy of inquiry, these teachers completed a questionnaire. Six randomly selected teachers from the initial sample participated in the qualitative phase of the empirical study which followed a case study strategy of inquiry and consisted of individual interviews and observations. The empirical research findings revealed that the sampled teachers experienced the official Departmental documents as regulatory, overwhelming and ambiguous and that they gave more attention to formal assessment than informal assessment. Due to this emphasis on formal assessment, the teachers felt uncertain about the purposes of informal assessment which, as a consequence, was considered as less important than formal assessment. A preference of conventional assessment methods was also disclosed which implied that the sampled teachers were not willing to experiment with alternative assessment methods. In conclusion, the researcher discovered that although CASS was implemented in the sampled teachers’ classrooms, learner-centred teaching founded on constructivism with the aim of encouraging scaffolding, was not high on the teachers’ teaching agendas. / MEd (Learning and Teaching), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2013

This study is a result of trying to grasp what teachers look at when they assess writing. The motive is to better understand what goes on inside a teacher’s mind when correcting a written piece of work and to raise the level of awareness of what teachers actually do. Background information as to what the teachers support their assessment on and how they acquired their “correcting skills” is also treated. The study brings up both what teachers say and what teachers do. It is an exploratory and open ended investigation. To perform this exploration a qualitative method is used. Interviews with open questions and observations of the assessment situation with think aloud protocols are performed. Examples of the teachers’ real life marking in students written texts are also considered. The findings show that teachers possess an intuition based on knowledge which has been constructed by themselves and that they cannot depict easily. Their own awareness of what they do seems to be mixed with what they would like to do at occasions. Linguistic topics such as morphology, grammar, syntax, vocabulary, spelling and idiomaticity are considered by both teachers showing that surface errors are of importance. Coherence and thematic treatment are also taken into consideration when teachers assess but the way they value these aspects together with views on what writing is, what communication is together with other possible choices shows that correction and assessing is highly subjective. In addition, this study points at the possibility that a teacher progresses from analytic to holistic with time and that writing as a process is more valid when a teacher becomes more experienced.