School principals' perceptions of team management : a multiple case-study of secondary schools
- Authors: Van der Mescht, Hennie , Tyala, Zakunzima
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6105 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009732
- Description: The notion of school management through teams (team management), though not a new phenomenon in South Africa, was formalized after the advent of democracy in 1994 and the subsequent reorganization of the education system. The concept was subsequently fleshed out in official documentation where the composition and roles of school management teams (SMTs) were elaborated upon. The notion of team management is rooted in theories that stress participation, notably site-based (school-based) management, teamwork, and distributed leadership. We report on a study in which the perceptions of secondary school principals, in Grahamstown, South Africa, of team management were explored. The study was interpretive in orientation, and utilized qualitative data gathering techniques in all (ten) of the state-aided secondary schools in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape province. We found that, while team management was generally welcomed and even celebrated by principals, there were fundamental tensions surrounding principals' understanding of their leadership roles in a team context. We consider the implications of these findings for leadership development in the context of team management.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Tracing and erasure in Kathryn Smith's Psychogeographies: the washing away of wrongs
- Authors: de Jager, Maureen
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147413 , vital:38634 , https://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC31057
- Description: Kathryn Smith's Psychogeographies: The Washing Away of Wrongs is a series of twelve prints comprising photographs and handwritten text, wherein she records her 'pilgrimage' to the former homes of British serial killer Dennis Nilsen. As such, it utilises photographic and autographic traces to 'track' the elusive traces left by Nilsen. Given the lapse of two decades between Nilsen's arrest and Smith's visit, the traces of Nilsen's 'wrongs' seem all but erased by the banal façade of suburban living which has continued on, regardless. In taking this as a starting point, the following article considers the motif of absence that characterises Smith's work as intrinsic to traces per se.
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- Date Issued: 2008
New Unity Movement Bulletin
- Date: 2007-04
- Subjects: Government, Resistance to -- South Africa , South Africa -- History -- 20th century , South Africa -- Politics and government
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/31726 , vital:31740 , Bulk File 7
- Description: The Bulletin was the official newsletter of the New Unity Movement. It was published about twice a year and contained articles reflecting the organisation's views on resistance to the Apartheid government.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2007-04
Enabling and constraining ICT practice in secondary schools: case studies in South Africa
- Authors: Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl , Siebörger, Ingrid , Terzoli, Alfredo
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/428923 , vital:72546 , https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1504/IJKL.2007.015551
- Description: The use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in education is being seen as a way of widening access to education, particularly in developing countries. This paper addresses the issue of ICT implemen-tation in secondary schools and focuses specifically on the practices that enable or constrain the successful implementation of ICT for teach-ing and learning activities. It reflects upon the lessons learned from a collective case study undertaken in 12 of the 13 secondary schools in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. School principals and designated IT teachers were interviewed and on-site infrastructure audits conducted. This paper identifies a number of key enabling and constraining factors surrounding practical issues, including sufficient hardware, appropriate software and affordable connectivity, sufficient technical support and training, policy-related issues such as the role of national, provincial and school policy, the vital contribution of principal leadership and champion teachers as well as ongoing teacher profes-sional development coupled with a willingness to change.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Enlarged arguments in Bantu : evidence from Chichewa
- Authors: Simango, Silvester Ron
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6140 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011592
- Description: This paper re-examines two types of constructions that have featured in the discussion of possessor ascension in Bantu: one type – an applicative construction – is associated with alienable possession, and the other – non-applicative – is associated with inalienable possession. The study shows that the former expresses affectedness, and that the possessor reading arises only by construal; whereas the latter expresses a part–whole relationship. The paper argues that the two constructions differ in more significant ways than has previously been acknowledged; and that their distinct derivations cannot be captured by traditional possessor ascension (PA) analyses. The putative “alienable” possessor constructions belong to the class of (benefactive) applicative constructions and should be analyzed as such. The paper proposes that the so-called “inalienable” possessor constructions can best be accounted for by positing the existence of “enlarged arguments” wherein the possessum functions as a nominal predicate which more narrowly pinpoints the locus of the action described by the verb.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Lessons from the dead masters: Wordsworth and Byron in J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace
- Authors: Beard, Margot
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6114 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003827
- Description: As one whose research interests lie in the field of Romanticism, most specifically Wordsworth and Byron, I was obviously intrigued by J. M. Coetzee's use of these poets in Disgrace. Subsequent readings of the work have convinced me that more attention needs to be paid to the deeper implications of their presence in the text. Certainly many scholars have explored the significance of David Lurie's professional interest in the Romantic poets and the novel's imbeddedness in what Jane Taylor has referred to as "the European Enlightenment's legacy of the autonomy of the individual" as well as a specifically "eighteenth century model of philosophical sympathy" (1999, 25). Yet I feel that insufficient attention has been paid to the significance of Romanticism, the Wordsworthian and the Byronic in the novel. Generally, the commentary ranges from seeing Lurie's academic interests as symptomatic of his white colonialist mentality to a more nuanced but insufficiently developed focus on the possibilities lying behind Coetzee's startling juxtaposition of two of the most famed and yet most overtly antagonistic of the Romantic poets. Zoë Wicomb is representative of the first approach. In her estimation, Lurie may be rejected since he "looks to Europe as the centre of reference" and "our feelings and experiences of nature need not be structured by poetic discourses from the metropolis".
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- Date Issued: 2007
Signatures of seaway closures and founder dispersal in the phylogeny of a circumglobally distributed seahorse lineage
- Authors: Teske, Peter R , Hamilton, Healy , Matthee, Conrad A , Barker, Nigel P
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6549 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006005
- Description: The importance of vicariance events on the establishment of phylogeographic patterns in the marine environment is well documented, and generally accepted as an important cause of cladogenesis. Founder dispersal (i.e. long-distance dispersal followed by founder effect speciation) is also frequently invoked as a cause of genetic divergence among lineages, but its role has long been challenged by vicariance biogeographers. Founder dispersal is likely to be common in species that colonize remote habitats by means of rafting (e.g. seahorses), as long-distance dispersal events are likely to be rare and subsequent additional recruitment from the source habitat is unlikely. In the present study, the relative importance of vicariance and founder dispersal as causes of cladogenesis in a circumglobally distributed seahorse lineage was investigated using molecular dating. A phylogeny was reconstructed using sequence data from mitochondrial and nuclear markers, and the well-documented closure of the Central American seaway was used as a primary calibration point to test whether other bifurcations in the phylogeny could also have been the result of vicariance events. The feasibility of three other vicariance events was explored: a) the closure of the Indonesian Seaway, resulting in sister lineages associated with the Indian Ocean and West Pacific, respectively; b) the closure of the Tethyan Seaway, resulting in sister lineages associated with the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, respectively, and c) continental break-up during the Mesozoic followed by spreading of the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in pairs of lineages with amphi-Atlantic distribution patterns.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
The effect of sulfide on -glucosidases: implications for starch degradation in anaerobic bioreactors
- Authors: Wutor, V C , Togo, C A
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6463 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005792 , dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2006.03.011
- Description: Membrane associated α-glucosidase activity was investigated in a methanogenic bioreactor (MR) and a biosulfidogenic bioreactor (SR). Temperature and pH optima studies showed temperature optima of 50 °C and pH optima of 8.0 for the α-glucosidases from both the MR and SR. Sulfide (at a concentration of 150 mg l[superscript (−1)]) resulted in the complete loss of all α-glucosidase activity in both the MR and SR. β-Glucosidase activities in our bioreactors were previously shown to be stimulated in the presence of sulfide. α-Glucosidases, in contrast, are inhibited by sulfide. This differential effect of sulfide on α-glucosidase and β-glucosidase activities is highlighted and is of crucial consequence to the respective degradation and utilization of starch and cellulose substrates in natural anaerobic environments and anaerobic bioreactors specifically designed for the accelerated digestion of wastewater sludge under biosulfidogenic conditions.
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- Date Issued: 2007
The humanities, vocationalism and the public good: exploring 'the Hamlet factor'
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7028 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007214 , https://doi.org/10.1080/17535360712331393503
- Description: preprint , This paper argues that the social mission of the humanities is no longer well understood by the public, sometimes not even by the very institutions seeking to attract students to these disciplines, the universities. It becomes difficult to argue for the cogency of research in the humanities, let alone for a specific national research agenda, when the general relation between the humanities and society is widely mistaken. To address such misapprehensions, the discussion outlines as clearly as possible the characteristic procedures of the humanities, the manner in which they inform individual and social transformation, and the contemporary predicament which makes them more rather than less needed in society’s repertoire of educational resources. With this understanding in place, the paper then puts forward suggestions for strengthening research in the humanities as part of a broader programme to renovate the humanities in the South African education system.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Time-resolved luminescence of low sensitivity quartz from crystalline rocks
- Authors: Chithambo, Makaiko L , Preusser, F , Ramseyer, K , Ogundare, F O
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:6801 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004164 , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radmeas.2006.07.005
- Description: preprint , Time-resolved luminescence spectra of low sensitivity natural quartz from crystalline rocks are presented. The luminescence was pulse-stimulated at width using 470 nm blue light from quartz separated from plutonic, metamorphic, volcanic and hydrothermal samples. Measurements were made at 20 °C. All samples show evidence of a short lifetime component less than long although in several cases too weak in intensity to be evaluated accurately. On the other hand, the value of the principal lifetime component varies considerably being about in metamorphic quartz, in plutonic quartz, and in one example of hydrothermal quartz. The results illustrate a new feature of luminescence from quartz for which lifetimes less than or greater than have never been reported at room temperature before. It is argued that the thermal provenance of the quartz and so the annealing it will have experienced influences the size of the observed lifetime. In particular, the results are explained in terms of a model consisting of three luminescence centers with the dominant lifetime linked to preferential recombination at one center depending on the thermal history of the sample and hence the hole concentration of the center.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Indigenous languages and the media in South Africa:
- Authors: Kaschula, Russell H
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/175137 , vital:42546 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC15168
- Description: This article explores the status of South Africa’s indigenous languages and how they are being used in the media. More specifically, the performance of these languages in the print media, the broadcasting media and the Internet, is outlined. This is done against the backdrop of the South African Constitution, Section 6, which entrenches eleven official languages. Contrary to the Constitution’s provisions, it is found that the indigenous languages are achieving varying levels of success within the media. The reasons for this are outlined. Finally, the effects of globalisation on the indigenous languages within the media are assessed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
JM Coetzee's Disgrace and the Task of the Imagination:
- Authors: Marais, Mike
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144126 , vital:38313 , DOI: 10.2979/JML.2006.29.2.75
- Description: In an early review of Disgrace, Jane Taylor first relates this novel's treatment of violence in post-apartheid South Africa to the European Enlightenment's legacy of the autonomy of the human subject (25), in terms of which each individual is conceived of as a living consciousness separated totally from every other consciousness, and then discusses J.M. Coetzee's postulation of the sympathetic imagination as a potential corrective to the violence attendant on monadic individuality. Taylor makes the telling point that, in the eighteenth century, the notions of sensibility, sympathy, and compassion, which the novel repeatedly invokes, were self-consciously developed as an ethical response to the instrumentalist logic of autonomous individuality and, in this regard, she cites Adam Smith's observation in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that "By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensation" (qtd. in Taylor 25).
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- Date Issued: 2006
New and improved : Linda in Java
- Authors: Wells, George C
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6613 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011511 , http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167642305000869
- Description: This paper discusses the current resurgence of interest in the Linda coordination language for parallel and distributed programming. Particularly in the Java field, there have been a number of developments over the past few years. These developments are summarised together with the advantages of using Linda for programming concurrent systems. Some problems with the basic Linda approach are also discussed and a novel solution to these is presented. The power and flexibility of the proposed extensions to the Linda programming model are illustrated by considering a number of example applications, including a detailed case study of visual language parsing.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
On the fast track to land degradation? A case study of the impact of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme in Kadoma District, Zimbabwe
- Authors: Fox, Roddy C , Rowntree, Kate M , Chigumira, Easther C
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6663 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006668
- Description: The Fast Track Land Reform Programme is the defining instrument for Zimbabwe’s future development prospects. In the three year period from 2000 to 2002 300,000 families were resettled on 11 million hectares thus witnessing the end of the colonial division of land which had seen 15.5 million hectares still in European hands in 1980, the start of the post-colonial period. The process which displaced the commercial farm workers and farm owners was chaotic, violent and disorderly and so has been called jambanja. Subsequent legislation and government agricultural initiatives have attempted to impose, retroactively, technocratic order to the sweeping changes that have taken place. Our study shows that the dire macro-economic situation coupled with trends of HIV/AIDS prevalence means that developing sustainable land use practices is going to be a very difficult proposition. At the local scale, our case studies show that there have been multiple outcomes with low investment, very limited government support and resource extraction leading to land degradation and unsustainable farming practices. In some instances, however, individual households have benefitted in the short term from the process but this has only occurred where climatic and soil conditions have been particularly favourable.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
The life history responses of the abalone pest, Terebrasabella heterouncinata, under natural and aquaculture conditions
- Authors: Simon, Carol A , Kaiser, Horst , Britz, Peter J
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6773 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008074
- Description: The sabellid, Terebrasabella heterouncinata, is a small (<5 mm) intratubular brooder that lives in burrows within the host s shell matrix. It is a semi-continuous breeder and despite producing small numbers of large eggs, infestation by this animal has reached epidemic proportions on local abalone farms. The present study compared the morphometrics and reproductive characteristics of worms from farmed and wild abalone, in the Walker Bay area of the south Western Cape Province of South Africa, to gain insights into why this animal has become so successful under aquaculture conditions. The farms designated farm A and farm B each had one on-farm site, and two wild sites, while farm C had two on-farm sites and two wild sites. The wild sites were natural abalone habitats located within 2.5 km of the farms. Our results conclusively showed that environmental conditions prevalent on the farms enhanced the reproductive success of these worms relative to that observed in its natural environment. At farms B and C, worms occurred in significantly higher densities at the on-farm sites than in the corresponding wild samples, but at farm A, density was equally low at the three sites. At all three farms, a greater proportion of the population was reproductively active in the on-farm samples than in the wild samples. Worms on farmed abalone had a higher instantaneous fecundity, brooded more clutches simultaneously and were larger than their conspecifics from the wild. There was a positive correlation between adult size and brood size and the number of clutches brooded simultaneously. Within the three on-farm sites there was a negative correlation between egg volume and brood size, indicating a trade-off between these traits. However, such a trade-off was not apparent between sites, with brood size being higher at the on-farm sites than at the wild sites, irrespective of egg size. This suggests that the stable nutrient-enriched environment on the farm led to an increase in fecundity without compromising the size (and implicitly the quality) of the eggs. Worm density did not have a significant effect on body size or any other reproductive traits at most sites, and the density of T. heterouncinata was unaffected by the density of other shell-infesting polychaetes. The results suggest that the farm environment has selected for larger, more fecund worms that breed rapidly with high recruitment success as a consequence of abundant nutrients, high host density, habitat stability and a possible lack of predation and interspecific competition.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
New Unity Movement Presidential Address
- Date: 2004-03
- Subjects: Government, Resistance to -- South Africa , South Africa -- History -- 20th century , South Africa -- Politics and government
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/32492 , vital:32118 , Bulk File 7
- Description: Presidential Addresses were delivered at each Annual conference of the New Unity Movement. This collection, though incomplete, has 18 items ranging from 1989 to 2013.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2004-03
Umabatha: global and local
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7032 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007364 , https://doi.org/10.1080/00138390408691324
- Description: preprint , There can be few shows that test the dimensions and pitfalls of 'globalised' theatre as thoroughly as Welcome Msomi's Umabatha. The worldwide success of the show, in box-office terms, can hardly be argued with. And yet, in its very conception, the vehicle is so riven by intrinsic cultural, theatrical, class and 'nationist' tensions that different audiences cannot but reap utterly different experiences, depending on their own cultural and intellectual inheritance.The show is an instance where theatre practice (sometimes) obfuscates political and aesthetic discourse, showing how easily cultures miss each other and fail to connect, and how easily specific historical, geographical and imperial associations are swamped by shallow 'globalised' audience response.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
Between the Reds and the Greens: a geographical interpretation of the land question in South Africa
- Authors: Fox, Roddy C
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Text
- Identifier: vital:575 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006657
- Description: This inaugural lecture is in two parts: each related to a different nexus of the four types of scholarly activity. The first reflects on my career and is an examination of how I have developed as a teacher and learner. The key scholarly activities being discovery, integration and teaching. The second part reflects on the evolution of my research interests and leads up to an examination of the land question in South Africa. The scholarly activities in this part of the lecture are discovery, integration and application.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
The proof of the pudding: the presentation and proof of expert evidence in South Africa
- Authors: Meintjes–Van Der Walt, Lirieka
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6338 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012403 , http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=170233
- Description: Imagine, as one may well imagine at this time of the day, a chocolate mousse, dark and delectable, or a tempting tiramasu or a perfect pavlova. How are you going to decide which is best? Yes, indeed the actual presentation of the puddings may influence your choice, but to be able to make an informed choice, you would need to taste them. Do you have to make the choice according to your own taste, or do you have to decide which should go best with your menu for your dinner party? If you have to decide which is best, you would have to be able to rank them in relation to other mousses, tiramasus or pavlovas. You need to know the ingredients, and for a professional decision you would need some knowledge of the art of cooking. Proof in the art of cooking, science, and also in law depends on the quantum and quality of evidence or data sufficient to support a conclusion. Loevinger concludes that “[p]roof ultimately depends on the ability of the human mind to make appropriate and useful distinctions and connections among data or items of evidence”.
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- Date Issued: 2003
Foucauldian feminism: the implications of governmentality
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Durrheim, Kevin
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6261 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007879
- Description: Foucauldian discourse has been received with varying degrees of enthusiasm within feminist circles. Some authors (e.g. Balbus, 1988; Di Leonardo, 1991; Hartsock, 1990) see a Foucauldian stance as incompatible with feminist theory, while others (e.g. Grimshaw, 1993; Hoy, 1988; McNay, 1992; Sawicki, 1988) advocate a positive relationship between Foucauldian discourse and feminism. And then there are those theorists (e.g. Burman, 1990) who stand between these two positions, stating that while Foucault offers useful insights and methods to feminists, it can also be dangerous.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002