Academic Wits Research Outputs (All submissions)
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Item Confronting the ‘pedagogical immunity’ of student teachers.(2009) Rusznyak, L.Student teachers enter teacher education programmes with preconceptions about the nature of teaching that have developed in the course of the years they spent in classrooms as learners. The initial phase of teacher education is a complex process in which many student teachers have to unlearn preconceptions they hold about the nature of teaching that would otherwise constrain their development in learning to teach. This is particularly relevant in the South African context, where the education system has recently undergone radical and multi-faceted transformation. Student teachers do not always get the opportunity to observe supervising teachers modelling conceptually deep, enquiry-based teaching during their Teaching Experience (TE) sessions, so it is sometimes difficult for them to acquire a concept of the type of teaching that university tutors expect. This makes learning to teach particularly complex and challenging. This article reflects on the pedagogical development of a student teacher, Amos, over the four-year period of his Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) degree. It shows how his pedagogical choices were often constrained by the conception he had held that teaching entails ‘providing learners with correct information’. If teacher educators are to enable student teachers to become competent in the practice of organising systematic learning, it is imperative that teacher education programmes explicitly examine, challenge or deepen notions of teaching that student teachers bring with them to their initial teacher education.Item The South African Bill of Rights and the Development of Family Law(Juta Law, 2002) Bonthuys, ElsjeFamily law is probably the area of South African private law which has expanded and changed most rapidly in the past nine years. Many of these changes have come about as a result of the enactment of a Bill of Rights in both the interim and the final Constitution. 1 On the one hand, this is not surprising, since family law contains many legal rules which are overtly discriminatory on the bases of sex, gender, culture, religion and sexual orientation. On the other hand, legal rules in this area represent a codification of moral and social norms in the quotidian and 'private' lives of many people, which are often resistant to scrutiny and change.Item Substantive equality and transformation in South Africa(Juta and Co, 2007) Albertyn, CatherineThis article considers whether ‘substantive equality’, as a transformative idea and legal mechanism in the South African Constitution, can generate legal solutions and court decisions that may result in transformative change. It does so by establishing a framework for analysing the ‘inclusionary’ or ‘transformatory’ effects of equality cases in relation to gender and sexual orientation. It argues that the idea of substantive equality is capable of addressing diverse forms of social and economic inequality, and that the legal form of substantive equality adopted by the Constitutional Court, emphasising context, impact, difference and values, has some potential for achieving meaningful social and economic change by and through courts. However, the manner is which the Court has engaged with this legal form suggests that the transformative possibilities of equality are constrained by a number of factors. These include institutional concerns, the capacity and willingness of judges to recognise and address the multiple systemic inequalities that still pervade our society as well as their ability to develop a consistently transformative jurisprudence that applies the ideas of substantive equality to the concepts and doctrines that underpin many equality claims.Item Maintenance policies based on time-dependent repair cost limits(Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), 2006-11) Beichelt, F.; Nkadimeng, R.M.; Yadavalli, S.S.This paper considers two replacement policies for systems which, during their useful life, are subject to deterioration. Strategy 1: after a failure, the repair cost is estimated. If the repair cost exceeds a given limit, the system is not repaired, but replaced with a new one. So far, this policy has been analysed only for constant repair cost limits. This paper investigates the effect of applying time-dependent repair cost limits on the long-run maintenance cost rate. Examples show that, compared to the application of constant repair cost limits, a reduction of the maintenance cost rate between 5% and 10% can be expected. Strategy 2: the system is replaced as soon as the total repair costs arising during its running time exceed a given limit. Compared to the economic lifetime method, which is based on the average repair cost development and that requires the same data input, maintenance cost savings up to 20% could be achieved.Item A novel method to measure residual stresses in unidirectional GFRP.(Elsevier, 2009-05) Reid, R.G.; Paskaramoorthy, R.A few methods are available for measuring the residual stresses that occur in the simplest of all possible composites structures - the unconstrained unidirectional laminate. None of them, however, are suitable for use on GFRP. A new method is presented whereby the stresses in a unidirectional GFRP laminate can be determined. The method relies on releasing the constraints between fibre and resin through an annealing process. The strain in the glass fibres is thus obtained, which allows the elastic stresses within the fibres and the resin to be determined. In this way, it is not necessary to take account of plasticity and viscous effects in the polymer in order to determine the stresses within the laminate. Results for unidirectional laminates initially manufactured to contain differing residual stresses are presented and discussed.Item Undergraduate engineering training through institutional collaboration in the Southern African region.(Higher Education South Africa (HESA)., 2005) Ilemobade, A.A.; Ballim, Y.The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and The University of Namibia (UNAM) signed an Agreement of Co-operation (AOC) in 2000. This agreement, which formalised an existing informal collaboration, was primarily targeted at facilitating the transfer of potential Unam undergraduate engineering students to pursue engineering studies at the WITS Faculty of Engineering as well as improving staff collaboration in research and teaching. Students from UNAM's pre-engineering programme and science departments have been beneficiaries of this agreement. Four years later, an evaluation of the collaboration reveals critical issues vis-à-vis decreasing student enrolments, unimpressive student graduation rates, and financial and operational complexities affecting student mobility - all of which have institutional as well as regional implications. This paper presents highlights and pertinent lessons of the collaboration, and recommendations for similar collaboration in the Southern African region both at an institutional and regional level. As a whole, the paper uses the Wits experience to extrapolate principles and strategic issues facing institutions involved in academic collaboration and cross-border movement of students within the Southern Africa region.Item Waste to wealth: A case study of the ondo state integrated wastes recycling and treatment project, Nigeria.(EuroJournals, Inc., 2009) Olanrewaju, O.O.; Ilemobade, A.A.The Ondo State Integrated Waste Recycling and Treatment Project, came into existence in June 2006 with the commissioning of the project office complex along Igbatoro Road, Akure by the Nigeria President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. The Project started operation in December 2006 with the aim of minimising solid waste in Akure and its environs. Since its inception, OSIWRTP has recorded huge successes in transforming the waste generated in Ondo State to wealth by the development of various valuable products using the basic concepts of sustainability: social progression, technical and technological improvements, environmental protection and economic development. Such waste is been generated from agricultural waste, nylon and plastic waste and foundry (metal) waste. Several techniques have been used to transform the waste into profitable products e.g. using anaerobic digestion (biogas) to produce energy and fertilizer; composting for soil conditioner; scrap iron for foundry products and other recycling techniques for solid wastes. The main output of OSIWRTP as at today are fertiliser, foundry materials and other recycled materials depending on the availability of wastes, and according to demands and need.Item Application of a constrained non-linear hydraulic gradient design tool to water reticulation network upgrade.(Tayylor & Francis., 2006) Ilemobade, A.A.; Stephenson, D.Southern Africa has embarked on substantial expansion of its water supply network in order to ensure safe, reliable, convenient and sufficient water for everyone. To achieve this, new systems are being built and many existing systems are being upgraded. The upgrade of many existing systems is required for two reasons: some currently functional systems may run dry if subjected to additional demands as these systems were not initially designed to cater for such demand, and some systems are currently non- or sub-functional as they were ill-designed and/or ill-implemented from inception. Many of the systems that require upgrade are underdesigned due to a lack of skill, tools and/or knowledge of designers, or from other extraneous factors (e.g., illegal connections and sabotage). It is hardly surprising therefore that the failures of water projects in developing countries are recorded to be as high as 80%. Ill-designed systems increase operation and maintenance costs significantly. In especially Southern Africa, designers require simple, yet rigorously tested tools to facilitate sustainable, yet cost-effective network designs. Presented in this paper is a simple, yet robust constrained non-linear hydraulic gradient network reticulation design tool. The design tool is calibrated using the New York City water supply problem that has served as a benchmark problem for other models and then applied to the Selebi – Phikwe (SP) water reticulation network (WRN) in Botswana, which was designed based on engineering judgement. The optimization algorithm employed in the design tool is based on the concept that a hypothetical hydraulic gradient for a hydraulically balanced WRN exists that, when achieved iteratively, produces optimal pipe sizes and an optimal flow relation between each pipe. The unique problems and challenges of the SP WRN (pressure deficiencies in sections of the existing network and the proposed addition of three new residential developments) required determining the most appropriate peak and night flow operating scenarios, and optimal pipe sizes for the proposed expansion of the network. Optimization by trial and error had been previously employed in the design of the SP WRN—a common practice amongst water system designers, and the results are compared with those generated with the design tool. The design tool achieved a 62% reduction in total pipe cost from that obtained by trial and error for the SP WRN problem. At the same time, the design tool gives comparable pipe costs to those published in literature for the New York City water supply tunnels problem.Item Reflections on future needs in concrete durability research and development.(CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008) Ballim, Y.; Alexander, M.G.; Beushausen, H.D.; Moyo, P.There is no doubt that, over the past two decades, we have made enormous advances in the understanding and practice of concrete durability. Spurred by the often experienced early deterioration of reinforced concrete structures, with high capital investment for repair and rehabilitation, conceptions of design for durability have gained an increasingly higher level of importance in recent years. Durability design is beginning to be considered of equal importance as design for safety and serviceability. Nevertheless, durability concerns remain and early deterioration still attracts much expenditure. This paper is aimed at identifying important developments made in the field of concrete durability during the past two decades. Based on current design practice and current knowledge, future research and development needs are discussed, focusing on the influences of constituent materials, deterioration prevention methods, service life modelling of reinforced concrete structures, and performance-based test methods.Item Dealing with Under-Preparedness in Engineering Education Part 1: Defining the Goal: A Taxonomy of Engineering Competency.(American Society for Engineering Education., 2003) Woollacott, L.C.This paper emerges from work conducted on the problem of effectively addressing under-preparedness in entrants to university engineering programs in South Africa. Any educational curriculum is based on a conception of the developmental journey a learner must take in becoming a competent graduate. The conceptions underlying traditional engineering curricula do not match well with the journeys that under-prepared students with ability should take to reach their potential fully. To work towards a better match between conception and reality requires deeper understanding of the nature of under-preparedness, of engineering competency and of the determinants of engineering competency (that is, the underlying factors that determine the quality of the competencies). The first of these areas will inform the process of curriculum design by clarifying the starting point of the developmental journey. The second area will clarify the goal and the third will help to clarify what must be done to get there. This paper addresses the second of these issues –understanding engineering competency. Eight different perspectives on engineering competency have been extracted from the literature and a ninth is developed in the paper. Analysis of their similarities and differences provides a basis for developing a broader, integrated perspective that is presented as a taxonomy of engineering competency. How the taxonomy is used in acquiring a deeper understanding of competency determinants and under-preparedness will be explored in two follow up papers.