Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: According to Van Scheers (2010, p. 1) small businesses constitute 55% of the employment rate in South Africa. The argument that in the future new jobs are more likely to come from a large number of small businesses than from a small number of large businesses (Martin, 2001, p. 189) has challenged the South African government to support the empowerment of small business. The Wholesale and Retail Sector Education and Training Authority (W&R SETA) was formed as part of the governmental plan to ensure quality-learning provision within the wholesale and retail sector. The training of employees within small businesses in the wholesale and retail sector is not adequate (Mokgata, 2009, p. 4), despite the various methods of training funded by the W&R SETA. The small business unit at the W&R SETA introduced the Voucher-training System. Small levy paying businesses in this sector receive a voucher or vouchers that can be used to access free training opportunities for staff. Providers accredited with the W&R SETA are allowed to offer training programmes that suit the education and training needs of the sector. Companies pay the provider with the free vouchers they are allocated by the SETA. The scope of the Small Business Voucher-training System is to offer short courses that provide skills with immediate effect on the small businesses. The focus of this study grew out of the need to know if the voucher-training programmes meet the needs of small businesses in the wholesale and retail sector. In order to determine whether the voucher-training programmes meet the needs of the small business sector, the small business managers’ perceptions of the voucher-training programme are essential in order to develop insights into the possible improvements and sustainability of the programme. A descriptive research study from an interpretivist perspective is used to understand the perceptions of the small business managers of the voucher programmes. A case study design was used and forms the basis of this study. Interviews were used to elicit qualitative data that provide insights into small business managers’ perceptions of the voucher-training programme. A descriptive research study from an interpretivist perspective is used to understand the perceptions of the small business managers of the voucher programmes. A case study design was used and forms the basis of this study. Interviews were used to elicit qualitative data that provide insights into small business managers’ perceptions of the voucher-training programme. The reasons small business managers gave explaining why they selected specific programmes for employees indicate the influence the training had on employees and their future progression and development within their company. It showed how the company itself benefited from the employees involvement in these programmes and lists the most appropriate programme for these small businesses in the wholesale and retail sector. The small business managers’ reflections on any changes in their employees’ behaviour after the employee attended the voucher-training programme ranged from positive behaviours which they noticed to poor or no influence from the training interventions on employee behaviours at all. The learning programmes small business managers noted as essential in furthering the development of their employees are programmes that suit the respondents in this study. These insights are important in order to understand the type of programmes needed by small business managers in determining the further training needs for their employees in the wholesale and retail sector. The respondents shared various insights, from their personal experience after they had sent employees on the learning programmes, on how they felt the voucher programme system could be improved. The insights these small business managers provide on how to possibly improve the voucher-training programme indicate a thorough knowledge of their business and operational requirements which the SETA and providers need to pay careful attention to should this programme continue.

The thesis topic seeks to address to what extent early childhood practitioners have adopted teaching methodology and pedagogical practices to embrace the SACSA Framework in the Communication and Language Learning Area.

<p>This thesis looks at conditions for selections of fictional texts in the Swedish subject in the upper secondary school. Three different empirical materials have contributed to the understanding of what conditions there are for the texts to enter the classroom. The first material consists of national policy documents from 1970 to 2005. Here there is a tendency that the student goes from being an object for knowledge to becoming a subject that creates his/her own knowledge. With this development the contents and the given aims with the subject become more abstract, which leads to the framework of the curriculum becoming wider and more difficult to interpret. Simultaneously the focus is moved from mediation of given knowledge, to the development of an identity for the individual.</p><p>The second material consists of debate and method articles from Svenskläraren, a magazine for members, published by an organisation of Swedish teachers. The study comprise articles from the same period of time as the national curricula. In the articles there are three tendencies reflecting the changes in the discourse of the Swedish subject. The first tendency shows how the overall ideological debate on the subject disappears during this period. The second tendency shows how discussions about the conceptions of the subject is replaced by more and more concrete examples of methods. The third tendency depicts that the concrete text selections have moved from being partly predetermined during the seventies to become debated during the eighties, to finally during the nineties end up in a situation where some texts has a sufficient cultural capital not to need justifications, whereas others need it.</p><p>The third material consists of interviews with, and observations of, four active teachers, in order to find what conditions there are for text selections in their rhetoric and practice. The results show a clear impression of informal institutional factors and of the school culture. However, this seems to decrease with experience. There are big differences in how the teachers speak about text selections and text use and what the result becomes in practice. Here professionalism in form of knowledge in subject didactics could have a vast impact.</p>

Experienced by thousands of children every year, professional theatre for young audiences TYA) is still a relatively new and understudied phenomenon in Canada. The purpose of this research has been to learn why teachers bring their students to the theatre, specifically Young People’s Theatre (YPT), and to determine how these connect to the perceptions of those who work at and with the theatre. In order to understand the complexities of the impetus to bring students to YPT, the limitations and successes teachers encounter in doing so, this ethnographic study was situated at the intersection of spatial and curriculum theories and has included surveys, interviews and participatory observation. This research provides greater understanding of the challenges and benefits of including theatre-going in one’s educational repertoire. These new insights contribute to contemporary scholarship on aesthetic education and arts-based community building and provide opportunities for further research about teaching and learning through theatre.

Experienced by thousands of children every year, professional theatre for young audiences TYA) is still a relatively new and understudied phenomenon in Canada. The purpose of this research has been to learn why teachers bring their students to the theatre, specifically Young People’s Theatre (YPT), and to determine how these connect to the perceptions of those who work at and with the theatre. In order to understand the complexities of the impetus to bring students to YPT, the limitations and successes teachers encounter in doing so, this ethnographic study was situated at the intersection of spatial and curriculum theories and has included surveys, interviews and participatory observation. This research provides greater understanding of the challenges and benefits of including theatre-going in one’s educational repertoire. These new insights contribute to contemporary scholarship on aesthetic education and arts-based community building and provide opportunities for further research about teaching and learning through theatre.

This thesis offers critical perspectives on a history syllabus for vocational education and training (VET) tracks in Swedish upper secondary schools and adds to our knowledge and understanding of the educative function of history education for the individual and for society. The overall aim of this thesis is to critically investigate discourses that are voiced in different fields about the construction and reproduction of the history curriculum in VET tracks. A general question addressed is how vertical (critical and theoretical) and horizontal knowledge is articulated by the discourses in terms of the meaning of history in a VET context. The following four research questions were the focus of the four different studies in this thesis: How were non-vocational subjects discussed on a policy level during the post-war period, and what meanings were ascribed to history education? What aspects of history as a field of knowledge are recontextualised into a pedagogic discourse for the VET curriculum? How do teachers perceive the history syllabus? What do the students express concerning the history syllabus and history education? The results of these studies are reported in separate papers, and the aggregated results are analysed in this thesis. The data consisted of government bills and committee reports, material from the National Agency of Education archives, and interview data gathered through interviews with 5 teachers and 46 students. The major theoretical inspiration comes from Basil Bernstein whose theories of classification and framing, pedagogic discourse, pedagogic code, and vertical and horizontal discourses are used in the analysis. With the aid of these concepts, the content and meaning of history education for VET are connected to macro levels of education, and the way in which education reproduces social order when certain forms of knowledge are distributed to different groups in society is discussed. Three major conclusions are drawn. First, history as a pedagogic discourse comes forward as versatile and contradictory when the results from the studies are aggregated. There is, however, a shared understanding that the meaning of history in VET is to educate the students to become democratic and active citizens. Secondly, the investigated discourses ascribe history education with the potential to distribute critical and powerful knowledge. The students see a value for history education in their future as citizens and for giving them access the public conversation of society. A final conclusion is that the pedagogic code, embedded in the history curriculum, can be interpreted in two different ways. The emphasis on competencies and the focus on the last two hundred years can be interpreted as (A) an expression of a wish for immediate utility and thus an instrumental view of education or (B) the recontextualisation of scientific theories, concepts, and practices into a pedagogic discourse as a means to give students access to disciplinary (powerful) knowledge.

This thesis looks at conditions for selections of fictional texts in the Swedish subject in the upper secondary school. Three different empirical materials have contributed to the understanding of what conditions there are for the texts to enter the classroom. The first material consists of national policy documents from 1970 to 2005. Here there is a tendency that the student goes from being an object for knowledge to becoming a subject that creates his/her own knowledge. With this development the contents and the given aims with the subject become more abstract, which leads to the framework of the curriculum becoming wider and more difficult to interpret. Simultaneously the focus is moved from mediation of given knowledge, to the development of an identity for the individual. The second material consists of debate and method articles from Svenskläraren, a magazine for members, published by an organisation of Swedish teachers. The study comprise articles from the same period of time as the national curricula. In the articles there are three tendencies reflecting the changes in the discourse of the Swedish subject. The first tendency shows how the overall ideological debate on the subject disappears during this period. The second tendency shows how discussions about the conceptions of the subject is replaced by more and more concrete examples of methods. The third tendency depicts that the concrete text selections have moved from being partly predetermined during the seventies to become debated during the eighties, to finally during the nineties end up in a situation where some texts has a sufficient cultural capital not to need justifications, whereas others need it. The third material consists of interviews with, and observations of, four active teachers, in order to find what conditions there are for text selections in their rhetoric and practice. The results show a clear impression of informal institutional factors and of the school culture. However, this seems to decrease with experience. There are big differences in how the teachers speak about text selections and text use and what the result becomes in practice. Here professionalism in form of knowledge in subject didactics could have a vast impact.

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a popular curricular approach in medical education. This thesis asks the question: How does PBL teach medical students about what matters in medicine using qualitative methods. The research demonstrates that PBL contributes to the on-going marginalisation of social issues in medical education.

The aim of this dissertation is to analytically discern different conversational genres within the teaching of literature, organized within the framework of the two school subjects in which Swedish is taught in upper secondary school, and to place this teaching of literature in a historical context by relating it to different conceptions of the Swedish subject. To be able to achieve this aim, a curriculum studies approach is combined with an ethnographical one. The ethnographical part of the study was conducted as a classroom study, including five different classes and teachers talking about literature, which took place during the school year 2003/2004 at three different schools in the middle of demographical Sweden. This part of the study also involved qualitative interviews with teachers and students concerning different factors which might have an effect on these conversations. The conversations of the study can be described as a part of the every-day-life of the teaching of those subjects, as the teachers organised these conversations in a way that they usually organise conversations of literature in their classes. However, what the teachers meant by talking about literature appeared to differ among them so radically that these conversations could be analytically discerned as four different conversational genres: The Teaching Examination, Text Oriented Talk, Culturally Oriented Talk, and Informal Book Talk. These four conversational genres are possible to analytically discern using the didactical tool, the analysis of conversational genres, which is developed in the dissertation in relation to Michail Bakhtin’s theory of speech genres. The curriculum part of the study comprises an analysis in three steps to place the teaching of literature in a historical context. In the first step national syllabuses for the subjects Swedish and Swedish as a second language are analysed. In the second step local syllabuses for the subjects are analysed. Finally, in the third step, the teachers’ thoughts, deliberations and ideals forming their teaching of literature are analysed. The teaching where conversational genres have been analytically discerned could then be related to different conceptions of the subject Swedish: Swedish as a Higher Subject of Bildung, Swedish as a Proficiency Subject, and Swedish as an Experience-based Subject. The analyses and discussions in the dissertation contribute to the discussions in the field of Subject-Didactics on the role of literature and conversation within the subjects of Swedish and Swedish as a Second language. Another contribution of the dissertation is the didactical tool, the analysis of conversational genres, which might be used by researchers and teachers for analysis and reflection on conversations in teaching.

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