ETD Collection

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Browsing ETD Collection by Faculty "Faculty of Education"

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    An action research study of the REFLECT approach in rural Lesotho
    (2007) Attwood, Gillian
    Development, literacy, empowerment and participation are timeworn words that have been woven together in varying constellations over the last few decades. A recent approach to adult education and social change, REFLECT1, has brought these concepts together in a new manner. This study, conducted over a five and a half year period, (June 2000 to December 2005), set out to investigate whether REFLECT was responsive to the needs of adults in two rural Lesotho contexts: an income generating co-operative, and a village context. I enquired into participants’ experiences of REFLECT, asking whether it could strengthen participants’ practices and livelihoods. What benefits were gained? Did literacy practices change? Were participants empowered? What were the challenges experienced? The theoretical framework of this study has been informed by critical and postmodern theory. These theoretical lenses have shaped my investigation and critique of concepts relevant to the study, namely development, power, participation, and literacy. Using an Action Research design, data was collected and analysed using participatory and collaborative methods, including focus groups, interviews, document and photograph analysis, observations, as well as journal and field notes. Results are reported as case studies providing a rich description of the project within the two contexts of the study. Results show that communities which used REFLECT benefited on personal and communal levels. Participants implemented their own learning and development agendas and took action to improve their livelihoods. Human and social capital were fortified; people increased their participation in meaningful decision making; and engaged more extensively in development initiatives. Participants became more selfconfident, strengthened their capabilities and took action to access resources and 1 Regenerated Freirean Literacy through Empowering Community Techniques make substantial changes in their lives. In sum, REFLECT stimulated a positive change process. However, it was noted that implementing REFLECT is a demanding process. Ongoing support is required to sustain effective learning and change, particularly where facilitators are not highly literate and operate in resource poor contexts where development related needs are perceived as more critical than the need to improve literacy skills. The challenge is to create a context where literacy and development are integrally related in practice, with new norms developed to foster sustained learning around development related action.
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    The Cape Coloured Corps and the educational development of the coloured people of South Africa 1795-1977
    (1983) Hoods, Willie Raymond
    An early series of mixed unions between Europeans and slaves and European-Hottentots resulted in the birth of the coloured people. The original hybrid groups have been perpetuated, increased and further intermingled by endogamy and cross-breeding and by additions from the original strains. The Dutch were the first foreign power to make use of coloured men in their military units when they established a settlement at the Cape in 1652. It was, however, the British who organised the coloured and Hottentots into a proper military unit. The Cape Corps, as the coloured military unit was to be known, served in most of the Republican governments that were established since the Colonists left the Cape Colony in 1834. Early attempts by the various missionary societies to educate the coloured people proved very successful. The allocation of land at the Kat River Settlement in 1829 provided an opportunity for coloured people, Hottentots and ex-slaves to build an economically viable community. It was during the two Great World Wars that the Cape Corps eventually made an impact as a fighting force. Large numbers of coloured men enlisted to fight the Germans. As most of them were illiterate the South African Defence Force had to devise certain programmes to enable them to read and write. This was the beginning of the Army Education System. Later provision was also made for ex-volunteers to improve their educational standard through the Army Correspondence Scheme. The Directorate of Demobilisation established at the end of World War 11, did outstanding work in helping the returned soldier to adjust to civilian life. Ex-volunteers were assisted financially and were encouraged and assisted to improve their education and training. An exposition or the political influence or the various Republican ruling groups and the government of the Union of South Africa, reveals that the coloured people were subjected to a number of discriminatory measures. The general rule was to use them in times of crises to protect the status quo, but at the same time to deny them their basic rights as citizens of South Africa. The Nationalist Party came to power in 1948 with their policy of Apartheid and immediately disbanded the Cape Corps. This decision was reversed in 1963 when the Cape Corps was re-established as a result of political development amongst the blacks in South Africa and the rest of Africa. Recruiting was not as successful as was anticipated. As a result of the unemployment rate amongst the coloured youth and the lowering of the educational qualifications from Standard VIII to VI, a fair number of coloured high school drop-outs enlisted. The South African Defence Force makes provision for coloured trainees to improve their secondary education through the Association of Correspondence Colleges of South AFrica, while technical education is available at the Peninsula College for Advanced Technical Education in Bellville and university education through the University of South Africa and the Military Academy at Saldanha. Lastly a number of recommendations are given with the hope that if implemented, the coloured community and therefore the South African society would benefit thereby
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    Investigating ways that 4th year Life Science preservice teachers demonstrate topic specific pedagogical content knowledge in the planning and teaching of their lessons
    (2020) Muvoti, Takudzwa Chantelle
    Literature shows that teacher education programmes aim to equip teachers with not only strong content knowledge but also the capability to reason soundly about teaching (Shulman, 1987). This sound reasoning requires both a process of thinking about how the teaching will be enacted as well as a sufficient body of content knowledge and experience to draw from (Shulman, 1987). Pre-service teachers in their fourth year of study may not have a wealth of experience to draw from as part of their pedagogical reasoning but they have been sufficiently exposed to instruction that has equipped them with the ability to reason soundly about their teaching. A large part of this instruction has involved use of the Topic Specific Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework. The topic specific nature of PCK has been attested to in many empirical studies (Loughran, Berry, & Mulhall, 2004). This framework has been used as a tool to help pre-service teachers transform knowledge of specific topics, particularly in maths and physical science into instruction. This research is a case study that followed three PSTs as they planned and enacted three different Life Sciences topics over a period of three lessons, respectively. The study aimed to contribute to a larger study by investigating the extent to which and ways in which pre-service teachers, in their final year of study, made use of the TSPCK framework in the planning and teaching of Life Sciences lessons. More specifically, the study looked at how PSTs were reasoning about the transformation of specific topics in the subject whilst using the TSPCK framework as the basis for their reasoning. Methods of data collection included lesson plan documents, video and audio taped lesson observations and semi-structured video (and audio) stimulated recall (VSR) interviews. The necessity of the three data collection methods was not only for triangulation and validity purposes but also to bring out the elusive nature of both pedagogical reasoning and planned and enacted TSPCK. Findings indicate that indeed, PSTs use the TSPCK framework as the basis for their pedagogical reasoning and action however, between both planned and enacted lessons, the TSPCK components that manifested the most are learner prior knowledge, representations and conceptual teaching strategies. It was further shown that pre-service teachers lacked knowledge of some aspects of TSPCK components. That being said, instruction in teacher education programmes that develops pre-service teachers’ capabilities to plan and enact richly in their teaching of science topics remains a challenge (Mavhunga, 2014). It is hoped that this study brings out the effectiveness of the Life Sciences teacher training programme at a South African university, particularly by shedding light on the effectiveness of the TSPCK framework as a content knowledge transformation tool for Life Science teachers as well as its usefulness once teachers are out in the field. Recommendations for this study include a call to develop pedagogical transformation competence in PSTs as opposed to waiting for this competence to be gained with experience