Using TIMSS data set on MENA countries, this study examines the determinants of educational outcome and gender inequality of learning in eight selected countries. The complicated structure of the data has been considered carefully during all the stages of the analysis employing plausible values and jackknife standard error technique to accommodate the measurement error of the dependant variable and the clustering of students in classes and schools. The education production functions provide broad evidence from mean and quantile analysis of very low returns to schooling; few school variables are significant and none have effects across countries and quantiles. In general, student characteristics were far more important than school factors in explaining test scores, but there was considerable variability across countries in which specific factors were significant. Strikingly, computer usage was found to influence students’ performance negatively in six MENA countries. Only Turkey and Iran had a significant positive effect of computer usage on maths achievements. Gender inequality of academic achievement has been investigated thoroughly using mean and quantile decomposition analysis. There is mixed picture of gender inequality across the eight countries with three pro-boys, three pro-girls and two gender-neutral. This exercise gives no general pattern of gender inequality across MENA. A detailed analysis of Egyptian students’ achievements explains the differential gap between school types, notably being single or mixed sex and Arabic or language schools. Single-sex schools perform better than mixed schools especially for girls. The single-sex language schools are more effective than the Arabic single sex school. This confirms the dominance of the language schools and is also related to the style and social-economic status of enrolled students.

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The rapid growth of Mexico's railway networks represented the crowning achievement of the Porfiriato--that is, the regime headed by Porfirio Diaz, who ruled between 1876 and 1911. Having succeeded in bringing the internal stability needed for the growth and development of the economy, government officials repeatedly used the railroad as a symbol to highlight the accomplishments of Porfirian modernization and to legitimate the regime that had shed its liberal ideals and grown increasingly authoritarian. Boosters emphasized the ability of the government's railway project to bring civilization, to promote national unity, to increase commerce, and, even to whiten the population. At the same time, opposition groups, although not opposed to railway development per se, objected to the national costs and social hardships that resulted from the railway boom. Opponents, many of whom played influential roles in the Revolution (1910), exploited the symbolic and rhetorical power of the railroad to underscore the more negative aspects of Porfirian modernization and to question the so-called universal truths that defined the regime's civilizing mission. This study offers a radically different interpretation of how Porfirio Diaz maintained control of the country, stressing the importance of his supporter's success at exploiting the iconic power of the railway--the ultimate symbol of material progress--in literature, art, and pageantry. It offers a unique perspective on the outbreak of the 1910 Revolution, arguing that opponents of the regime used the railway as a metaphor to highlight the failures of the government's modernizing and civilizing mission, ideas also disseminated among the population in a myriad of cultural expressions.

The study aimed to explore, describe and interpret the challenges of the parents who care for diabetic children. The study aimed to attempt to highlight relevant issues that may assist the diabetic team in developing guidelines in managing diabetic children. The data were collected by engaging in face to face in depth interviews with parents of diabetic children who attended the outpatient clinic at a hospital in Durban. The interviews were guided by an interview guide, which allowed the researcher to cover all relevant areas of interest in a logical and uniformed way. The sample consisted of 16 participants, which was racially mixed. The findings of the study revealed that parents who have diabetic children experience many challenges while some are able to incorporate it into their daily lives others continue to experience problems despite the team involvement and education. Diabetes is a life long disease that requires continued management which includes ongoing education, family support, finances and support from the diabetes team. The study also revealed that caring for a diabetic child is expensive and many families struggle to meet their dietary needs due to financial constraints. The finding further revealed that diabetic children are often affected by the diagnosis and many withdraw from family, friends and social activities. Healthy siblings sometimes do not understand the child’s diabetes. In some instances, the parents’ relationships are affected as couples do not have couple time and the family’s lives are altered and most schools have minimal knowledge of diabetes. Based on these findings, recommendations regarding the required information and assistance to be given to the diabetic patients and family members were formulated. Schools have a role to play and the larger communities require diabetes awareness. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

This study investigated community members’ understanding of research and res earch collaboration. Their attitudes towards research, as well as their perceptions of research, were explored as were factors that affected their understanding of research and research collaboration. The study used maximum variation sampling to select 12 participants who occupy di fferent influential positions in the community. The current study was conducted in the eas tern part of KwaZulu-Natal. An interview guide was used to collect data, aimed at acquir ing in-depth understanding of community conceptions of research and research collaboration. The at titudes and perceptions of the research were examined. Lastly, factors that affect research and research collaboration were explored. The results suggest that the participants have a limited understanding of Wes tern research. Community training and education is thus warranted. Participants indicated that community members would appreciate the establishment of relationships characterised b y mutual respect for different world views held by researchers and participants. This was viewed a s a vehicle towards a more consultative approach to research which does not overlook the interface of world views for research outcomes to be useful. This was also perceived as likely to facil itate adequate participation in decision making in the research process. The involvement of key community members was emphasised. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

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In this thesis, First Nations popular music is examined as a polysemic sign (or symbolic form) whose meaning is mediated both socially and politically. Native popular music is a locus for the action of different social forces which interact in negotiating the nature and the meaning of the music. Music is socially meaningful in that it provides a means by which people construct and recognize social and cultural identities. As such, First Nations popular music functions as an emblem of symbolic differentiation between Canadian natives and non-natives. Native pop music plays host to a number of political meanings embedded in this syncretic musical form. Struggle over meaning is mediated within the music itself: in the lyrics, in the music, in the juxtaposition of musical styles, and between music and text. Mediation on all of these levels is further influenced by the mass media. Meaning on individual, local and national levels is dependent on the socio-political positioning of both the performers and the audience. Because socio-political positions are themselves fluid, political meanings are also in constant flux. As a polysemic sign vehicle, First Nations popular music is a locus for these various meanings and a site for the construction and deconstruction of political discourse.

Cross cultural education in art museums is an interesting and complex issue. While cultural exhibitions have received attention in research, studies have usually focused on the nature of the exhibitions and have not explored the audience's understanding about culture in relationship to the exhibition. This qualitative study explores how and what First Nations cultures have been mediated by a civic art museum and negotiated by the museum audience, and the relationship between the two. Observations of the exhibition and audience and interviews with 99 adults in the museum were collected and analyzed to identify patterns and relationships. Analysis of the exhibition found the mediation of culture was distinguished by a partnership of the museum and First Nations cultures which reflected both their languages and voices. Audience responses illustrated a range of affective, factual and conceptual responses. Positive affective responses reflected the stimulation and satisfaction with learning which occurred. Visitors indicated enlightenment, exposure and revision of previously held ideas and assumptions, similarities and differences among cultures, and insight into perspectives of others. Partnership between the museum and the exhibition of masks from Northwest First Nations cultures is seen as a complex undertaking requiring reflection and examination of these two cultures. Visitor responses to the exhibition indicates learning, thinking and innumerable ways individuals construct meanings and understanding from art museum experiences.

Anthony Cohen, in The Symbolic Construction of Community, writes: "the symbolic expression of community and its boundaries increases in importance as the actual geo-social boundaries of the community are undermined, blurred or otherwise weakened." As Japanese-Canadians were uprooted from familiar communities throughout British Columbia and overwhelmed with the loss of those closest to them, photography was employed to recentre themselves within a stable, yet somewhat imaginative, network of relations. Looking became an act of imaginative exchange with the subject - conflating the act of seeing with the act of knowing. Photographs became "the most cherished possession" at a time when all else familiar had been lost. It is my contention that domestic photographs and albums produced at this time worked to construct, preserve and contain the visual and imaginative narrative of cohesive family stability and communal belonging, despite divisive political differences, disparate geographical living situations, and elapsed family traditions. While acknowledging that photographs construct and embody a multiplicity of meanings, I am interested in the ways Japanese- Canadian albums were employed during the internment to foster a sense of place while internees existed in a liminal or transitional, marginal space. These representations attempt (and of course sometimes fail) to authenticate a seemingly cohesive biography. Declarations of positive experiences abound throughout the seven family albums I address in this project. Yet there is a double nature to these affirmations. Inscribing "happy times" or "joy" alludes to the silent binary of sadness that is effaced from the images. Representations of state surveillance and poor living conditions are virtually never included but did nonetheless exist. It is not my intention, however, to suggest that photographs are entirely deceptive anymore than they are undeniable truths. Rather, I want to argue that the production, organization and narration of photographs enabled internees to resist being subsumed by fears of persecution and obliteration. The intersection of the photographic image with the viewer constructs a narrative of stability, potentially resulting in a positive experience. Inscribing a positive identity onto images of one's body plays a role in the production of contentment: it is an act which simultaneously elides present troubles and safeguards fond memories for the future, it is a conscious and unconscious maneuver constituting one's personal history. Thus the images not only reinforce a positive experience, but also participate in creating one. It is only when anxieties cannot be contained that representation breaks down. "Intimate Archives" seeks to situate domestic photographs of Japanese-Canadians during the 1942- 1949 exile as intersecting with historical crisis and subjective narrative, tracing the possibilities of meaning for both the depicted subjects and the possessor of the images.

Advertising is an institution of economic, cultural and spatial regulation. This thesis examines the role of the advertising industry in mediating the geographies of markets and identities. In the same way that Stuart Ewen (1976) links the structure of the advertising industry in the 1920s to its role in the consolidation of national markets, mass consumption patterns and consumer identities congruent with Fordism, I tie the restructuring of the industry in the current period to the new regime of flexible accumulation. There is an increased need for information about consumers and a heightened design-intensity in flexible production. Institutions of power/knowledge such as advertising play an important role in linking production and consumption and in establishing a “just-in-time” consumption. In addition, through the process of “branding”, advertising agencies attach images to goods. Branding involves matching consumer identities with the “identities” of products. An important component of this process encompasses the formation of “brandscapes”, places where the product is sold and consumed. Advertising both responds to the location of consumers and situates consumers in space. At the same time that advertising has grown in importance, I find that the advertising industry is experiencing a crisis in the 1980s and 1990s. This crisis reflects a weakening of the industry’s ability to regulate the formation of markets and identities. The increasingly discontinuous and fluid spatial and temporal nature of consumer identities, combined with “reflexive modernization”, have made it increasingly difficult for advertisers to locate consumers in terms of both identity and space. In response to this crisis and under new conditions of flexible accumulation, U.S. agencies have reoriented both their organizational structure and their methods of operating. In terms of the reorganization of agencies themselves, I focus on two divergent tendencies in the 1980s and 1990s: the concentration! transnationalization of agencies on one hand, and the increased polarization/flexibility of agencies on the other. I draw upon trade journal literature and 55 interviews with employees. With respect to changing methods, I examine the role of agencies in processes of globalization, market segmentation and shifting gender identities. Increasingly sophisticated methods of monitoring consumers’ use of commodities, forms of resistance and places of consumption point to an escalation of surveillance in the current period. My thesis presents a contribution to debates over both flexibility and identity. I argue that the distinction between producer and consumer has become increasingly blurred, and that the two have come closer together at the site of advertising.