Academic Wits Research Outputs (All submissions)
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/36827
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Item Supporting student teachers through their first attempts at teaching: Possibilities and limitations afforded by school-based and campus based models of support.(2014) Rusznyak, L.; Moosa, M.Student teachers' first attempt at teaching a lesson is a crucial step in their professional development. This paper compares the potential pedagogical learning opportunities and limitations afforded by school-based and campus-based support programmes that are designed to support student teachers in their early attempts at teaching. We use a qualitative analysis of interviews with university lecturers and a quantitative analysis of written feedback provided to student teachers within each of these models. The analysis of our data shows that during the school-based model, students receive retrospective feedback on many diverse issues relating to their lesson, particularly their management of learners. In contrast, the campus-based model offers student teachers an explicit opportunity to work collaboratively on the management of the content knowledge for their first lesson. The campus-based model, despite its numerous limitations, offers possibilities for developing students' understanding of teaching as a complex cognitive practice from their early attempts at teaching.Item Using metaphors to gain insight into South African student teachers’ initial and developing conceptions of ‘Being a teacher’(2014) Rusznyak, L.; Walton, E.Metaphors are a useful way of accessing students' conceptions of teaching and tracking how their conceptions shift over time. This article analyses metaphors for ‘being a teacher’ written by a group of South African student teachers at the beginning and end of their first year of study. The metaphors depict teachers' interactions with learners and reveal how students recognise a specialised knowledge base for teaching and their understanding of learner diversity. One third of students constructed initial metaphors that emphasised teaching as nurturing, an endeavour they associate with particular personality traits but without a specialised knowledge base. We analyse how student teachers' initial and subsequent metaphors reflect significant shifts in their conception of ‘being a teacher’ and we briefly explore how students account for these shifts. Revisiting their initial assumptions about teaching within a programme that offers a coherent conception of teaching enabled student teachers to better understand the goals of initial teacher education.Item An exploratory perspective of student performance and access to resources(Mediterranean Center of Social and Educational Research, 2014-11-01) Papageorgiou, E; Callaghan, C.WThis research investigated the relationships between potential constraints to students’ access to technological resources and student academic performance. Longitudinal data from 2010 (n=228), 2011 (n=340) and 2012 (n=347) from South African accounting students was used to test the relationships between technological resources access and student academic performance using correlation analysis, multiple linear regression analysis and factor analysis. Access to the latest software was found to be associated with student academic performance; a ‘digital divide’ between students may influence their academic performance. This research specifically identifies certain constraints potentially associated with a ‘digital divide’ that may influence student performance.Item The rule that a spouse cannot forfeit at divorce what he or she has contributed to the marriage: an argument for chance(Juta Law, 2014) Bonthuys, ElsjeUnlike other systems of family law, South African law allows parties to choose their matrimonial property system by way of antenuptial contract. Although the financial consequences of the dissolution of marriage follow broadly from the chosen matrimonial property system, certain statutory and common-law mechanisms allow for a variation from the rigours of the applicable property regime. This article concerns one of these mechanisms, namely forfeiture of benefits in terms of s 9 of the Divorce Act 70 of 1979.Item Judicial diversity(Juta and Co, 2014) Albertyn, CatherineA judiciary controlled entirely by whites and enforcing laws enacted by a white parliament in which Africans have no representation—laws which in most cases are passed in the face of unanimous opposition from Africans— . . . cannot be regarded as an impartial tribunal in a political trial where an African stands as an accused.Item An exploratory perspective of student performance and access to resources(2014) Papageorgiou, E; Callaghan, CWThis research investigated the relationships between potential constraints to students’ access to technological resources and student academic performance. Longitudinal data from 2010 (n=228), 2011 (n=340) and 2012 (n=347) from South African accounting students was used to test the relationships between technological resources access and student academic performance using correlation analysis, multiple linear regression analysis and factor analysis. Access to the latest software was found to be associated with student academic performance; a ‘digital divide’ between students may influence their academic performance. This research specifically identifies certain constraints potentially associated with a ‘digital divide’ that may influence student performance.Item Bridging risk and enactment: the role of psychology in leading psychosocial research to augment the public health approach to violence in South Africa(2014) Bowman, Brett; Stevens, Garth; Eagle, Gillian; Maztopoulos, RichardIn the wake of apartheid, many in the South African health and social sciences shifted their orientation to understanding violence. Rather than approaching violence as a criminal problem, post-apartheid scholarship surfaced violence as a threat to national health. This re-orientation was well aligned with a global groundswell that culminated in the World Health Assembly’s 1996 declaration of violence as a public health problem. In response, researchers and other stakeholders have committed to the public health approach to violence in South Africa. Despite some unquestionable successes in applying this approach, violence remains a critical social issue and its recalcitrantly high rates signal that there is still much work to be done. One avenue for more focussed research concerns understanding the mechanisms by which upstream risk factors for violence are translated into actual enactments. We argue that South African psychology is well placed to provide greater resolution to this focus. We begin by providing a brief overview of the public health approach to violence. We then point to three specific areas in which the limits to our understanding of the way that downstream psychological and upstream social risk factors converge in situations of violence, compromise the theoretical and prevention traction promised by this approach and chart several basic psychosocial research coordinates for South African psychology. Steering future studies of violence by these coordinates would go some way to addressing these limits and, in so doing, extend on the substantial gains already yielded by the public health approach to violence in South Africa.Item Making Migrants ‘Il-legible’: The Policies and Practices of Documentation in Post-Apartheid South Africa.(2014) Amit, R.; Kriger, M.In South Africa, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) – the department charged with managing migration – has struggled to control growing migration flows, particularly the increased demand on the asylum system. The DHA has both relied on and sought to undermine documentation attempts as part of its migration management efforts. These shifting practices reveal an official ambivalence toward granting foreign migrants documents and the rights that accompany them. Ensuring that foreign migrants remain undocumented fulfils the DHA’s objective of facilitating their removal, but it undercuts the administration’s ability to know who is in the country, another expressed DHA goal. Examining two documentation schemes – the asylum system, and the three-month documentation programme targeting undocumented Zimbabweans – this article highlights these conflicting purposes. It explores the DHA’s administrative strategies and practices to withhold or deny documentation, and hence legal rights, to foreign migrants even when its stated goal is documentation. Looking at the role that documentation plays in state administration, the article argues that the street-level organisational approach and its focus on implementation best captures the actions of the DHA, underscoring the ways in which street-level bureaucrats can influence documentation policy and practice by determining who gets access to documents.Item Measurement of the Distribution of Residual Stresses in Layered Thick-Walled GFRP Pipes.(Springer, 2014-11) Carpenter, H.W.; Reid, R.G.; Paskaramoorthy, R.The objective of this study is to measure the axial, circumferential, shear and radial residual stress distributions in three thick-walled glass fibre reinforced plastic (GFRP) filament-wound pipes, two of which are layered. The measurement of residual stresses was carried out using a recently published layer removal method which overcomes the limitations of previous techniques and can be applied to layered anisotropic pipes of any wall thickness. Layers of approximately 0.3 mm thickness were incrementally ground from the outer surface of the pipes. The resulting strains were measured on the inner surfaces. A least-squares polynomial was fitted to each measured data set, and used to calculate the corresponding stress distributions. All of the resulting axial, hoop and shear stress distributions adhere to the requirement of self-equilibrium and the radial stress distributions all vanish to zero at the inner and outer surfaces. The radial stresses of the layered pipes showed a tendency to have two peaks, one for each layer, a consequence of the two-stage manufacturing process of these pipes. The measured axial and hoop stresses of all three pipes were similar at the inner surfaces despite significant differences in the stiffnesses in the principal directions arising from different wind angles.Item Extension of the layer removal technique for the measurement of residual stresses in layered anisotropic cylinders.(Springer, 2014-09) Carpenter, H.W.; Reid, R.G.; Paskaramoorthy, R.An extension of the layer removal technique is presented that allows the residual stresses within multilayered anisotropic pipes of any wall thickness to be determined. The method inherently satisfies the self-equilibrium requirement and limits the effects of measurement errors to the region local to the error. The thickness of each layer that is removed need not be uniform and is entirely independent of the thickness of each ply of material. Four example problems are considered. The first three allow results to be compared between the present method and previous work. The fourth problem demonstrates the method on a thick walled anisotropic pipe built up of +45°/-45° plies for which no solution was previously available.