published_or_final_version / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Since it assumed power in 1994, the government of South Africa had to meet the challenges of changing an education system that was established along racial lines. OBE and Curriculum 2005 were adopted into the school system. In the Further Education and Training Band Report 550 which was a 'cleansed' curriculum was introduced. The Framework for the Transformation of Further Education and Training in South Africa was published and promoted equality, economic competitiveness, redress, productivity and quality learning. On 28 October 2002 the draft National Curriculum Statements were published. The purpose of this study was to examine some of the policy intentions, influences and dominant ideologies in the FET policy documents. The study also examines the policy process and the recontextualization of policy discourses. A qualitative approach was used. Data was collected from questionnaires and interviews. The data obtained from the completed questionnaires and interviews was processed. The dominant ideology in the policy documents for English, Life Sciences, Mathematics and Physical Science were identified. The findings of the study shows that policy makers, designers and trainers adopted particular discourses that were at times aligned to the official policy discourse and at times they drew on new discourses based on their own histories, biographies and experiences of teaching in South African schools. Finally recommendations were made concerning the policy process in the form of three propositions: (i)Timing determined what was possible for the NCS: the policy development process was driven by a political need to deliver on a new curriculum; (ii) In a system that is not currently functioning efficiently, new policy initiatives exacerbate rather than reform the conditions on the ground; (iii) Government rationality was driven by a transformative agenda yet constrained by technicist management theories. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

The study examined the role of non-formal skills programmes at Further Education and Training (FET) colleges in assisting marginalized learners in their livelihoods. The high rate of unemployment and poverty in South Africa, and in Kwazulu-Natal in particular, highlights the need for non-formal programmes to be more responsive to the developmental needs of marginalized learners, and to the economy. There is a need to move away from programmes that are run in isolation, towards programmes that are more responsive, creative and holistic. A case-study of three different non-formal skills programmes from each of the FET colleges in the Durban area were used in the study. These included Coastal, Sivananda and Thekwini FETI's. The reason for choosing different programmes, was to get a broader picture of skills programmes offered at FET colleges. One of the programmes was a Welding one offered at the Swinton Road Campus of Coastal College. The second programme was the Organic Farming one offered at the Mpumalanga campus of Sivananda College, and the third programme was the Cooperatives one offered at the Asherville campus of Thekwini College. Interviews with learners comprised the primary data, while documents, observation and interviews with personnel comprised secondary data. The three different programmes provided an interesting contrast. While the Organic Farming programme and the Cooperatives were fairly new, the Welding programme had been in operation for some time. There were also differences in the design and implementation which impacted on the learners' ability to improve their livelihoods. Learners in the Organic Farming programmes for example, were technically unemployed. Yet they were producing organically grown vegetables to sustain themselves and their families. In contrast, learner in the welding programme were unable to find employment on completion of the programme. Using the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach used by international Aid agencies in developing countries as a bench mark, the programmes were examined to establish whether they were assisting their learners in developing sustainable livelihoods. What emerged was that there was a strong correlation between the design and implementation of the programme and the learners' ability to transfer skills to improve their lives. Programmes that provided support to learners aside from the actual training content tended to be more successful than programmes that focused only on training. The more a programmes incorporated the principles of SLA (responsive and participatory; learner-centred; conducted in partnerships; linking micro and macro-level activities, holistic and sustainable), the more they were able to assist learners in developing their livelihoods. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

A creative exploration of the consequences of public speech in the era of freely accessible, social media, as the author, a former elections official, records and explores the consequences of public dissent in the case of President Barack Obama’s eligibility controversy. This non-fiction narrative culminates with the author’s analysis and observations on both his personal experiences and the state of public speech and political power in contemporary America.

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Graph partitioning is a fundamental optimization problem that has been intensively studied. Many graph partitioning formulations are important as building blocks for divide-and-conquer algorithms on graphs as well as to many applications such as VLSI layout, packet routing in distributed networks, clustering and image segmentation. Unfortunately such problems are notorious for the huge gap between known best known approximation algorithms and hardness of approximation results. In this thesis, we study approximation algorithms for graph partitioning problems using a strong hierarchy of relaxations based on semi-definite programming, called Lasserre Hierachy. Our main contribution in this thesis is a propagation based rounding framework for solutions arising from such relaxations. We present a novel connection between the quality of solutions it outputs and column based matrix reconstruction problem. As part of our work, we derive optimal bounds on the number of columns necessary together with efficient randomized and deterministic algorithms to find such columns. Using this framework, we derive approximation schemes for many graph partitioning problems with running times dependent on how fast the graph spectrum grows. Our final contribution is a fast SDP solver for this rounding framework: Even though SDP relaxation has nO(r) many variables, we achieve running times of the form 2O(r) poly(n) by only partially solving the relevant part of relaxation. In order to achieve this, we present a new ellipsoid algorithm that returns certificate of infeasibility.

Šis darbas nagrinėja naujas, lanksčias energijos efektyvumą skatinančias priemones, kurios paremtos rinką imituojančiais mechanizmais. Baltieji sertifikatai yra visiškai naujas mechanizmas, gyvuojantis tik nedaugelyje šalių. Energijos efektyvumo skatinimas yra tiesiogiai susijęs su ekologija, aplinkosauga, todėl priemonių skatinančių taupyti ir efektyviai naudoti energiją labai trūksta ir jų įvedimas į rinką yra labai aktualus. / This job deals with modeling the effects of introducing a market-based tool for improving end-users’ efficiency in an energy market which is already regulated through a cap-and-trade system for green house gas emissions and a quota system meant to improve competitiveness of energy produced using renewable resources. Our results show that the regulation of energy demand achieves its underlying objects of energy savings and energy efficiency solely at the expense of other goals such as the environmental efficiency of energy production. In our model, the implementation of a market for White Certificates (WCTS) causes energy producers’ investment in abatement to decrease along with the price for Brown Certificates and the amount of renewable energy demanded. Once we turn to the currently more empirically relevant case of integrating endusers only partially into WCTS, the unregulated group compensates in parts for the decrease in demand of the regulated group, due to an indirect price effect. As both supply and demand side of the market are regulated, this special set of regulations applied can, therefore, be compared to the grip of printers embracing the entire market, leaving some of it virtually scarred. Consequently, we intended to search for alternative policy measures, which are able to achieve an increase in endusers’ energy efficiency without the negative side-effects witnessed in case of a WCTS. In our model a subsidized reduction in the price for households’ investment... [to full text]

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Also available in print.

This study offers an in-depth exploration of the conditions from which the implementation of a curriculum called the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), later localised into Swaziland General Certificate of Secondary Education (SGCSE), emerged and the constraining and enabling conditions for the implementation of the new I/SGCSE curriculum. It derives its theoretical foundation from Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism and Margaret Archer’s concept of analytical separability. The study therefore offers explanations about the curriculum change and its implementation that are based on how structural, cultural, and agential mechanisms operating at a deeper level of reality (the intransitive layer of reality or the domain of the real) and existing independently of what we see, know or believe of them (the transitive layer of reality or domains of the actual and empirical) interacted to condition the emergence of I/SGCSE and the way it is implemented. I conduct a critical discourse analysis of relevant literature, I/SGCSE documents and interview data in order to identify those mechanisms that were cultural and also those that were structural and agential. Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing are used to analyse observation data in order to explore the influence of these mechanisms on the teaching practices of the teachers who took part in the study. Analysis of the data suggests that the change from General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level (GCE O-level) to I/SGCSE was conditioned by inconsistencies between the cultural and structural mechanisms of the Swazi context. Many of the cultural elements of the Swazi context such as the discourses of good citizens, of competitive advantage, and of quality education draw from global discourses which view relations between people from a postmodernist position and therefore support weakly classified and framed pedagogic practices. In contrast, the discourse of morality and many of the structural elements of the Swazi context, such as the pre2006 education system and the Tinkhundla government system, all view reality from a modernist position, therefore supporting strong relations of power and control. The cultural system therefore exerted more influence in conditioning the change from the strongly classified and framed GCE O-level curriculum to the weakly classified and framed I/SGCSE curriculum. Furthermore, the analysis of interview and observation data suggests that inconsistencies between the global discourses and the discourses and structures that teachers confront in their day-to-day lives, together with the decisions teachers made in response to structural constraints, created constraining conditions for the change from GCE O-level to I/SGCSE. The study adds to knowledge on curriculum change and implementation through insights into the enabling and constraining effects of mechanisms operating at a deeper level of reality on curriculum-change decisions and on the ability of teachers to implement curriculum changes. The focus on the deeper level of reality may therefore contribute towards emancipatory knowledge which could be used not only by the Ministry of Education and Training and teachers in Swaziland but also elsewhere to inform future planning, decision making, and practice in relation to curriculum change and implementation.

Essa pesquisa buscou investigar a elaboração e os usos que as pessoas fazem da Declaração de Nascido Vivo (DNV) na cidade de Porto Alegre/RS. Partindo do referencial que concebe a DNV com uma tecnologia de governo realizamos pesquisa etnográfica acompanhando os percursos das três vias DNV – principalmente em cartórios de registro civil e na Equipe de Eventos Vitais da Secretaria Municipal de Saúde – para tentar conhecer as práticas e significados, os atores envolvidos na elaboração, na utilização pelos representantes da administração pública e que efeitos ela produz no cenário contemporâneo da administração da população e da constituição de subjetividades e cidadanias particulares. A pesquisa em diferentes contextos de circulação do documento permitiu percebermos os diferentes sentidos atribuídos à DNV e as diferentes preocupações que os diferentes atores trazem com ela. Nos órgãos de vigilância em saúde podemos verificar a preocupação com a produção de dados estatísticos e legibilidade da população. Nos cartórios, as preocupações das pessoas que buscam o serviço registral passam pelos documentos que a DNV permite gerar, enquanto que, para os funcionários do registro civil, a preocupação consiste em tentar verificar o vínculo entre mãe e o recém-nascido. A pesquisa etnográfica nesses distintos lugares de circulação da DNV, ao apontar as diferenças de sentido atribuído ao documento, mostrou, também, que a objetividade absoluta que aparentemente revestiria os dados estatísticos e os documentos de identificação envolve inevitavelmente a interação entre diversos artefatos e agentes, carregando, assim, aspectos contingentes e relacionais em sua produção. Emerge, dessa forma, uma máquina burocrática do Estado que não pode ser tomada de forma tão mecânica quanto seus idealizadores gostariam. / In this volume, we investigate the elaboration and the uses of the present Brazilian document issued when a child is born alive (known as the declaração de nascido vivo - DNV) through an ethnographic study of different bureaucratic instances in the city of Porto Alegre/RS. Working on the hypothesis that the DNV is a sort of government technology, we tracked the three leaflets of the DNV– with special emphasis on the office of civil registration and on the Team of Vital Events at the Municipal Secretary of Health – to discover the practices and meanings attributed to this document by the actors involved in its elaboration. We examined the attitudes of public administrators as well as those of common citizens who are registering their children. The research in different contexts of circulation of the documentation allowed us to discern the different meanings assigned to the DNV and the different preoccupations that the various actors bring with it. In the offices of health surveillance we observed a particular concern with the production of statistical data capable of producing a ―readable‖ population; the preoccupation of the family members who seek to register a newborn child centers on legal issues concerned with documenting a child‘s identity, whereas the employees at the office of civil registry are concerned with verifying the biological connection between the declared mother, the declared father and the newborn. From our ethnographic research in these distinct administrative sectors of the DNV, notwithstanding the difference of meanings attributed to the document, there emerged the hypothesis that the ―objectivity‖ that supposedly accompanies the production of statistical data and similar identity documents inevitably involves the interaction between innumerous artifacts and agents, necessarily implying contingent and relational elements in this state technology. Altogether, our study depicts an image of state bureaucracy that adds considerable nuance to the idealized picture often projected by government planners.