Increasing unemployment and low economic growth are of growing concern in the world economy and a recognised intervention to combat these challenges is entrepreneurship. Tourism has been acknowledged as an underexploited sector with considerable potential for addressing these challenges. In order to advance entrepreneurial activity, it is essential for students to possess the necessary entrepreneurial skills. However, the absence of consensus on the content of training courses and curricula is currently a concern in the field of entrepreneurship. South African higher education institutions need to redefine their roles and academics should take heed, and ensure that the curricula that they provide correspond with the requirements of practitioners. Through analysing the development skills of successful entrepreneurs, the focus of training courses and curricula can be established. This study constitutes exploratory research into an important issue facing many higher education institutions today and is supported by a detailed literature review and an empirical study. Higher education institutions have to remain competitive due to the turbulent and changeable environment within which they operate. The literature review, in accordance with the scope and limitations of the study, concentrated on the principles of tourism management, together with the entrepreneurial and marketing development skills essential to tourism entrepreneurs. For the empirical part of the study, a self-administered questionnaire was sent to a sample of tourism enterprise owners, tourism management academics and tourism management students. The objective was to develop a set of guidelines for the content of the entrepreneurship and marketing subjects for tourism management students. The research findings provide a balanced view in that they incorporate the perceptions of tourism enterprise owners, tourism management academics and tourism management students. The skills analysed within this study, together with the suggested implementation method, can be used to guide the structured integration of the development of these skills into tourism management programmes. The intention of the study was to cover a wide range of entrepreneurial and marketing development skills essential for the tourism entrepreneur, so that a clear set of skills could be formulated for the recommended inclusion into the content of tourism entrepreneurship and marketing curricula. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Business Management))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

The purpose of this study has been to describe and analyze how seven Swedish preschool teachers and two special education teachers think and work with children who show a lack of social skills. The study method has been semi-structured interviews with the educators which have been analyzed and sorted under different themes/categories. The theoretical framework used in this study is sociocultural, relational and categorical perspectives. These perspectives have been chosen in order to better understand how teachers see their role in supporting children in need of special support. The environment in the preschool is found to be of great help and the teachers’ approach is of great importance.The research emphasizes the importance of integrating thinking, feeling and behavior. Social skills are an important part of the pre-school assignment. The children have to learn how to¨cooperate and empathize with others. The result of the study shows that children’s skills in playing and taking turns are the biggest issues in the daily activities. The teachers see an important task in helping children achieve social competence and helping children translate their emotions. The special education team assists greatly in the preschool teachers’ work with children in need of special support.

<p>This study investigated the extent to which skills development is implemented within the naval dockyard Simon's Town within the context of the NSDS and the various forms of legislation. In March 2001 the Department of Labour embarked on an initiative called the National Skills-Development Strategy to address unemployment, and thus enhancing the economy. One of the areas that were identified to address the above concerns was the skills-development of its people. It is against this background that this study investigated the implementation of the NSDS within the Naval Dockyard.</p>

Mental-state and emotion understanding are important constructs for successful interpretation of behaviour and interaction with others. While false-belief understanding has been the main focus of investigations into children�s mentalising over the past 30 years, we now have tasks available that allow assessment of a broader range and more advanced set of mentalising skills amongst older age groups of typically developing young people (Baron-Cohen, Jolliffe, Mortimore, & Robertson, 1997a; Baron-Cohen, O�Riordan, Stone, Jones, & Plaisted, 1999; Happé, 1994). A recent trend has seen a shift away from investigating when children attain these skills towards examining individual differences in their performance. This has included consideration of both the factors that contribute to (Carlson & Moses, 2001; Hughes & Dunn, 1997; Meins et al., 2002; Milligan, Astington, & Dack, 2007; Ruffman, Slade, & Crowe, 2002), and the factors that are influenced by (Astington & Jenkins, 2000; Cassidy, Werner, Rourke, Zubernis, & Balaraman, 2003; Diesendruck & Ben-Eliyahu, Repacholi, Slaughter, Pritchard, & Gibbs, 2003) individual differences in mental-state understanding. One of the interesting questions in this area is what are the subsequent benefits or harm that individual differences in mentalising and emotion skills hold for children�s social competence? The current study investigates young people�s growing socioemotional understanding and how it is related to their social abilities, both prosocial and antisocial. The aims were to provide information on the relations amongst advanced mental-state skills, to investigate how these skills were related to emotion understanding, and, further, to investigate how socioemotional skills were related to social competence. The current study also extended the literature by addressing these aims amongst older children. Two studies were conducted, involving children (4- to 7-years) seen on four occasions in a three-year longitudinal study, and adolescents (13- to 17-years) in a cross-sectional study. There were a number of key findings. Individual differences in children�s advanced mental-state understanding are relatively stable across time, and the relations which they show with emotion skills are more consistent when examining tasks that shared skill sets. Language plays an important mediating role in the relation between socioemotional skills, although this influence appears to decrease with age. Mental-state and emotion understanding are both important for children and adolescents� social competence. It seems that greater socioemotional abilities influence prosocial behaviours, and poorer socioemotional abilities influence antisocial behaviours. Overall, the current study provides evidence that socioemotional skills are overlapping but distinct constructs, that they show varied interactions in social settings, and that future investigations of how children come to understand and interact with others will be best served by careful consideration of appropriate measures and by including multiple aspects of children�s social cognition.

The ultimate purpose of this study was to investigate how to best prepare Singapore students for the Knowledge-based Economy (KBE). Investigating the possible need for the realignment of the primary science assessment to the KBE was of utmost interest as assessment was viewed as the driver of the actual curriculum. This was a mixed methods design study (Creswell, 2005). Fifteen teachers were first interviewed to ascertain the major features of primary school science assessment in both Perth, Western Australia and Singapore. A list of twelve questions was prepared for the eight teacher interviewees in Singapore and the seven teacher interviewees in Perth. The NUD*IST program was used to help organise trends in these teacher responses. Definitions of KBE skills were synthesised from literature reviews and validated by the fifteen teachers for the subsequent survey. The survey involved a list of demographic questions and two matrices. The first matrix required the teachers to rate, on a four-point scale, the use of the eleven assessment modes for the twelve 'process' and KBE skills. The second matrix was a frequency check to determine if the teachers had used a particular mode to assess a particular skill. One hundred and forty-five usable surveys were analysed. The Rasch analysis was performed through RUMM2020 program and unfolding model was sought through the program RateFOLD. The interviews first established that KBE skills and a variety of assessment modes were needed for today's classes. The survey confirmed these needs and found that the paper and pencil test was the most frequently used assessment procedures in Singapore and Perth. In both interviews and the survey, teachers were requested to match the skill(s) to the appropriate assessment mode(s) though the details and justification of such tasks were explained by the teachers in the interviews. In the process, other factors such as 'time constraints' and 'ranking of the teachers' were uncovered as 'hindrances' to teachers assessing the students appropriately for learning. The problems identified by the Singapore teachers were a lack of time, overloaded syllabi and the crucial perceived need of assessment of learning (high-stake summative tests). The results of both the interviews and survey supported the need for a variety of assessment modes (Gray & Sharp, 2001; Hackling, 2004; National Research Council, 1996, 2001 & 2003; Sebatane, 1998; Sterenberg, 1998) to help students learn science in today's contemporary classes. The Singapore teachers in this study were also appealing for help from the policy-makers to use a variety of assessment modes as the system that stipulated the use of the paper and pencil testing was beyond their control and jurisdiction. Recommendations that stemmed from this study include allowing teachers to use a variety of assessments to assess the students' learning in the high-stake Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) and not just the paper and pencil mode that has been in used for at least the last thirty years. There are important implications as the learning theories that are currently used to support the assessment of learning are no longer sufficient nor in total alignment with the needs for today's class. For example, a behaviourist taxonomy of skills emphasises the measurable output and not the process of learning. Socio-constructivist approaches that focus on the individual constructing meaning in hislher context such as the use of ongoing formative assessment to encourage feedback (Black & Wiliam, 1998a & b) may assist in engaging the students in lifelong learning which is required in the KBE. Lastly, the significance of this study lies in two aspects, the practical and the scholarly. This study provides the evidence for the need primary science assessment to be more aligned to contemporary needs. This in turn will assist in better preparing the young of Singapore, who are the nation's only natural resource, for the workforce. This study also aims to contribute to the body of knowledge in three ways. Firstly, KBE needs will be connected to the primary science classroom via assessment of skills. Secondly, both KBE and process skills were found to be more appropriately assessed by assessment modes such as portfolio and paper and pencil respectively, as demonstrated through the analysis by Rasch and unfolding models. Thirdly, the gap between the implemented and official curriculum will be narrowed with this proposed change in assessment processes.

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Communication Disorders, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-78).

Thesis (M. Ed.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1992. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2748. Abstract precedes thesis as [1] preliminary leaf. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-71).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Texas A & M University, 2004. / Title taken from PDF title screen (viewed October 23, 2007). Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-74) and appendices.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1992.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 233-266).