The aim of this study was to investigate the responsiveness of rural primary schools in Zimbabwe to the needs of in-school OVC. The study adopted a qualitative approach in which the phenomenological and case study designs were employed to study in-school OVC in their natural setting. The target population for the study comprises OVCs, principals and school counsellors. From this population, a sample of 24 participants was purposively drawn. Data was collected from the participants in the three sampled rural primary schools in Masvingo district through in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, document analysis and observation. Tesch’s model was applied to analyse data qualitatively. The study revealed that rural primary schools’ capacity to address the needs of in-school OVC was deemed ineffective by all the participants due to a myriad of factors which include inter-alia: lack of specialist school-counsellors; lack of funds to initiate school-based projects aimed to assist OVC; lack of a comprehensive school-feeding scheme; and a dearth of workshops to equip principals and teachers with knowledge to handle and deal with OVC. To improve the responsiveness of schools to the needs of OVC the study recommends that the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education should train specialist counsellors in teachers’ colleges. The study also recommends that the government should increase funds allocated for the Basic Education Assisted Module scheme to cater for more OVC. In addition, the study recommends that the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education should conduct workshops in schools on how to deal with challenges confronting OVC. Lastly a model to improve rural primary schools’ capacity to address the needs of OVC was suggested, which proposes partnerships among stakeholders in projects aimed at supporting in-school OVC. / Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Socio-Education)

Background: Policy initiatives to promote sustainable travel through the use of Internet based public information systems have increased during the last decade. Stockholm, in being one of the first cities in Europe to implement an Internet based service for facilitating sustainable travel is believed to be a good candidate for an analysis of key issues for developing sustainable travel planning services to the public. Aim: This thesis investigates the past development of two Stockholm based public information systems and their services in order to draw lessons on how to better provide for a public information service geared towards facilitating  environmentally sustainable travel planning through information and communications technology. The overall goal of the thesis is to contribute to an understanding on how to better design and manage current and future attempts at facilitating sustainable travel planning services based on historical case studies. Approach: The thesis draws ideas from the concept of organizational responsiveness – an organization’s ability to listen, understand and respond to demands put to it by its internal and external stakeholders – in order to depict how well or not the two public information systems and their owners have adapted to established norms and values of their surroundings. Results: Overall, the findings from the historical case studies suggest that organizations attempting to provide sustainable travel planning to the public need to design and manage their systems in such a way that it responds to shifting demands on how to provide for information. Implementing and embedding new technologies involves complex processes of change both at the micro level – for users and practitioners of the service – and at the meso level for the involved public service organizations themselves. This condition requires a contextualist framework to analyze and understand organizational, contextual and cultural issues involved in the adoption of new technologies and procedures. Conclusions: The thesis concludes with a discussion on how the findings from the historical case studies may provide lessons for both current and future attempts at providing public information systems geared towards facilitating environmentally sustainable travel planning to the public. Historical examples and issues concerning collective intelligence and peer to peer based forms of designing, producing and supervising public information services identified throughout the study are looked upon and discussed in terms of their possible role in increasing the potential for public information services to facilitate sustainable urban transport. / <p>QC 20140319</p> / TRACS, Travel Planner for Sustainable Cities