The purpose of this thesis is to identify typical patterns of career destinations for young women and men in relation to their high school science preparedness. This is an empirical structural study that documents the way high school academic capital is turned (or not) into human capital for science and engineering professions. The study uses ten years of longitudinal data on educational and career paths of British Columbia high school graduates of the Class of '88. Correspondence analysis and other descriptive statistics provide a picture of students' participation in mathematics and science senior high school courses and post-secondary academic programs. School course choices, post-secondary educational attainment, specialization fields are correlated to respondents' high school science preparedness, parental education and gender. A major finding of this study is that high school science preparedness opens greater opportunity for students to attend and succeed along abroad range of post-secondary pathways. Still, thesis findings confirm the existence of a "leaking" phenomenon along the physical sciences and engineering post-secondary pipeline, especially for women as well as men with non-university educated parents. Equity in access and outcomes is discussed in relation to respondents' possession of cultural and academic capital, and in relation to gender inequality that persists within school and post-secondary institutions, the science community and society at large. Implications for further research emerge from the literature review and the interpretation of thesis findings. Longitudinal research needs to explore more directly the reasons why many young women and men who excelled in science at the high school level depart from the science pipeline sooner or later. A major conclusion is that the "critical mass" approach that directs attention toward creating a large supply pool to feed the science pipeline by encouraging more young women to enter the field of science is still a unilateral numerical strategy, and more has to be done to improve the retention and advancement of talented women interested in science. This thesis reinforces the need for an analysis of the culture of the science community and a revision of the leaking science pipeline concept that should be replaced by a more open non-linear model of science careers.

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Personal computers (PC) and high level programming techniques have been developing so rapidly during last decade leading to new and exciting opportunities in the field of education. The purpose of this research was to develop food processing virtual labs as efficient teaching and study tools for food processing courses using user-friendly computer languages (VC++, MFC and OpenGL). A 3D graphic technique was employed in this study as a specific objective to generate 3D graphics in the visualization mode. / According to functionalities, virtual labs were designed for three basic simulations: (1) Calculation simulations, which perform various calculations related to food processing. These simulations help users to remember and understand the formula used in process calculations. Several simple concept calculations were included: conduction heat transfer in steady state through individual and composite slabs; two-component mass balance systems, Pearson rule applications; freezing and thawing time calculations; (2) Animation simulations, which are aimed to visualize processing scenarios for different physical phenomena or working principles. Included in these simulations were: conduction heat transfer through single and multiple walls under steady state; mixing processes involving two and three component systems and Pearson rule concept; freezing and thawing processes through slab, cylinder, and sphere, the three regular shapes, agitation thermal processing modes which include axial agitation and end-over-end agitation in rotational retort; (3) Virtual equipment simulations, which are aimed to dynamically simulate a real operating environment and to demonstrate equipment working principle, internal structure, and operating procedures. The simulated equipment include a horizontal retort used in thermal processing and a high pressure processing equipment used in non-thermal processing. / The food processing virtual labs provide a new way in teaching and learning, with no risk, time or place limitations, and are cost effective. The simulated scenarios and equipment can be used as teaching tools in food processing courses, which provide an efficient way to the instructor/assistant. Instructor/assistant can dynamically and repeatedly demonstrate the operating process for the simulated equipment in a vivid and interested manner. Also students can get intuitive understanding by viewing these simulations. Computers are the waves of the future; however, traditional learning techniques should not be forgotten.* / *This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation). The CD requires the following system requirements: Windows 95 or higher.

The topic of this Master's thesis is "Intercultural 'Landeskunde' in the field of German as a foreign language at Canadian unversities: a documentation of a case study in the Department of German Studies at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada". In the introduction "Landeskunde" itself will be defined as well as its role in the teaching of a language. The three main approaches to "Landeskunde" will be studied, by which more emphasis will be laid on the intercultural approach, which will then be elucidated through a practical example. In chapters two, three and four the background information leading up to the development and implementation of the new "Landeskunde" course will be explained. In the main chapter of the thesis, chapter five, the structure of the course will be presented and analysed in detail. This chapter will be completed by a documentation of the course materials used, quotes from the students' logbooks as well as a summary of the main ideas and suggestions for improvement. The sixth chapter is a general assessment of the course, demonstrating how it could be used as a model for intercultural learning in Canadian universities and as such offer suggestions for alternative methods in the teaching of German as a foreign language.

This classroom-based interpretive inquiry investigates how two academic writing instructors with disciplinary backgrounds in English Literature and English Education teach writing to graduate students with other disciplinary backgrounds. The instructors' teaching practices are conceptualized within a Vygotskian socio-cultural framework. Relevant educational issues are situated within two fields of education, Second Language Education and L1 writing instruction. This inquiry challenges the polarized views of writing instruction reflected in the second language literature. The research participants were two writing instructors and two focal students in one class. Data collected and analyzed include 70 hours of classroom-based observations in two classes over a semester, 12 hours of interviews with the research participants over 16 months, and documents such as course handouts, the focal students' portfolios, teacher audio-taped and written feedback to student drafts. Findings indicate that the writing instructors provided writing instruction and writing opportunities both in the specific disciplinary discourses of their students and other discourses. The instructors' goal-directed teaching practices were informed by their own generalist and discipline-sensitive evaluative orientations toward academic writing instruction at postsecondary levels. The instructors' evolving individual beliefs, perceptions, and practices were shown to be related to embedding sets of nested institutional contexts, such as developments in composition and education theory, and the changing theoretical orientations of the instructors' teaching units. Despite the instructors' different emphases on discipline-specific and general features of writing, findings suggest that both instructors mediated the students' appropriation of disciplinary discourses.

The present project is part of a larger research programme focussed on the analysis of change; one aspect being educational transformation and in particular an emphasis on the explication of the contentless processes (eg. logical operations, reasoning styles, analysis and synthesis) which underlie both learning and teaching at university level. The present project is aimed at an analysis of the teaching-learning dialectic in mathematics courses. This analysis has two major focal points, that is, making explicit the often tacit and mostly inadequate and/or inappropriate rules for engaging in mathematical tasks which the under-prepared learner brings to the teaching-learning situation, and secondly the teaching strategies which may enable these learners to overcome their past (erroneous) knowledge and skills towards the development of effecient, autonomous mathematical problem-solving strategies. In order to remedy inadequate and inappropriate past learning and/or teaching, the present project presents a set of mediational strategies and regulative cues which function both for the benefit of the teacher and the learner in a problematic teaching-learning situation and on the meta and epistemic cognitive levels of information processing. Furthermore, these mediational strategies and regulative cues fall on a kind of interface between contentless processes and the particular content of the teaching-learning dialectic of mathematics in particular, as well as between the ideal components of any instructional process and the particular needs and demands of under-prepared learners engaged in mathematical tasks. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of Natal, Durban, 1988.

In the absence of qualitative research in the field of American journalism education, a case study of a Duke University affiliated documentary tradition program is blended with a Scholarly Personal Narrative to answer the call for innovative journalism education models and to address the decades old debate related to teacher qualifications in journalism education. By blending the study of a particular type of journalism with a particular type of journalism educator, a new model for journalism education is offered for consideration by the journalism education community. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

This study is postpositivist. Adopting an ontological framework of critical realism requires the researcher to take the position of “modified” objectivist, and explore opportunities for the qualitative interpretation of quantitative data. Grounded theory is explored as the primary methodological approach, and as such the study takes on an inductive, theory-generating form in an attempt to describe and explain student performance within the context of alternative access to tertiary science studies. True to grounded theory, the researcher begins the study without a theoretical framework, this being built as the study progresses. The researcher’s experience of teaching educationally disadvantaged students Foundation Biology in the Centre for Science Access on the Pietermaritzburg campus of KwaZulu-Natal is used as a starting point, from which the initial research question emerges, namely the performance of the Access students in a first-year Life and Environmental Science stream module relative to direct entry students. Results from quantitative data analysis on students’ final marks in the first-year module pose a second research question: what factors contribute to the differing success of the student groups in the first-year module? Drawing on extant international and South African literature on factors affecting university student performance in conjunction with Regression Tree Analysis on the first-year module final mark, a theoretical framework begins to emerge. The concept of the “advantaged disadvantaged” calls for the notion of Access to be reconsidered, and curriculum responsiveness is examined in some detail. Grounded theory method of constant comparison, seeking core categories, together with efforts of triangulation prompt the third line of enquiry, specifically to establish what factors are influencing the performance of the Foundation students in their Access year. Using students’ final Foundation marks as the outcome variable, further Classification and Regression Tree analysis is conducted, including biographical, socioeconomic, school history, and academic factors as well as a measure of student motivation. In addition, literature around Access contributes to theory building. This systematic abstraction and the conceptualization of empirical data result in a substantive theory: that it is English language proficiency, above all other possible variables that can best explain Life Science (Biology) student performance. Selection into the Foundation Biology module is found to be at odds with selection into the Programme as a whole, necessitating curriculum responsiveness at the modular level. The emergent grounded theory, and the notion of “fuzzy generalization”, seen to be appropriate to critical realist research, allows opportunities to explore remediation in the curriculum on the basis of these research findings. Attention is paid specifically to scaffolding literacy in biology through a “learning to read”, “reading to learn” approach. These measures are dicussed within the context of assisting students to achieve epistemic access that will enable them to successfully participate in the academic practice of Science. / Theses (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

This study investigates ways in which English Studies at Rhodes University, the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Natal, and the University of Sydney responded to linguistic and academic literacy needs of entrance level students. Both qualitative and quantitative data from these research sites are integrated with an autobiographical narrative based on my own personal experiences of learning English and in English at secondary and tertiary levels in South Africa. Dealing with data this way made it possible for my study to examine strategies through which different English departments negotiate the challenge of enabling students to access the discourse of the Discipline. I relied on the principles underpinning Genre Theory and Grounded Theory to engage critically with participants’ responses to interview questions and documentary evidence from research sites. It appears from the study that modules designed to develop students’ linguistic and/or academic literacy skills need not maintain a pedagogic practice that is either grammatical rules or academic writing and critique based, without an attempt to integrate the two. This separation is seen as artificial, and reflects pedagogic practices that tend to mystify the discourse of the Discipline of English Studies. Given the fact that not all students posses relevant cultural capital to negotiate meanings successfully within this discourse, many of them are excluded during lectures. Literature and research findings in this study indicate that this exclusion manifests itself when such students fail to choose grammatical structures according to the purpose for which they construct texts, both in speaking and in writing. Within this context, there is a need for an alternative model to inform theory, module design, and pedagogic practices in entrance level modules. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.

This study sought to explore some of the ways in which assessment itself needs to be treated as a feature of equity and transformation in post-apartheid South Africa. How can the classroom become a level playing field for all, not just in terms of admission and changes to the overall composition of the student body, as well as staffing, but in relation to the curriculum itself, of which assessment is a part? In a multilingual, multicultural country like South Africa, which also carries a lot of political baggage, one has to agree that assessing all students in the same way does not mean, assessing all students equally. To assess all students in the same way, regardless of their proficiency in English and only in the mode of writing, is to ignore the wealth of diversity and potential among our student population. The ESL students in this study repeatedly indicated that they cannot express themselves adequately in writing in English and that "the expression of the examiners" and the "wording of the questions" pose a problem in the written assessments. They often find out after a paper "what a question meant" or what the examiner intended. EFL students too experienced problems with "ambiguity" and "unclear expression" of the examiners. This qualitative study introduced an oral component into the present tertiary assessment structures in Science. The private nature of the written assessments does not permit interaction between student and examiner or invigilator during an examination. This means that both student and assessor in turn have to rely on their own interpretation of the written word without consulting with each other. Oral assessments on the other hand, permit live interaction. Both candidate and assessor can seek clarity from each other. Rather than grappling with understanding of each others' English, the focus can rightfully move to assessing the student's knowledge of content. As the study endeavoured to devise a relatively new form of assessment for the South African context, it required tools and techniques that would provide for exploration and that would allow for modification along the way. An action research approach was therefore used. This study took on what might be described as a 'hybrid' version of action research in order to investigate how as an instructor in Language Education, I could bring about change in assessment in Science. Individual and group oral assessments were conducted with undergraduate students at two tertiary institutions, viz. a technikon and a university, in KwaZulu-Natal. The assessments were conducted in three phases. The first phase of the assessments adapted oral assessment practices used by South African and international Science educators. The second and third phases investigated 'closed' structures devised for the individual and group oral assessments within a South African tertiary context, respectively. After each phase of the assessments, feedback from the participants was analysed and comments and criticisms were addressed. Collaboration with the participants yielded harmonious working relationships, successful administration of the assessments, and valuable contributions from the students and assessors, especially with regard to the design of the oral assessment grid. Five main sources of data were generated in this study, viz. from the focus group discussions with the assessors and the students, the student and assessor questionnaires, and the assessment sessions. Triangulation, and more specifically, data triangulation was employed to ensure reliability and validity or consistency and comparability of the oral assessments. Incorporating an oral component to the assessments meant that students could reap the benefit of the higher mark in either the written or the oral mode. Students were grateful that the assessments "tested two different sides of a person" and that if they could not express themselves adequately in writing, they could "fall back on the orals". Assessors were unanimous that "apart from promoting understanding, the oral assessments provided many other benefits for assessors and students". They therefore hailed the mixed-mode of assessments as a "win-win situation" for all the participants. The study concludes with recommendations and implications for the reform of language policy and assessment practices in tertiary education, and the need for further work in tertiary classrooms where teachers embark upon action research. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.