Millions of people live and work on college campuses everyday. The environment they dwell and interact with is essential to their quality of life and health. There is no doubt that the campus landscape is of great importance to millions of students, faculty, and staff on campus. Surrounding communities are also significantly affected by college campuses as colleges often provide education and social events, as well as economic activities. However, in the past, the design of campus landscape spaces have been overlooked or treated as a leftover of buildings, even though campus landscape spaces are more than the "faces" of colleges. With more and more colleges and universities expanding and redesigning their landscape spaces, the design of campus landscape space has gained more recognition in the recent twenty years. One of the significant changes in the design process is the taking of users' needs/concerns into account. This change is influenced by a community-based design concept found in Active Living and Public Spaces design. While Active Living and Public Spaces design emphasizes the importance of user involvement and different techniques in soliciting user input, there is a missing link between user input and the design program elements. In this thesis, I examine the past practice of campus landscape space design and propose using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to fill in this missing link. QFD has been used in various industries, including service and manufacturing, for years. It emphasizes the importance of taking users' needs, called Voice of Customers (VOC), into the design process. The employment of different matrices to capture the relationship between VOC and subsequent design and quality characteristics makes QFD a unique framework suitable to fill the gap in the current design process. A case study of campus landscape space design is conducted to examine the applicability of QFD in campus landscape space design, including the advantages, the obstacles, and the unique condition of using QFD in landscape design. The study yields several insights on the application of QFD in campus landscape space design, which are applicable in other landscape design projects. / Master of Landscape Architecture

The Zimbabwean refugees sheltered at Holy Cross Church* in central Johannesburg have taken the initiative to develop their own curriculum. There have been many orientations to curriculum development with current reconceptualisations emphasising practical and descriptive curriculum development approaches. This research is framed specifically by Walker’s naturalistic curriculum development model, the community-based approach to education development, literature on refugee education and generally by broader theories of curriculum. The study employed the ethnographic research method and gathered data through non-participant observation, interviews and document analysis. Taking a wider approach to curriculum development and in the context of displaced people, the research redefined the term curriculum developer to mean ordinary people and refugees in their communal social setting. This study provides an analysis and description of how the refugees successfully initiated and developed effective learning and training programmes which resulted in the establishment of a school, early childhood, adult-education and vocational training centres. The refugee meetings and school council deliberation forums guided by common values and political, social and economic factors made practically defensible, education and training resolutions on language, school policies, curriculum options, pedagogy, knowledge and certification issues. On the forms of refugee-emergency education, the refugee school curriculum followed that of the country of origin, with some minor modifications thereby preparing learners for return to their country. The training programmes utilised a slightly adjusted curriculum of the host country in synergies with local private colleges and prepared the refugees to integrate into the host country’s economic communities. To improve the quality of education and training at Holy Cross there is need for intervention from government and international humanitarian organisations. In addition to the academic curriculum, subjects with a social reconstructionist ideology, double-shift schooling and democratic teaching and learning approaches must be introduced as well as awarding refugees with regionally recognised training certificates.

This research is a case-study based primarily on theory and pre-existing documents describing the history and the current situation in regards to violence against children in Indonesia. The theory of intervention is analysed against the context of Indonesia with an aim to find which of the selected intervention approaches – the systems approach, the human ecology approach, the lifecycle approach and the community based approach – are considered most appropriate, in terms of minimal obstacles or barriers, for recommendation to be implemented by religious leaders to eliminate violence against children. Furthermore, this research finds which types of violence against children – those with religious motivation or those with cultural motivation – each of these four intervention approaches are best suited for. The study finds that the former two approaches are lesser recommended for religious leaders on their own to lead, and that the latter two are better able to provide the necessary social programming. While conditions apply, each of the approaches are capable of intervening violence motivated by both religious and cultural norms.

The objective of the thesis is to verify the method of community based approach to strategic regional planning as an instrument of local development. The emphasis is put on the public participation and the consequences that result from this approach. The methodology of the thesis is based on the critical analysis of particular steps during the preparation of one particular plan - Strategic regional plan of Vodňany. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threads of community based strategic regional planning are formulated. The main hypothesis is confirmed - the community based approach to strategic planning is the proper method for designing a strategic plan in a small town, on the assumption that the political representation has a positive approach to the concept and the public is also involved and interested in the process. It is also confirmed that the strategic regional plan designed using the community based approach has greater chance to be implemented than the strategic plan designed using the expert method. Last but not least it is validated that while working out the participation project some new relations and connections are formed bewteen the participants which might cause establishing the social network that strenghten a formation of a social capital in the locality. KEY WORDS...

<p>The research reported here is a meta-evaluative case study of project evaluation in the context of Official Development Cooperation (ODC) in the education sector in Tanzania, where the particular focus is on capturing the relative values attached to evaluation by various stakeholder groups.</p><p>Perspectives from the constructivist paradigm are adopted, implying relativist ontology, subjectivist epistemology, and naturalistic interpretive methodology. Based on these perspectives, a review is provided of development theories and evaluation theories, including the actor-oriented approach to development, participatory monitoring & evaluation, utilization-focused evaluation, and responsive-constructivist evaluation. An exploratory qualitative case study strategy is taken, combining several complementary methods e.g. in-depth interviews, questionnaires, document analysis, and observations.</p><p>Evaluation is considered as an applied social research, implying a managerial and political purpose. It is a reflective interactive process, where the relevance, effectiveness and impact of an intervention in pursuit of certain objectives are assessed, adding value in order to construct knowledge for the enhancement of decision-making. In order to facilitate understanding of the cases under study, their structural contexts are investigated: 1) ODC evaluation systems and strategies (international/ macro context); and 2) ODC in the education sector in Tanzania (national/meso context). Each case (at local/micro level) is located within these contexts and analyzed applying a meta-evaluative framework.</p><p>Integrating the perspectives of the stakeholders, the study demonstrates the strengths of, and constraints on, each case, factors which are to some extent determined by their respective time-frames. A number of significant discrepancies between theory and practice in ODC evaluation are reported. Findings indicate the significance of constructing consensus values that are based on a synthesis of multiple stakeholders’ values and perspectives complementing each others. The study also find that evaluation ought to be used as a powerful tool in which the values, needs and aspirations of various stakeholder groups can be reflected, especially those of local communities, who are now too often powerless in ODC projects in the education sector.</p>

The research reported here is a meta-evaluative case study of project evaluation in the context of Official Development Cooperation (ODC) in the education sector in Tanzania, where the particular focus is on capturing the relative values attached to evaluation by various stakeholder groups. Perspectives from the constructivist paradigm are adopted, implying relativist ontology, subjectivist epistemology, and naturalistic interpretive methodology. Based on these perspectives, a review is provided of development theories and evaluation theories, including the actor-oriented approach to development, participatory monitoring &amp; evaluation, utilization-focused evaluation, and responsive-constructivist evaluation. An exploratory qualitative case study strategy is taken, combining several complementary methods e.g. in-depth interviews, questionnaires, document analysis, and observations. Evaluation is considered as an applied social research, implying a managerial and political purpose. It is a reflective interactive process, where the relevance, effectiveness and impact of an intervention in pursuit of certain objectives are assessed, adding value in order to construct knowledge for the enhancement of decision-making. In order to facilitate understanding of the cases under study, their structural contexts are investigated: 1) ODC evaluation systems and strategies (international/ macro context); and 2) ODC in the education sector in Tanzania (national/meso context). Each case (at local/micro level) is located within these contexts and analyzed applying a meta-evaluative framework. Integrating the perspectives of the stakeholders, the study demonstrates the strengths of, and constraints on, each case, factors which are to some extent determined by their respective time-frames. A number of significant discrepancies between theory and practice in ODC evaluation are reported. Findings indicate the significance of constructing consensus values that are based on a synthesis of multiple stakeholders’ values and perspectives complementing each others. The study also find that evaluation ought to be used as a powerful tool in which the values, needs and aspirations of various stakeholder groups can be reflected, especially those of local communities, who are now too often powerless in ODC projects in the education sector.