This study aims to explore and describe the experiences of significant others during the coming out process of two lesbian individuals. The study gathered more detail regarding how various individuals experience the coming out process in the hope of contributing to the theoretical base of literature concerning lesbian studies in South Africa. The literature review provides a survey of the coming out process as well as a discussion regarding significant others (family and friends). Some factors and experiences involved in the coming out process are also discussed. The qualitative case study is approached from the interpretive paradigm and systems theory was utilised as a theoretical framework throughout the study. Data was generated primarily through unstructured interactive/in-depth interviews and secondarily through stories, field texts, photographs and a research diary. Six individuals participated in the research study, the two lesbian individuals and four significant others as identified by them - two mothers, a father and a close friend. The data analysis led to both commonalities in experiences and unique experiences identified by participants. The results of the study indicated that some form of suspicion or awareness was present in the significant others before the act of disclosure; emotional reactions from involved participants can be placed in a continuum ranging from positive to negative and the act of disclosure was viewed and experienced as both a crisis and as progressive by different participants. Various factors could influence the experience of the coming out process for significant others as well as the reactions to the act of disclosure. However more research is needed to investigate what these factors might be. Participants also mentioned various stages towards acceptance (individuals fall in a continuum and can move forward and backward). Both common and unique experiences were present and can assist others in understanding the coming out process from different perspectives. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

Die Studie gibt zunächst einen Überblick über den Forschungsstand in Deutschland zur „Schwarzen Szene“. Neben der Vorstellung von Geschichte und Entwicklung der Gothic-Szene steht eine umfassende Stilanalyse im Mittelpunkt, die Zeichen und Symbole dieser Jugendkultur vorstellt und auf deren Verwendung eingeht. In einer empirischen Untersuchung nimmt die Autorin einen doppelten Vergleich vor: Zwischen dem Selbstbild der Szene und ihrer medialen Fremdwahrnehmung sowie zwischen den jeweiligen Mediendarstellungen in zwei unterschiedlich ausgerichteten Zeitungen, der Leipziger Volkszeitung und der BILD-Zeitung. Anhand von qualitativen und quantitativen Daten gibt die Autorin differenzierte Einblicke in die medial auffällige, aber in ihren Binnendifferenzierungen dennoch wenig bekannte Schwarze Szene. / First, the study provides an overview of the current state of research in Germany concerning the „black scene”. After the presentation of the history and development of the scene a comprehensive stylistic analysis is focused, which also introduces signs and symbols of this youth culture as well as their usage. In an empirical analysis the authoress draws a comparison in two ways: first between the self-perception of the scene on the one hand and the medial perception on the other hand, and secondly concerning the different medial representation in two different newspapers – the Leipziger Volkszeitung and the BILD-Zeitung. Based on qualitative and quantitative data, the authoress provides a complex insight into the goth scene, which is medial striking but nevertheless little known in its internal differentiations.

The objective of this thesis is to improve the understanding of human behavior that goes beyond monetary rewards. In particular, it investigates social influences in individual’s decision making in situations that involve coordination, competition, and deciding for others. Further, it compares how monetary and social outcomes are perceived. The common theme of all studies is uncertainty. The first four essays study individual decisions that have uncertain consequences, be it due to the actions of others or chance. The last essay, in turn, uses the advances in research on decision making under uncertainty to predict behavior in riskless choices. The first essay, Fairness Versus Efficiency: How Procedural Fairness Concerns Affect Coordination, investigates whether preferences for fair rules undermine the efficiency of coordination mechanisms that put some individuals at a disadvantage. The results from a laboratory experiment show that the existence of coordination mechanisms, such as action recommendations, increases efficiency, even if one party is strongly disadvantaged by the mechanism. Further, it is demonstrated that while individuals’ behavior does not depend on the fairness of the coordination mechanism, their beliefs about people’s behavior do. The second essay, Dishonesty and Competition. Evidence from a stiff competition environment, explores whether and how the possibility to behave dishonestly affects the willingness to compete and who the winner is in a competition between similarly skilled individuals. We do not find differences in competition entry between competitions in which dishonesty is possible and in which it is not. However, we find that due to the heterogeneity in propensity to behave dishonestly, around 20% of winners are not the best-performing individuals. This implies that the efficient allocation of resources cannot be ensured in a stiff competition in which behavior is unmonitored. The third essay, Tracing Risky Decision Making for Oneself and Others: The Role of Intuition and Deliberation, explores how individuals make choices under risk for themselves and on behalf of other people. The findings demonstrate that while there are no differences in preferences for taking risks when deciding for oneself  and for others, individuals have greater decision error when choosing for other individuals. The differences in the decision error can be partly attributed to the differences in information processing; individuals employ more deliberative cognitive processing when deciding for themselves than when deciding for others. Conducting more information processing when deciding for others is related to the reduction in decision error. The fourth essay, The Effect of Decision Fatigue on Surgeons’ Clinical Decision Making, investigates how mental depletion, caused by a long session of decision making, affects surgeon’s decision to operate. Exploiting a natural experiment, we find that surgeons are less likely to schedule an operation for patients who have appointment late during the work shift than for patients who have appointment at the beginning of the work shift. Understanding how the quality of medical decisions depends on when the patient is seen is important for achieving both efficiency and fairness in health care, where long shifts are popular. The fifth essay, Preferences for Outcome Editing in Monetary and Social Contexts, compares whether individuals use the same rules for mental representation of monetary outcomes (e.g., purchases, expenses) as for social outcomes (e.g., having nice time with friends). Outcome editing is an operation in mental accounting that determines whether individuals prefer to first combine multiple outcomes before their evaluation (integration) or evaluate each outcome separately (segregation). I find that the majority of individuals express different preferences for outcome editing in the monetary context than in the social context. Further, while the results on the editing of monetary outcomes are consistent with theoretical predictions, no existing model can explain the editing of social outcomes.

The success of any public-private partnership (PPP) project in a country is largely dependent on the country’s maturity on critical success factors (CSFs) that made PPP projects successful. Thus, identification of metrics and standards for measuring the maturity of stakeholder organisations on CSFs for PPP projects implementation remains a challenge. Though studies on CSFs for PPP projects abound, approaches of using CSFs to develop PPP process maturity received scarce attention. Against this backdrop, this research becomes imperative to create efficient and transparent operational strategies with a view to using CSFs to develop process maturity for stakeholder organisations in PPP projects in Nigeria. Data for the research were obtained through mixed methods approach namely: quantitative and qualitative approaches. Questionnaires were administered on five different stakeholder organisations comprised public sector authorities (i.e. ministries, department, and agencies), concessionaires, local lenders/banks, consultants, and contractors involved in different PPP projects implementation in Nigeria. The data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Also, the qualitative approach was conducted through an expert forum and six PPP infrastructure project case studies in Lagos metropolis, Nigeria. The expert forum was constituted to refine and verify the conceptual framework developed. Also, structured interviews were conducted with primary stakeholders in the six PPP infrastructure project case studies in the study area. The research identified fourteen CSFs that made PPP infrastructure projects successful in Nigeria. These CSFs were employed for capability maturity levels definition ranging from level 1(Ad hoc) to level 5(Optimising) in accordance to Capability Maturity Model (CMM) concept. This led to the development of stakeholder organisations capability enhancement framework (SOCEF) in PPP infrastructure projects in Nigeria. The framework was validated by PPP experts to ensure it is comprehensive, objective, practical, replicable, reliable, and suitable for use in Nigeria. Thus, a quantitative assessment tool was developed with the framework in assessing the current capability maturity levels of stakeholder organisations involved in PPP infrastructure projects on fourteen CSFs identified in this research. The findings revealed that public sector organisations were between maturity level 1 and maturity level 2 (out of 5 maturity levels) on CSFs applicable to them. The majority of the private sector organisations were in maturity level 2 on CSFs associated with them. It is established in this research that Nigeria’s maturity is between maturity level 1 and maturity level 2 (out of 5 maturity levels) on CSFs that made PPP infrastructure projects successful. The findings emanated from this research provided both the theoretical and practical contributions to knowledge. The theoretical contributions include the methodology for developing capability maturity levels in PPPs, new insights into the usefulness of CSFs in PPP projects, and contributed to the wider body of knowledge of process improvement in the construction industry at large. The practical contributions are the capability level definitions and enhancement framework for PPP practice, and the specific CSFs for PPP infrastructure projects in Nigeria. The framework developed in this research had provided the benchmark for the identification of methodical approach and standard to process improvement in PPP infrastructure projects in Nigeria. It is believed that the framework would provide a useful guide and roadmaps for improvement by indicating ‘what’ needs to be done by stakeholder organisations involved in PPP projects in achieving higher capability maturity levels on identified CSFs for PPP projects in Nigeria and developing countries at large. Thus, the framework could be used to benchmark future studies.

As with other forms of green crime, timber trafficking is frequently overlooked by traditional criminology. This research is an exploratory investigation into the problem of timber trafficking in Vietnam, which aims to obtain a detailed understanding of the typology of, victimisation from, and key factors driving this crime. To achieve this aim, 41 semi-structured interviews with seven different cohorts (environmental police, investigative police, forest protection officers, commune authorities, forest-based inhabitants, timber traders, and green NGO staff) were conducted. Over one hundred pages of official documents (criminal case records, operational reports, and conference papers), and more than two hundred relevant newspapers were collected and analysed to enhance and triangulate the primary data. This research reveals a multifaceted typology of timber trafficking in Vietnam, comprising five different components: harvesting, transporting, trading, supporting, and processing. Each of these components is further constituted by distinctive, parallel forms of illicit operation. There are, for example, three parallel forms of illegal timber harvesting, termed small-scale, medium-scale and large-scale (SSITH, MSITH and LSITH). While having certain overlaps, in general SSITH, MSITH and LSITH are fundamentally distinctive not only in terms of the volumes of illicit timber they produce and the methods of illegally felling trees they employ, as typically identified in the previous studies, but more importantly in terms of the harvesters‘ attributes, their motivations, and the sophistication and security implications of the criminal operations. It is thus argued that the typology of illegal timber harvesting in this research challenges the typical classification in the existing literature, and offers an alternative way of understanding more comprehensively the dynamic of illegal logging. Regarding the victimisation from timber trafficking, due to the employment of a broad conceptual framework of human security, it is revealed that timber trafficking has substantial harmful impacts on all seven elements of human security: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political. These impacts are closely interconnected, but vary between different groups of victims. These findings culminate in the proposal that there are three main typical characteristics of green victimisation: suffering hierarchy, victim-offender overlap, and multidimensionality. Additionally, the employment of a human security paradigm in this research leads to another proposal that it is highly achievable and productive to integrate perspectives from the field of security studies into the discipline of green criminology, for the purpose of systematically examining green victimisation. Finally, this research offers five solutions to control timber trafficking in the context of Vietnam, by refining the current policy framework of forest governance and improving the efficiency of law enforcement.

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is a concept which has developed over the past five decades through a range of fields. It is based on the premise that modifications to the built and natural environment can reduce both crime and fear, and improve the overall quality of life. CPTED relies on the cooperation of a variety of agencies; however, research has revealed important inherent difficulties regarding multi-agency working and that current practice is neither sustainable nor does it consider social characteristics which may impact upon crime and the effectiveness of CPTED initiatives. Criticisms of diverse factors relating to CPTED have been expressed but how robust such criticisms are and if suitable resolutions exist has not been explored. Using a mixed methods approach, this PhD seeks to improve and update the CPTED concept by addressing issues of communication and collaboration between CPTED stakeholders, and suggests robust ways of enhancing the social context within CPTED planning. The research answers the following fundamental questions: what are the underlying problems of the CPTED concept and how did they come to fruition; and can the approach to CPTED planning be re-examined and updated to reduce the inherent underlying difficulties and improve the transferability and practical application of CPTED initiatives. The research highlights language and definition inconsistencies in the CPTED framework, transferability and engagement issues between CPTED stakeholders and an unestablished but vital link between CPTED and social sustainability and context. The thesis delivers three major academic contributions to new knowledge. It firmly identifies failings in the CPTED concept since its inception to present; it proposes an updated framework which is theoretically driven, and represents a holistic catchment of all CPTED knowledge; and it makes a solid link between crime prevention and the sustainable development of communities highlighting its importance for context analysis.

The contemporary juridico-political and bioethical debate over physician assisted dying has emerged as one of the most divisive of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Commonly strained through Western conceptions of individual rights and near ubiquitous calls for the respect an abstractly defined human dignity, popular discourse on assisted dying tends to promote universal understandings of both human beings as well as ethical, legal, moral action. This thesis, however, holds these debates in abeyance preferring rather to explore the ways in which the possibility of an assisted death creates a more meaningful dying space for many Canadian advocates. And though I cannot answer for everyone, for many of the 24 individuals I spent months interviewing, “hanging out” with and generally following around to various meetings/training sessions, the assisted death is not some nihilistic response to the suffering of our materially bounded/feeling bodies, but a contemporary recurrence of a deeply spiritual, relational and artful dying.

When we watch an expert perform, how does that inform our own knowledge and skills in that subject, or establish what our potential might be to become a ‘better’ learner? There is much policy and rhetoric around the development of this ‘expert’ learner through ‘Learner Voice’ initiatives, yet this is a sparsely researched area. Mainly anecdotal, with poorly documented methodology, it is also heavily biased towards compulsory-aged education. This study, set within Further Education, adds to knowledge by providing evidence of how learners can improve the quality of teaching, and their own learning, through direct involvement in reflection and discussion with teachers. It also considers the implications of this for those involved: learners, teachers, the organisation and wider policy. Using an action-research model, and observations, eight volunteer participants from a teacher training curriculum area engaged with this study: two ‘learners’, each paired with a different ‘teacher’ for the observation; three teaching staff who were ‘observed’; and the curriculum area manager. Interviews were conducted throughout the research, with main participants interviewed up to three times to draw out their phenomenological interpretations and reflections. Working within a community of learning, with multiple points of interaction and ‘layers’, two theoretical frameworks were used in analysing the interviews: communities of practice and ecological learning systems. Finding them insufficient in isolation, to improve the data analysis, and the nuances of these layers – ‘micro’, ‘meso’, ‘exo’ and ‘macro’ – a ‘continuum of practice’ was devised to combine these frameworks. Additional theoretical concepts – self-efficacy, self-esteem, self-concept and self-categorization theories – were also used to interpret evidence of an individual’s sense of identity and their perceived trajectory. Evidence suggests interactions within observation partnerships, including those observed, were influenced by the theoretical framework embedded within that interaction: an appropriate framework approach can enhance the quality of outcome from these collaborations.

While there has been research regarding the effectiveness of teaching strategies to teach science to students with learning disabilities (LD), the viewpoints and experiences of students with learning disabilities using narratives have not received the same attention. This study was conducted to explore the beliefs and feelings of students with learning disabilities about their science learning experiences during their high school years. Vygotsky’s theory on Social Constructivism was used to examine the interaction of cognitive processes such as perceptions and attributions; behavioral features such as social skills and communication difficulties; and, environmental factors such as teaching techniques and peer interactions. These factors are interacting determinants of learning and classroom participation. Due to the social nature of schooling and disability, the social model of disability approach was considered the most efficient way to address this issue of learning of science with learning disabilities. Eight undergraduate students with LD were interviewed about their experiences of learning science in mainstream science classrooms. Four themes emerged after thematic analysis of the narrative interview data: a) understanding of learning disability; b) finding resources and strategies for learning science with LD; c) overcoming difficulties in learning science with technology; d) learner autonomy and science learning experiences with LD. The salient feature of these themes showed that the participants had an adequate understanding of their LDs, and the difficulties they faced in learning of science subjects due to their learning disabilities. The stigmatizing experiences of low achievement in science subjects and the initial reaction of some teachers triggered sad and angry feelings, and all the students longed to be more pushed to their higher potential in science learning. Participants then sought help from More Knowledgeable Others (MKO), they used assistive technology and developed their own strategies to overcome difficulties they were facing in learning science. The difficulties in learning of science subjects indicated by the participants have consequences; these difficulties may result in student’s reduced motivation in learning, disengagement from school, leaving school prematurely, and may cause depression in students who drop out of school. These possible consequences and the dissatisfaction expressed by the participants in this study implicate a need to continually assess students with LDs knowledge of, perceptions of, and experiences with their science learning, both in research and actual practice. In turn, this greater consideration of participant’s viewpoints may have a positive influence on the success of high school science education programs and the social-emotional development of students with LD.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / At primary school learners are excited about mathematics. This may be an indication that learning related to familiar contexts, connected to the learners’ interests, values and goals is necessary for motivation. At secondary school level learners begin to question the applicability of certain topics in the school syllabus and sometimes do not see the necessity of mathematics in their future careers. This is an indication that they are apprehensive regarding the relevance of mathematics in various contexts. However, relevance has a point of reference, what is relevant to a teacher is not necessarily relevant to the learner and what is relevant to a text book writer might not be relevant to the text book reader. As mathematics educators endeavour to encourage learners to appreciate the relevance of mathematics to everyday life, it is important to be aware of their interests. It is crucial to be informed on the subject areas they desire to know about in order to plan classroom activities that will occupy them in purposeful activity.Usually contexts for learning are chosen by adults without conferring with learners at any point. The present study investigated learners' preferences for contexts to use in learning school mathematics. Furthermore the study sought to establish motivations learners have for preferring particular contexts. The problem the study addressed was that of absence of learners' contribution in contexts used to learn mathematics. The aim was to find out the contexts learners preferred and the reasons they gave for their preferences. It is important to be aware of learners' preferences when choosing contexts to use in teaching. Preferences improve motivation and learning. Furthermore, consulting them sends a message that they matter and have an important role to play in their education. / South Africa