Theses and Dissertations (Education)

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    "My pen won't talk" : towards an understanding of creative writing experiences among primary school children.
    (1995) Winkler, Gisela
    The work of Piaget and Vygotsky has formed the theoretical foundation for many research projects that investigate children's cognitive processes which are part of their learning experience, These investigations, however, do not address the affective aspects of the learning process. This study seeks to isolate and-explore the affective components of writing by conceptualizing a "creative writing experience" as a personal meaning making event which is simultaneously influenced by the children's cognitive development and their emotional development. The feelings experienced by the children while writing are a particular interest. Theories developed by Freud and Klein are used to investigate the children's emotions and to assess the impact these have on their writing process. The methods of investigation employ a detailed observation of external behaviour with the help of a video camera, a focus group interview, a reflective interview and a projective technique. The children's emotional experience of writing is deduced from the visual data as well as the interviews. It is concluded that the children's experience of writing is dominated by anxious emotions. As the medium of writing does not provide children with a communicative structure, it presents many children with an experience of isolation and meaninglessness. If the children fail to provide a purpose for their task, writing becomes an experience of insecurity and alienation. The role of children's talk during the writing process does not have a cognitive significance. On the contrary, its primary function seems to be to control affective forces and to maintain the personal purposefulness of the writing task.
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    'A good education sets up a divine discontent': the contribution of St Peter's School to black South African autobiography
    (2000) Woeber, Catherine Anne
    This thesis explores in empirical fashion the contribution made by St Peter's Secondary School to South African literary history. It takes as its starting point the phenomenon of the first black autobiographies having been published within a ten-year period from 1954 to 1963, with all but one of the male writers receiving at least part of their post-primary schooling at St Peter's School in Johannesburg. Among the texts, repositioned here within their educational context, are Tell Freedom by Peter Abrahams, Down Second Avenue by Es'kia Mphahlele, Road to Ghana by Alfred Hutchinson, and Chocolates for My Wife by Todd Matshikiza. The thesis examines the educational milieu of the inter-war years in the Transvaal over and against education in the other provinces of the Union, the Anglo-Catholic ethos of the Community of the Resurrection who established and ran the school, the pedagogical environment of St Peter's School, and the autobiographical texts themselves, in order to plot the course which the autobiographers' subsequent lives took as they wrote back to the education which had both liberated and shackled them. It equipped them far in advance of the opportunities available to them under the colour bar, necessitating exile, even as it colonised their minds in a way perhaps spared those who never attended school, requiring a continual reassessment of their identity over time. The thesis argues that their Western education was crucial in the development of their hybrid identity, what Es'kia Mphahlele has termed `the dialogue of two selves', which was in each case worked out through an autobiography. The typical, if simplified, trajectory is an enthusiastic espousal of the culture of the West encountered in their schooling at St Peter's, and then a rejection out of a sense of betrayal in favour of Africa, eventually leading to a synthesis of the two. The thesis concludes that it was the emphasis on all-round education and character formation, in the British boarding school tradition, with its thrust of sacrifice and service, which helped to fashion the strong belief systems of Abrahams and Mphahlele's later years, namely Christian socialism and African humanism, which inform their mature writings.
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    "An imperilled profession?" : teachers' perceptions of the significance of remuneration in entering and remaining in the teaching profession.
    (2009-03-03T10:05:53Z) Sfetsios, Nefeli
    In view of the rapid decrease in the number of students opting to train as teachers and the increasing numbers of teachers leaving the profession; the teaching profession in South Africa is indeed what Duke (1984) termed “imperilled”. While quantitative research identifies remuneration to be the foremost factor attributed to the dissatisfaction of teachers in South Africa as elsewhere; the main purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ perceptions of remuneration. Nine qualified women teachers aged between 25 and 35 years of age, who had been teaching for at least two years and less than ten, volunteered to take part in this study. The sample was drawn from government schools in a suburban part of Johannesburg. This research was based on the information gathered from a short biographical questionnaire followed by in-depth, semi-structured interviews. A process of language sensitive thematic content analysis was employed in order to analyse the data from the interviews. The research indicates that in the decision to enter the teaching profession, notions of the perception that teaching is a vocation predominate. An emphasis on the related intrinsic rewards to be gained from teaching was found to receive greater focus than monetary concerns on entering the profession. The participants expressed that women are more likely to enter the teaching profession while even though men may share the passion to teach, they are seriously deterred by the poor levels of remuneration. The participants explained that as the contexts of their lives changed, so too did their perceptions of remuneration, often resulting in an increasing emphasis on the importance of better remuneration to meet their and their families’ financial needs. Related to this, it was found that as South African teachers were exposed to an almost overwhelming number of challenges, the participants began to experience fewer intrinsic rewards which seemed to impact negatively on their perceptions of remuneration. Thus of the nine participants, only two indicated their long-term commitment to the teaching profession whereas the remaining seven all had plans to leave the profession in search of better remuneration.
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    'Being and doing' in a new academic environment : challenges faced by seven Chinese post-graduate students at a South African University.
    (2009-01-09T08:15:56Z) Shen, Chunyan
    This research explores a range of academic and socio-cultural challenges faced by seven Chinese post-graduate students at the University of the Witwatersrand. The main aims of this study are to identify and understand any academic discourse challenges these students have been experiencing, together with any challenges in their new socio-cultural environment, such as financial or social challenges, and then to investigate the impact of these challenges on their studies and their identities as students. The study is based on data gathered from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with seven Chinese post-graduate students, from location ‘maps’ completed by each student and from some examples of the writing of three of the students. The findings suggest that these Chinese students are encountering great challenges in relation to English language proficiency and adjustments to new Discourses (Gee, 1996) – both academic and social. The data provide evidence that although these students feel socially disempowered in many respects, their attitudes toward academic study remain positive and each is making steady progress in his or her progamme of study and research. This finding indicates that there seems to be no explicit connection between positive social experiences and academic achievement and contrasts with findings from other research studies in which there is a correlation iii between positive or negative socio-cultural experiences and success or failure in the academy.
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    "Incentives and disincentives in education and their impact on educator satisfaction."
    (2008-12-23T08:18:27Z) McDonald, Donagh-Leigh
    The above research investigates what incentives and disincentives are present within the education system and how these factors impact on educator satisfaction. Increasingly, educators are becoming dissatisfied with their status in society as well as with their working environment. The research looks at a small group of Johannesburg based South African educators and, through an in-depth questionnaire, compares the situation with educators from the United States as well as from China in order to find similarities. A number of authors work was researched that looked at what “satisfaction” is and, how it affects the workplace. Various educational authors were also looked at in order to gain a historical and sociological view. Various news articles and media reports were also taken into consideration as a number of educators felt that the media reflected the education system in a negative light. It is evident from the research conducted that, increasingly, educators are becoming more despondent and less satisfied with their careers and a large degree of this dissatisfaction appears to stem from the organisational structures within education. Using South African based work, similarities were also established between the United States as well as China. The similarities and findings suggested that a more structured approach needs to be taken in terms of the organisational structure, not only in South Africa but perhaps within the United States and China too. If these changes were to be instituted, educators may experience improved satisfaction.