published_or_final_version / Transport Policy and Planning / Master / Master of Arts

Contemporary South African planning practice is rich in detail, complexity and innovation born out of a need to fulfil a post-apartheid development agenda. This practice warrants theorising. This dissertation aims to advance the concept of critical pragmatism into an analytical framework that will facilitate the analysis and theorising of one such complex planning case, and its delivery. The case study examines the Kathorus Special Integrated Presidential Project (KSiPP) – an ambitious, large-scale strategic planning programme that was by many accounts successful in achieving a substantial range and scale of outcomes in an exceedingly complex underdeveloped and violence-ridden context. This case provides the material for a deeper analysis of what actually happened in the project, through the application of my framework. Within the dissertation I define critical pragmatism as a concept for exploring planning practice as: An analytical framework for examining the actual processes and outcomes of planning practice that is contextually situated; that operates within and through pervasive power relations, which are exercised through and influenced by multiple rationalities, and practice in which the planning choices that are made are valueladen and mutable. This framework is comprised of five interrelated elements. These are: context, outcomes, power, rationality and ethics. These are derived through a study of the philosophical roots of critical and pragmatic schools of planning. My interrogation of these roots and planning traditions, especially with reference to thinkers such as Dewey, Habermas, Foucault, Harrison, among others, finds that while the critical traditions predominantly foreground power, the pragmatic traditions predominantly focus on action and outcome. Each tradition is limited and a conversation between them, in an integrated critical pragmatism produces a framework that can address the sort of complexities manifest in the KSiPP. Out of this conversation and the identification of ethics as an element somewhat lacking in both traditions, a contemporary critical pragmatic analytical framework is derived and substantiated, with significant implications for the discipline of planning. My own involvement as a practitioner in the project provides close methodological benefits and insights for the thesis. The research methodology employed in this thesis focuses on case study techniques, with a strong leaning on practice writing. An in-depth literature review research into theoretical concepts in planning and philosophy has enabled the development of an appropriate framework for analysis. The application of my framework yields deep and nuanced findings of the KSiPP. These include the extent to which context and circumstances contributed to the project, whose means and ends were multifaceted. The explicit assessment of power in the project illuminates its many faces in its institutional, collaborative and personal forms. A precise examination of the rationalities that were at play finds competing political and technical rationalities, and their relationships with power and action. Finally, an assessment of the project against the ethical question of justice, found it lacking and modified the sense of the KSiPP as an entirely successful endeavour. The value of critical pragmatism is that it enables a conversation between the analytical efforts to understand planning practice and outcome, and the efforts to analyse the power, rationality and ethical choices inherent in planning processes. It also takes what is implicit within such frameworks and particularly in the work of Forester, who has written of a critical pragmatic approach to planning, and makes this explicit and thus available for use in further evaluation.

The intent of this exploratory case study was: (1)to compare a model of expected formal business plan content with the content of actual business plans developed within a single company, (2)to develop a modified model of formal business plan content which recognizes organizational influences on plan content, (3)to propose a method for evaluating business plans based on this modified model. The firm studied was Fast Delta Corporation, a "Fortune 500" multidivisional manufacturing company in a high technology industry. The business plan content analyzed in this study was produced through a planning system similar to those implemented by other multidivisional companies. In this study, planning by middle managers rather than top management was the primary focus. The study method was based on the analysis of formal plan content rather than direct observation or inquiry about the planning process. Study steps included: (1)test of goodness of fit between a simple model of expected business plan content and the actual content of business plans produced through the Fast Delta Corporation planning system. (2)analysis of deviations of the actual content from the expected content model. This analysis included comparison of actual formal plan content with non-content characteristics of the formal plans, with the content of business strategy case studies from other firms, and with the content of Fast Delta Corporation managers' responses to case studies in business strategy. The results of this study showed that Fast Delta Corporation formal business plan content was influenced by several factors. These included short-term corporate-wide concerns; shared assumptions among managers about the strengths and limitations of the study firm; and constraints on strategy which may be characteristic of other firms with similar structure, at a similar life cycle stage, or within the same industry. From these results a modified model of business plan content was developed which considered these influences. The validity of this model suggests that the plan analysis techniques used in this study were effective techniques for identifying the planning assumptions which underlie business plan content produced through a firm's formal business planning system. The results and conclusions of this study are significant for top management, middle management, corporate planning staff, and those doing research in strategic planning.

Not available / text

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

published_or_final_version / Urban Studies / Master / Master of Social Sciences

This study aimed to identify the influences on the development and sustainability of education for librarianship and information management. It analysed the factors that contribute to the development of education for librarianship and information management, drawing on theories of change management and the transfer of innovation, and the contextual factors suggested by theories of comparative librarianship. The investigation of these factors focused on a case study of developments in Iraq up to 2003. It examined education for librarianship and information management against the background of the creation of the country’s library and information services, and the broader context of its national, economic, and social development. It also considered trends in international perspectives on library development, and the advice and assistance offered to Iraq. To provide a benchmark for developments in Iraq, it contrasted developments there with brief summaries of parallel developments in other Arab countries and in the cognate field of education for archives and records management in Iraq. It drew evidence from the published literature, previously unexplored archival material, and discussions with some of the participants. From an evaluation of the evidence, the study developed models of the value chain in developing education in the field, illustrating the complex interactions that need to be considered. These represent the generic factors that appear critical to the sustainable development of education for librarianship and information management not only in developing countries but also in countries that are seeking to strengthen the foundations of education in this field. The conclusions also pointed to a number of specific issues that fostered or hindered development in Iraq, including trends in international assistance. The study calls for further work including investigating the impact of traditional and cultural attitudes on the development of education in the field, and understanding of how future generations of LIS professionals in Iraq could develop as change agents.

Since the early 2000s, Social Media has become part of the everyday activity of billions of people. Museums and galleries are part of this major cultural change - the largest museums attract millions of Social Media 'friends' and 'followers', and museums now use Social Media channels for marketing and audience engagement activities. Social Media has also become a more heavily-used source of data with which to investigate human behaviour. Therefore, this research investigated the potential uses of Social Media information to aid activities such as exhibition planning and development, or fundraising, in museums. Potential opportunities provided by the new Social Media platforms include the ability to capture data at high volume and then analyse them computationally. For instance, the links between entities on a Social Media platform can be analysed. Who follows who? Who created the content related to a specific event, and when? How did communication flow between people and organisations? The computerised analysis techniques used to answer such questions can generate statistics for measuring concepts such as the 'reach' of a message across a network (often equated simply with the potential size of the a message's audience) or the degree of 'engagement' with content (often a simple count of the number of responses, or the number of instances of communication between correspondents). Other computational analysis opportunities related to Social Media rely upon various Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques; for example indexing content and counting term frequency, or using lexicons or online knowledge bases to relate content to concepts. Museums, galleries and other cultural organisations have known for some time, however, that simple quantifications of their audiences (the number of tickets sold for an exhibition, for example), while certainly providing indications of an event's success, do not tell the whole story. While it is important to know that thousands of people have visited an exhibition, it is also part of a museum's remit to inspire the audience, too. A budding world-class artist or ground-breaking engineer could have been one of the thousands in attendance, and the exhibition in question could have been key to the development of their artistic or technical ideas. It is potentially helpful to museums and galleries to know when they have inspired members of their audience, and to be able to tell convincing stories about instances of inspiration, if their full value to society is to be judged. This research, undertaken in participation with two museums, investigated the feasibility of using new data sources from Social Media to capture potential expressions of inspiration made by visitors. With a background in IT systems development, the researcher developed three prototype systems during three cycles of Action Research, and used them to collect and analyse data from the Twitter Social Media platform. This work had two outcomes: firstly, prototyping enabled investigation of the technical constraints of extracting data from a Social Media platform (Twitter), and the computing processes used to analyse that data. Secondly, and more importantly, the prototypes were used to assess potential changes to the work of museum staff information about events visited and experienced by visitors was synthesised, then investigated, discussed and evaluated with the collaborative partners, in order to assess the meaning and value of such information for them. Could the museums use the information in their event and exhibition planning? How might it fit in with event evaluation? Was it clear to the museum what the information meant? What were the risks of misinterpretation? The research made several contributions. Firstly, the research developed a definition of inspiration that resonated with museum staff. While this definition was similar to the definition of 'engagement' from the marketing literature, one difference was an emphasis upon creativity. The second set of contributions related to a deeper understanding of Social Media from museums' perspective, and included findings about how Social Media information could be used to segment current and potential audiences by 'special interest', and find potential expressions of creativity and innovation in the audience's responses to museum activities. These findings also considered some of the pitfalls of working with data from Social Media, in particular the tendency of museum staff to use the information to confirm positive biases, and the often hidden biases caused by the mediating effects of the platforms from which the data came. The final major contribution was a holistic analysis of the ways in which Social Media information could be integrated into the work of a museum, by helping to plan and evaluate audience development and engagement. This aspect of the research also highlighted some of the dangers of an over-dependency upon individual Social Media platforms which was previously absent from the museums literature.

Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Previous studies of lesson preparation groups (LPG; beikezu) have not dealt with the impact of LPG on teachers’ reflective practice. This qualitative case study was an exploration of LPG group leaders’ (beike zuzhang) facilitation of LPG meetings (beike zuhui) to gain insights on reflective practices in LPG meetings. The study involved 54 participants: 29 participants (LPG group leaders and teachers) were interviewed and observed; 20 participants (teachers) were observed; and 5 participants (school leaders) were interviewed. In addition to in-depth interviews and on-site observations, two questionnaires were used to expose a holistic picture of group learning and reflection in LPG meetings. The results indicate school leaders’ perceptions and values of reflective practices have an influence on the interdependence of LPG group leaders’ preparation and facilitation of meeting content and teachers’ attitudes and engagement toward reflection in LPG meetings. School leaders expected teachers to engage in reflection inside and outside of LPG meetings, but teachers’ practices were not aligned with school leaders’ expectations, given the differing understandings of LPG goals. Schools did not have evaluative plans for reflection in LPG meetings. LPG group leaders prepared teachers to understand the upcoming week teaching content and progress. However, LPG group leaders lacked facilitation skills for encouraging reflective group discussions. They were also reluctant to deal with group dynamics challenges proactively. Teachers’ experiences of reflection depended on the purpose of meetings and meeting agendas. Teachers were more likely to engage in reflective discussions with colleagues when LPG meetings involved clear purposes, guiding questions, constructive feedback, and guided future actions. The creating reflective practice in LPG meetings model was proposed to address the interdependence between stakeholders, with the mindsets and skillsets needed for LPG group leaders and teachers. The research results represent a step toward developing school-based reflective practice professional learning communities (PLCs).