This essay is about the history of the Swedish board game-industry from the 1970’s to today. The essay focuses on the companies in the business and how they change during this period and about the causes of this change. This essay aims both at accurately describing the development of the industry as well as asking the question of what influence factors from outside of the industry have upon the change during this period of time. The material used in this essay is mainly extracts from interviews with people who have been working in the industry during the period, as well as literature on the subject and product-catalogues from certain years in the time-frame. From this material I have outlined the basic history of the industry. From a nearly monopolized industry in the 1970’s to the global market of today with a wide spectrum of different companies competing for the attention of consumers. I have looked at the different kind of games that enter the shelves in the stores and what trends have come, like the party and trivia games, and what have gone, like the electronic board games and the DVD-board games. I have also applied a theory of society affecting the board gaming industry and looked at if this is true of other factors than just the theme of games. I found that the theme of games is more affected by outside factors than the mechanics are. I also found that while the industry is competing with the quickly growing industry of digital games, board games still sell almost as much today as they did forty years ago. When it comes to the business part of the industry, the globalization and the new ways to fund and distribute products have affected the consumers more than the companies in the Swedish industry. The big Swedish companies still work mainly for a Swedish market and mostly in the same working methods as earlier.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The University of Stellenbosch Business School integrates environmental, social responsibility and corporate governance teaching in all its MBA courses. In 2012, it also introduced a stand-alone course, Business in Society, to improve students‟ knowledge of these topics and improve their decision-making ability. To enhance the course further, a social engagement project was piloted with the 2013 full-time cohort. The aim of the research paper is to determine the impact that the Social Engagement Project had on the participating students and to make recommendations for improving future engagements. The research method employed was content analysis of the reflective essays that the students wrote on assessing the course. Only essays for which permission was obtained from the students were used in the research. The success of the engagement in terms of experiential learning was firstly determined in relation to the Kolb learning cycle and literature regarding specifically service-learning. The impact on the students was then measured against Bloom‟s taxonomy, specifically focusing on the affective domain. Lastly, the effect the theory of planned behaviour was used to determine the influence the engagement had on the behavioural intentions of the students. From the content analysis it was determined that as an experiential learning engagement the project was a success In terms of Bloom‟s affective learning domain the learning dimension achieved by most students was the organisation dimension. Considering the limited duration of the course, this can be deemed a success. Two of the three independent determinants in the theory of planned behaviour that could be analysed, namely perceived behavioural control and attitude towards behaviour, were both positively influenced by the engagement. From a theoretical point of view, the Social Engagement Project could therefore be deemed a success. Areas for improvement that were however identified relate to students original motivations for choosing their projects that were not met. The main reason for this was very high initial expectations that were never congruent with the time available for projects. This factor can have a negative effect on the future behavioural intentions of the students, and the writer therefore proposes that the expectations of students be managed in order to obviate these shortcomings. The analysis of student recommendations revealed three main themes requiring attention, i.e. appropriate project identification, better time allocation, and improved support from faculty. Using these themes and the information learnt from the content analysis, final recommendations were made.

The purpose of this study was to provide information to secondary, post-secondary and vocational teachers on what instructional areas should be taught to prospective entrepreneurs involved in pre-venture training. In addition it was hoped that information gained from the study would add to the existing body of knowledge on entrepreneurship education and validate entrepreneurship education practices in Oregon.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

The research describes how creativity in higher education can be introduced as a concept that could enhance the creative thinking and application of adult learners enrolled in the Advertising Management Diploma. A number of different routes were attempted in order to answer the research question „can creativity be taught? ‟ Cord and Clement (2010) stated that adult learners should be allowed to practice their skills and prior knowledge, and that the learning material should promote generic workplace skills. The research discovered that the learning material for the Advertising Management diploma does little to enhance or even cater for imagination and creative application. It is vital for accurate application to take place, as this will enhance creativity. The problem formation is centered on the lack of sufficient skills in using one‟s imagination to generate creative ideas. This research study included five research activities that employed a semi-structured interview that involved sessions spanning over a period of six months, aligned to the course material‟s learning outcomes, and creative application of such acquired knowledge. It was established that, in order to further the creative application of young adults, it is important that they are able to link theory to practical and so be able to create concrete examples of what they are capable of doing. / ABET and Youth Development / M. Ed. (Adult Education)

This study originates out of my experience as an environmental educator working within business and industry in Zimbabwe and South Africa. It is motivated by my observation that, despite much environmental rhetoric and training, environmental education in industry rarely leads to significant advances towards environmental protection. I assume that the problem of the mismatch between rhetoric and action involves both semiotic and non-semiotic components and therefore, after a thorough exploration of my methodological options, I adopt a qualitative transdisciplinary textual analysis of relevant documents using Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis and Bhaskar’s Dialectical Critical Realism, with some insights taken from Bhaskar’s more recent concept of Meta-Reality. My main conclusions from the study indicate that causally efficacious philosophical mistakes, relating to theories of structure/agency and theories of epistemology, are an important aspect of the problem being considered. Specifically, I demonstrate that these mistakes function to buttress ideology and its attendant contradictions which in turn function to provide the preconditions that maintain inequalities and poor environmental practice in business and industry. Prior and current events, such as climate change and the trend towards globalisation, the ‘free market economy’ and psychological characteristics of the author, relevant to the problem, are also important. In line with Bhaskar’s emancipatory aim for explanatory critique, I end with tentative recommendations for a re-imagined environmental education for business and industry which require (un)action. Consistent with my methodological choices, my recommendations have a (qualified) universal application, despite my focus on texts from South Africa and Zimbabwe. My recommendations are summarised below: • there should be consistency between theory and practice such that performance contradictions are avoided; • we should not act from a fear of survival based on past, no longer relevant experiences (e.g. from childhood) as this is unlikely to be an adequate base for present actions; • we should avoid voluntarism by acting with the resources at our disposal, based on a true understanding of our strengths and weaknesses and our own specificities; • we should avoid assuming the stance of the ‘victim’ by refusing to blame other agents or circumstances, without distorting or underestimating the causal efficacy of those agents or circumstances (related to avoiding voluntarism, whilst nevertheless not resorting to determinism either); • we should direct our action towards the abolition of inequalities and master-slave relationships (related to the avoidance of performance contradictions); • we should act from the position of epistemological humility, rather than from the position of epistemological privilege; • we should consider action as ‘shedding’ based on an understanding of the Transformational Model of Social Activity (TMSA); and • we should consider learning to be ‘shedding’ based on the necessity of (un)knowledge, or ignorance, as a requirement of arriving at relatively new knowledge. This study is also a contribution to contemporary methodological discussions relevant to Critical Discourse Analysis in that it extends these discussions to include psychoanalytical (as well as the more familiar phenomenological and ideological) depth explanations of lived illusion. Furthermore, this study is an experimental attempt to apply the concept of ‘meta-reflexivity’ in Critical Discourse Analysis.

The research describes how creativity in higher education can be introduced as a concept that could enhance the creative thinking and application of adult learners enrolled in the Advertising Management Diploma. A number of different routes were attempted in order to answer the research question „can creativity be taught? ‟ Cord and Clement (2010) stated that adult learners should be allowed to practice their skills and prior knowledge, and that the learning material should promote generic workplace skills. The research discovered that the learning material for the Advertising Management diploma does little to enhance or even cater for imagination and creative application. It is vital for accurate application to take place, as this will enhance creativity. The problem formation is centered on the lack of sufficient skills in using one‟s imagination to generate creative ideas. This research study included five research activities that employed a semi-structured interview that involved sessions spanning over a period of six months, aligned to the course material‟s learning outcomes, and creative application of such acquired knowledge. It was established that, in order to further the creative application of young adults, it is important that they are able to link theory to practical and so be able to create concrete examples of what they are capable of doing. / ABET and Youth Development / M. Ed. (Adult Education)

Thesis (M. Ed. (Didatics)) / Assessment methods in Business Studies in the FET phase have had to change as a result of the implementation of OBE and the NSC in South Africa. In order to analyse how this has affected the education of learners, a case study, based on the IEB was analysed. Under the supervision of Umalusi, the IEB has developed new moderation systems in order to quality assure SBA (School Based Assessment), represented by learners’ portfolios which constitute 25% of the final promotion mark for the NSC. The guidelines and documentation for these moderation requirements are contained in the IEB Business Studies SAG (Subject Assessment Guidelines). This document forms the basis of the case study.The IEB, however, does not work in isolation and through their partnership with the DoE the experience gained through implementing new assessment methods in Business Studies as described in this study can be adapted for other subjects or schools in the public sector.

The aim of this research was to examine the extent to which the pedagogical practices of Business Studies teachers in Botswana junior secondary schools conform to pedagogical practices recommended for imparting practical business skills relevant to the world of work. It also aimed to identify the strengths and weaknesses of teachers’ current practices with a view to proffer a teaching model that would help to maximize learner acquisition of business skills and competencies. Literature related to the pedagogy of business education subjects was reviewed to give a general conceptual and methodological foundation for the investigation. An overview of the methodological approaches and the qualitative research design selected for application to the study were provided including the data-gathering procedures and the conceptual framework that supported and informed the research. The major findings of the study were that Business Studies teachers subscribe mainly to the transmission paradigm of teaching. Teachers’ failure to use constructivist pedagogies prescribed in the syllabus were attributed to a multiplicity of challenges they face in their day-to-day practices. The challenges that beset the pedagogy of business subjects emanate from a variety of sources such as the scarcity or non-availability of teaching materials and resources, a congested syllabus and problems associated with striking a balance between the theoretical and practical aspects of the subject. Teachers indicated that the Business Studies syllabus is too long and with the little time allocated to teach it on schools timetables, it is impractical to expect them to complete the syllabus using constructivist teaching approaches which they perceive as pedagogically burdensome and time-consuming. Despite the teachers’ constraints in creating constructivist learning environments, the use of an entrepreneurial pedagogy in the form of the mini enterprise whereby students are involved in setting and running a concrete enterprise is prevalent. The study concluded by suggesting a pedagogical model, based on the findings, to improve Business Studies curriculum delivery. It was also recommended that support structures aimed at monitoring and ensuring that the delivery of business education is done according to the stipulated business curriculum standards be put in place. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D. Ed. (Didactics)