A critical investigation into discourses that construct academic literacy at the Durban Institute of Technology
- Authors: McKenna, Sioux
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1317 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004121
- Description: This thesis examines the construction of academic literacy at the Durban Institute of Technology through a discourse analysis of interviews with educators and learners. Academic literacy comprises the norms and values of higher education as manifested in discipline-specific practices. Students are expected to take on these practices, and the underlying epistemologies, without any overt instruction in, or critique of, these ways of being. Lecturer and student discourses are identified and discussed in terms of their impact on the teaching and learning process. This broad context of educator and student understandings is set against the backdrop of the changing educational policies and structures in post-Apartheid South Africa. The changes in approach to academic development are also traced as a setting for the institutional study. The discourses about the intersection between language and learning were found largely to assume that texts, be they lectures, books, assignments etc, are neutral and autonomous of their contexts. Difficulties some learners experience in accessing or producing the expected meaning of these texts were largely ascribed to their problems with language at a surface level rather than to their lack of shared norms regarding the construction of these texts. The study provides an analysis of how the ‘autonomous’ model is manifested iii and illustrates the limitations on curriculum change imposed by this understanding of how texts are constructed and interpreted. Discourses of motivation presume that students’ difficulties in taking on the literacy practices esteemed by the academy are related to attitude. This discourse assumes that learners have a fairly fixed identity, an assumption that did not bear out in the data. The multiple identities of the learners often presented tensions in the acquisition of discipline-specific academic literacies. The learners were found not to invest strongly in an academically literate identity, or were found to experience conflict between this target identity and the identities they brought with them to the institution. The elevation of academic literacy practices is questioned if the surface features, characteristic of these practices, are valued without a concomitant claim to knowledge production. The rapid emergence of a high skills discourse in Universities of Technology in South Africa is also interrogated, given the current emphasis on training for economic growth over discourses of social redress and transformation.
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- Date Issued: 2004
A phenomenological investigation into lecturers' understanding of themselves as assessors at Rhodes University
- Authors: Grant, Rose
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: Curriculum-based assessment -- South Africa Education, Higher -- South Africa -- Evaluation Educational tests and measurements -- South Africa Education, Higher -- Evaluation Case studies Universities and colleges -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1315 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003948
- Description: This thesis sets out to obtain an understanding of what it means to be an assessor in higher education, more especially within the Rhodes University context. The concept of assessment, a highly contentious and complex issue, is examined against a background of competing understandings of the nature and purpose of higher education, including the striving for excellence versus the call to more equitable ideals associated with a mass higher education and training system. An overview of salient issues is presented in which both traditional and alternative paradigms of measurement and assessment theory are explored with a view to considering foundational principles upon which sound assessment practice should be based. Specific methods and instruments of assessment are examined with the purpose of evaluating their potential for empowering students as active participants in their own learning and in the assessment process. In a field in which much of the literature seeks improved assessment merely through the administration of increasingly sophisticated assessment techniques, a phenomenological investigation offered a unique way of understanding the meaning assessors make of their practice. Making use of in-depth interviews with five lecturers at Rhodes University the researcher, interacting in a personal manner with people not viewed as experimental objects but as human subjects, assisted participants in moving towards non-theoretical descriptions that accurately reflected their experience. Insights contained in the data were synthesised and integrated into a consistent description of the essential nature of the experience, the primary endeavour of the phenomenologist being to transform naïve experience into more explicitly detailed conceptual knowledge. The essence of how these educators understand themselves as assessors at Rhodes University is perhaps best encapsulated by a considerable sense of agency or initiative on their part. While participants make use of a variety of assessment strategies, they are conscious that assessment cannot be viewed in isolation from other aspects of their teaching and the curriculum. Not only do they make use of different assessment methods but, conscious of accommodating the diverse needs of students, understand their responsibility in terms of providing learning opportunities to assist students in meeting the course outcomes and fulfilling their potential. Rather than allowing pressures from within and outside of the academy to dictate, these lecturers, with significant hard work, courage and a capacity for reflective practice, have embraced the challenges associated with higher education in a state of transition.
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- Date Issued: 2005
A case study of the goals of the business communication course at Technikon Witwatersrand
- Authors: Vongo, Mthuthuzeli Rubin
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: Communication in education -- South Africa Communication -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa English language -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa Curriculum change -- South Africa Competency-based education -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1316 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003949
- Description: At Technikon Witwatersrand, Business Communication is offered as a service subject, which is compulsory for a variety of diplomas and the majority of students are obligated to do the course. Its broad intention is to assist students in developing their proficiency in English, enabling them to cope with studying at Technikon and preparing them for the workplace. Despite the fact that the course is designed to assist them, many students question why they have to do the course and whether it is simply a repetition of high school work. The study attempts to examine the implicit and explicit goals of Business Communication, to explore the process through which the goals have been developed and changed over the years (i.e. how the goals have been constructed), and to elicit and compare the perspectives of the different stakeholder groups as to the goals. Both a qualitative and a quantitative approach are used in the research design. Interviews with four fulltime lecturers were conducted and a self-designed questionnaire was administered to students. These were the main means of data collection. The data reveals that the goals of Business Communication are implied rather than explicit. Despite this, students and lecturers see the course as important. Recommendations are made to help the Department of Business Communication to reflect on their practice with particular emphasis given to material development and the application of OBE principles.
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- Date Issued: 2006
Using experiential learning to facilitate pharmacy students' understanding of patients' medication practice in chronic illness
- Authors: Williams, Kevin
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: Chronic diseases -- Chemotherapy Chronically ill -- Care Pharmacy -- Study and teaching Pharmacy -- Practice Social medicine Health -- Sociological aspects Diseases -- Sociological aspects Health -- Psychological aspects
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1322 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003955
- Description: This study originates from experiences which led me to question the way pharmacists are equipped to advise and support the medicine-taking practice of patients using chronic medication. The study offers a critical theoretical consideration of underlying perspectives informing pharmacy education. I propose following a critical realist ontological perspective, a social realist understanding of social structure and human agency, and a sociocultural epistemology. Based on these perspectives, I consider a sociological critique of ‘health’, ‘disease’, ‘illness’ and ‘sickness’ perspectives on medicine-taking, and of pharmacy as a profession. I then propose an experiential learning approach, with an emphasis on developing reflexivity through affective learning. I follow this with an illustrative case study. Following a critical discourse analysis of student texts from the case study, I conclude that there is evidence that experiential learning may prove useful in developing pharmacy students’ reflexive competency to support the provision of pharmaceutical care to patients using chronic medications.
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- Date Issued: 2006
A social realist account of the emergence of a formal academic staff development programme at a South African university
- Authors: Quinn, Lynn
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Teachers -- Training of -- South Africa Education, Higher -- South Africa Graduate students -- South Africa Universities and colleges -- South Africa -- Graduate work
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1321 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003954
- Description: Using social realist theory and particularly the morphogenetic/morphostatic methodology advocated by Margaret Archer, this study offers a critical examination of the emergence of a formal academic staff development programme at a small South African university (SSAU). Archer’s morphogenetic approach enabled an investigation of the interface between culture, structure and agency (at macro, mezo and micro levels) in order to theorize about the material, ideational and agential conditions that obtained and which in turn enabled the emergence of the Postgraduate Diploma of Higher Education (PGDHE) at the SSAU. The study therefore advances concrete propositions about the cultural, structural and agential conditions for transformation which existed at a particular time in the history of higher education (and the subfield of educational development) which enabled the introduction of the PGDHE. Analysis of the data suggests that what occurred at SSAU was a disruption of the morphostatic synchrony between structure and culture brought about by new discourses and structures emanating from the broader international and national higher education context. In particular, it seems that attempts at reconciling the constraining contradictions between the discourses and structures related to quality assurance on the one hand and educational development on the other resulted in a conjunction between transformation at the levels of both the cultural system and social structure. This conjunction, along with the actions of key Institutional agents and the morphogenesis of the staff of the Educational Development Unit, created sufficiently enabling conditions in the Institution for the introduction of the PGDHE. The research adds to knowledge through insights into the contribution that the ideas, beliefs, values, ideologies and theories about higher education broadly and about educational development specifically make to enabling or constraining conditions for the professionalization of academic staff in higher education institutions. It uncovers how relevant structures at the international, national and institutional levels can shape the practice of educational development and specifically staff development. It has generated insights into how the relevant people and the positions they hold can impact on staff development practices. In summary, the research could contribute towards emancipatory knowledge which could be used by SSAU and educational development practitioners elsewhere to inform future planning and decision making in relation to educational development and more specifically staff development practices in their contexts.
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- Date Issued: 2007
Academic literacy right from the start?: a critical realist study of the way university literacy is constructed at a Gulf university
- Authors: Picard, Michelle Yvette
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Gulf University Education, Higher -- Persian Gulf Literacy -- Persian Gulf Academic writing -- Study and teaching -- Persian Gulf English language -- Study and teaching -- Persian Gulf
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1323 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004121
- Description: The aim of this research was to examine how university literacy is constructed at a university in the Arabian Gulf and to evaluate the appropriateness of this construction where students of a low level of English are exposed to academic English (Right from the Start). Unpacking this construction is a complex task and to gain even a limited insight into the numerous Discourses, epistemologies and pedagogies constituting the construction of university literacy at Gulf universities, a stratified approach that probes the layers of ‘reality’ is necessary. Therefore, a critical realist approach is engaged, along with a variety of methods to probe the layers of the phenomenon. In terms of thesis organization, the traditional empirical structure common to the Social Sciences and the argumentative structure common to the Humanities are integrated. While the information obtained by a variety of methods is analysed and conclusions are reached, this material is also used along with additional literature to support the central contention that university literacy and academic English are possible ‘right from the start’, if the students’ literacy is examined from a certain perspective and if there is an appropriate pedagogy which promotes the desired literacies. This combination of thesis structures would be deemed appropriate in the critical realist ontological framework since the rigour of the thesis lies both in its “reliability” resulting from the empirical data and its focus on the ‘real’; and its “reflexivity” and “persuasivness” arising from the transparently ‘critical’ argument of the thesis (Cadman 2002). In order to conduct the empirical research, the lenses suggested by each of the major views of literacy as outlined by Lea and Street (1998) - namely the “study skills” view, the narrow “academic socialization view” and the “academic literacies view” are utilized in succession. However, the central argument is revealed as the manifestations of each ‘view’ of literacy in the specific context are examined, the research outcomes obtained by utilizing each view in succession are outlined and both are critiqued from the perspective of the “academic literacies” view. Corpus research is undertaken from a “study skills” perspective and the effect of the vocabulary taught to the students on their use of vocabulary in their writing is examined. Also, using the “study skills” lens, the students’ “global language development” in terms of changes or fluctuations in “fluency, accuracy and complexity” (Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki et al. 1998) over a period of at least three semesters is examined. Utilizing a narrow “academic socialization lens”, studies conducted at the University on learning strategies and motivation and the comments made by respondents in interviews and on an electronic discussion board are compared to comments made by teachers and lecturers. Major flaws in these views of academic literacy are acknowledged and the way each view manifests itself in the Discourse(s) prevalent at this particular university is demonstrated. Finally, Discourses evidenced in the student interviews in particular, are unpacked and then compared and contrasted with those in the lecturer interviews as well as the curriculum and other university documents. The limitations of the study are examined and suggestions for further research and ways to address ‘problems’ associated with university literacy are given.
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- Date Issued: 2007
The role of discourse in the constitution of radiographic knowledge: a critical realist account
- Authors: Wright, Jennifer Lynne
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: Education, Higher -- South Africa Universities and colleges -- South Africa English language -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa Language and education Discourse analysis Radiography -- Study and teaching
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1320 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003953
- Description: The ways in which knowledge is constituted in Higher Education in South Africa today needs to take into account the historical diversity of learners’ academic and literacy competencies. The thesis begins by considering the ways in which, historically, many learners in Higher Education have been under prepared for the challenges of studying complex disciplines through the medium of English, which is often their second or third additional language. It also considers the sometimes inappropriate response of Higher Education to the plight of these learners and the present and potential role of language specialists working in collaboration with disciplinary specialists to support these learners. In this ethnographic research, I use an ontological metatheory, critical realism, as my analytical lens. Critical realism is an appropriate analytical lens for exploring and gaining insight into the possible causal mechanisms that generate the stratified and often inscrutable nature of social reality, including the role of language and discourse in education. I employ a case study design to explore the role of discourse in lecturers and clinical radiographers’ constitution of the knowledge of entry level Radiography learners at the Groote Schuur campus of Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). Taking discourse as my unit of analysis, I develop a model of knowledge constitution based on a Hallidayan framework (1978). This model comprises two contexts of culture (Higher Education and Health Care) within which are embedded two contexts of situation (the university classroom and a clinical radiography workplace). In these contexts, I focus on how lecturers and clinical radiographers constitute radiographic knowledge through the field, tenor and mode of their discourse. My research sheds light on learners’ construal of various aspects of this process of knowledge constitution, and I consider implications for Radiography teaching and learning. I conclude that, because of the dual contexts in which the learners’ knowledge is constituted, literacy requirements in the two contexts are quite different. For this reason, learners may often be unmotivated to enhance their literacies, particularly in reading and writing; yet, in the interests of the future growth of the profession, the latter will be required of them as practitioners who conduct research and publish. I argue that the real empowerment of Radiography learners thus lies in their lecturers’ agency: there is a need for them to implement certain practices that will shape the learners’ identity, not only as clinical practitioners, but as researchers and writers. In doing this, they will ensure that the learners’ potential is realised and they have the capacity to make meaningful contributions to the growth of the future radiography profession.
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- Date Issued: 2008
Discourse and the oppression of nonhuman animals: a critical realist account
- Authors: Mitchell, Leslie Roy
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Animal rights Animal welfare -- Moral and ethical aspects Critical realism Critical discourse analysis Animal industry -- Moral and ethical aspects Livestock -- Social aspects Human-animal relationships Agriculture -- Moral and ethical aspects
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1318 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003951
- Description: This work examines the use of nonhuman animals in the farming industry and seeks to understand why this practice takes place and what supports its continuation. The research is approached from a critical realist perspective and after a description of past and current practices in the industry, it uses abduction and retroduction to determine the essential conditions for the continuation of the phenomenon of nonhuman animal farming. One essential condition is found to be the existence of negative discourses relating to nonhuman animals and this aspect is examined in more detail by analyzing a corpus of texts from a farming magazine using Critical Discourse Analysis. Major discourses which were found to be present were those of production, science and slavery which construct the nonhumans respectively as objects of scientific investigation, as production machines and as slaves. A minor discourse of achievement relating to the nonhumans was also present. Further analysis of linguistic features examined the way in which the nonhumans are socially constructed in the discourses. Drawing on work in experimental psychology by Millgram, Zimbardo and Bandura it was found that the effects of these discourses fulfil many of the conditions for bringing about moral disengagement in people thus explaining why billions of people are able to support animal farming in various ways even though what happens in the phenomenon is contrary to their basic ethical and moral beliefs.
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- Date Issued: 2009
Economic responsiveness in organisational psychology curricula
- Authors: Van Niekerk, Roelf
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Psychology, Industrial -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa Universities and colleges -- Curricula -- South Africa College graduates -- Employment -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1319 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003952
- Description: This study focused on a topic at the intersection of two contexts, namely curriculum responsiveness and industrial/organisational psychology (IOP). The rationale for this study is based on two considerations. Firstly, a review of the IOP curricula offered at ten prominent South African universities revealed little overlap. This suggests that academic departments are not guided by shared principles when they implement decisions about the content or sequencing of curriculum content. Secondly, the Department of Education urges academics to design curricula that are relevant and responsive to contemporary conditions. These two considerations motivated the investigation of the following research question: What key performance areas (KPAs) do employers specify when they advertise positions suitable for IOP graduates? The investigation had two aims, namely (a) to systematically analyse the KPAs specified in job advertisements and (b) to compile KPA templates that may be used by IOP departments who wish to revise or transform their curricula. The research design of this study has five characteristics, namely that it is: (a) qualitative, (b) naturalistic, (c), descriptive, (d) applied, and (e) strategic. The study employed a purposive sampling strategy that involved the collection of documentary data (job advertisements aimed at recruiting IOP graduates) over a 52-week period (N=1115). The data was content analysed by means of a six-step documentary analysis method. Specific strategies were employed to enhance the validity of the findings. These strategies focused on credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. Similarly, the ethical standing of the investigation was promoted by addressing four considerations, namely autonomy and respect for dignity, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. The data analysis procedure produced comprehensive and detailed qualitative descriptions of (a) 21 occupational categories, (b) 4070 KPA themes and (c) 84 KPA clusters. In addition, the number of occupational categories, KPA themes and KPA clusters were recorded and interpreted. In addition, the data analysis procedure produced comprehensive KPA templates that IOP departments may find useful. The templates reflect the KPAs specified by advertisements aimed at recruiting IOP graduates for a range of occupational categories and were designed to be used as benchmarks against which the economic responsiveness of curricula can be compared.
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- Date Issued: 2009
A case study of the research careers of women academics: constraints and enablements
- Authors: Obers, Nöelle Marie Thérèse
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Career success , Research , Women college teachers , Women in higher education , Sex discrimination in higher education
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1313 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001575
- Description: The purpose of this research is to investigate constraints that women academics experience in their research careers and how enablements, particularly in the form of mentoring relationships and support structures, can impact on their research career development in the context of the new knowledge economy of Higher Education. The research was a case study of one South African Institution and used a mixed method approach. Social realism underpinned the research. Data was collected and analysed within the spheres of structure, culture and agency, using critical discourse analysis, interpretation and abstraction strategies. I investigated how women researchers understand and experience career success and what they perceive and experience as enablements and constraints to their research careers. Institutional support structures and cultures were examined with a focus on the role of the Head of Department. I explored mentoring and questioned whether the agency of women academics is empowered by mentoring and supportive structures to overcome constraints to their research productivity and the development of their careers. Gender-based issues of inequity, low self-esteem and accrual of social capital appear to be the underlying factors affecting how women perform in the research arena and advance within the institution. It was found that mentoring is a generative mechanism that has a favourable impact on women academics as it enables them to overcome obstacles to research productivity and career advancement.
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- Date Issued: 2013
A social realist account of the tutorial system at the University of Johannesburg
- Authors: Layton, Delia Melanie
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: University of Johannesburg Education, Higher -- South Africa Tutors and tutoring -- South Africa College teaching -- South Africa Archer, Margaret Scotford College student development programs -- South Africa Social realism , Tutorial system
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1314 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001621
- Description: Using Margaret Archer’s social realist methodology, this study critically examines the construction of the tutorial system in several departments and faculties at the Auckland Park campus of the University of Johannesburg. The purpose of the study is to investigate the extent to which tutorials support the acquisition of programme and disciplinary epistemologies. Social realism calls for analytical dualism of ‘the people’ (agents) from ‘the parts’ (structure and culture). This requires the separate consideration of structures (social systems, rules, roles, practices, policies, institutions, and organisational structures like committees, units, departments, faculties), culture (ideologies, theories, beliefs and values as evidenced in discourses), and agency (people and their ability to act within and upon their own world in terms of their social roles and positions dependent on their ability to activate their emergent properties and powers). Through this investigation, an understanding was gained into how the emergent properties and powers contained within the material, ideational and agential elements helped to generate certain events and practices in the tutorial system. These generative mechanisms were examined to explore whether they enabled or constrained the construction of the tutorial system to provide epistemological access. The study shows that while many official policy documents construct the tutorial system as being an intervention to support academic success, particularly for first-years, there are some tensions within the document discourses, where, on the one hand, student success is constructed in terms of throughput numbers, or, on the other hand, as being about becoming a particular kind of person who is able to access and add to powerful knowledge. Furthermore, the study found that policies are not being consistently implemented. While certain key agents and actors, in the form of management, academics and tutors, were found to be able to overcome constraints and introduce innovative ways of enhancing access to target epistemologies, there is a need for consideration of structural and cultural constraints. For example, structures in the form of funding, venues and timetabling were found to constrain the tutorial system as did some of the discourses in the cultural domain: for example, in the form of certain dominant discourses around teaching and learning, beliefs about the purpose of the tutorial and the relationship between academics and the tutorial system. The study also found that the ontological aspects of ‘learning to be’ were not fore-grounded to any great extent in the ways in which the tutorial system was constructed. There needs to be more consideration of the ontological as well as the epistemological aspects of first-year study so as to take cognisance of the different learning needs of an increasingly diverse student body and to encourage the development of the student agency necessary for a deep engagement with the disciplinary epistemologies.
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- Date Issued: 2013
An analysis of the structure of knowledge and students' construction of knowledge in an introductory accounting course
- Authors: Myers, Lyndrianne Peta
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Knowledge, Theory of , Learning, Psychology of , Accounting -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa -- Grahamstown
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1328 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013227
- Description: This research seeks to explain how students construct knowledge in introductory accounting. It was prompted by concerns over low pass rates for first-year Introductory Accounting students at Rhodes University and particularly low pass rates amongst novice (first-time) Accounting Students. In trying to get a better understanding of reasons behind these pass rates, this research focuses on the structure of knowledge in the discipline and what this means for how students should construct knowledge in the course. Bernstein’s Pedagogic Device and the dimensions of Semantics and Specialisation in Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory are used as theoretical and analytical frameworks to help understand the structure of knowledge in this course, how knowledge is recontextualised and finally how it is acquired by students. A group of students from the 2011 class were interviewed to gain a better understanding of how each of these students constructed knowledge during the semester. The analysis of these interviews reveals how students construct knowledge in the course and the implications this has for their success over the semester. Analysing this interview data, and comparing it with the levels of success for each student, permitted me to develop an improved understanding of how successful and unsuccessful students construct knowledge. As a teacher of Accounting, understanding and being explicit about the structure of knowledge in the discipline, and how this impacts on the construction of knowledge, will allow me to advise future students on how to most effectively construct knowledge in this course and to advise and guide colleagues on how best to present this course.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Becoming and being: a critical realist study into the emergence of identity in emergency medical science students, and the construct of graduate attributes
- Authors: Millar, Bernadette Theresa
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Critical realism , Emergency medical personnel -- Psychology , Emergency medical services
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1327 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013175
- Description: This critical realist thesis seeks to understand how student, graduate and professional identities emerge in Emergency Medical Science (EMS) students at a South African University of Technology (UoT) as well as in professional paramedics in the Emergency Medical Care Services (EMCS). It further considers the construct of graduate attributes (GAs) and its relationship to emergence of identity and influence on curriculum design. The research design is that of a case study. The theoretical framework is critical realism whose depth ontology posits three domains of reality. Causal powers and generative mechanisms exist in the Real domain which cause events or phenomena to emerge in the Actual domain that are experienced in the Empirical domain. Using retroduction one may come to explore some of the causes for the event. Using Bhaskar’s concepts of identity, the self, absence and emergence, ontology and four-planar social being, a Bhaskarian explanatory framework of identity to explore the emergence of identity has been created. In exploring graduate attributes, a critical realist question is posed: “What must the world be like for GAs to exist” to explore the possibilities of the existence of GAs. It was found that student identity emerges diachronically in three moments, while professional paramedic identity starts to emerge during the third year of study mainly through the structure, culture and agency of workplace-based learning. In answer to the critical realist question it was found that GAs emerge from the neoliberalist commodification of universities. In seeking an alternative to GAs, traits and attitudes were explored. It was found that these emerge from curriculum, interplay of departmental structure, culture and agency of and from students’ being which makes them ontologically radically different from GAs. This study concludes that student, graduate and professional identities emerge from a person’s core constellational identity diachronically within four-planar social being and the interplay of structure, culture and agency. GAs cannot be related to the emergence of identity and curriculum design because of their ontology; however, if traits and attitudes are substituted for GAs, a close relationship does exist between emergence of identity, traits and attitudes and curriculum design.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Control, compliance and conformity at the University of Fort Hare 1916 - 2000: a Gramscian approach
- Authors: Johnson, Pamela
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: University of Fort Hare -- History , University of Fort Hare -- Administration , Higher education and state -- South Africa , Hegemony -- South Africa , Conformity -- Political aspects -- South Africa , Abuse of administrative power -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , South Africa -- Politics and government -- 1916-2000 , Apartheid -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1325 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013126
- Description: Arising from Marxist theory, critical theory investigates the mechanisms that enable continued domination in capitalist society, with a view to revealing the real, but obscured, nature of social relations and enabling these to be challenged by subjugated classes. Within the broad spectrum of Marxist theory, social relations of domination and subordination are assigned according to the relationship of social classes to economic production. However, the neo-Marxist perspective developed by Antonio Gramsci locates relations of power within the broader context of the political economy. In doing so, the role of the State in a capitalist society assumes greater significance than that of maintaining and securing social relations on behalf of the dominant class through coercion and force. Instead, the State embarks on a range of activities in the attempted “exercise of hegemony”, or the cultivation of general acceptance by all social classes of existing social relations and conditions. Gramsci refers to this desired outcome as “consent”, the product of the successful exercise of hegemony, a political function which is thus crucial to the accumulation of capital. When unsuccessful, dissent cannot be contained by the State, and the extent to which contestation constitutes a threat is revealed by recourse to coercion. The manner in which relations of power are cemented through the exercise of hegemony lies at the core of this thesis. It investigates the relationship between the State and the administrators of an institution within civil society, the University of Fort Hare, as well as the responses to the activities of the State and University Administration within the University itself, over an extended period of time between 1916 and 2000. This period is divided into three specific time frames, according to changes in the expression of the South African State. In general, it is seen that conformity characterises the relationship between the State and the University Administration, underscoring the success of the State in fostering the role of education in the reproduction of social relations and values and in eliciting conformity. The nature of conformity is seen to vary according to different expressions of the State and changes in social relations, which are in turn informed by the overarching political economy and events taking place within society and the University of Fort Hare. Manifestations of consent and dissent, as responses to the attempted exercise of hegemony, are presented in the three periods corresponding to different expressions of the State. Four reasons for conformity, as presented by Gramscian scholar Joseph V Femia (1981), are utilised in order to explain and illustrate the nature of control and compliance at the University of Fort Hare between 1916 and 2000.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Cultural bias on the IELTS examination
- Authors: Freimuth, Hilda
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: International English Language Testing System -- Evaluation Language and culture -- United Arab Emirates English language -- Study and teaching -- Foreign speakers English language -- Examinations Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1324 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012088
- Description: The study reported in this thesis investigated Emirati students’ claims related to experiences of cultural bias of the reading component of the IELTS examination through a critical realist lens. Critical realism posits a layered reality which allows for the conceptualization of experiences as emerging from the interplay of events and mechanisms found in two other realms of reality – the actual and the real. Experiences, therefore, have a different ontological status than the events and the causal mechanisms to which they are attributed. Social realism was used to further explore the depth of the realm of the real through Archer’s construct of analytical dualism. This allowed for the placement of generative mechanisms into three domains: structure, culture, and agency. There were two parts to this investigation: a content analysis and a focus group study. The first part of the content analysis consisted of analyzing 60 reading passages from 20 IELTS examinations for a number of cultural categories. These included such things as cultural objects, social roles, idiomatic expressions, traditions and festivals, superstitions and beliefs, and political and historical settings. The second part of the content analysis focused on the question types and syntactical structure of the 5 different IELTS examinations that the focus groups students sat. All three components of the analysis – the cultural content, question types, and syntactical structure – were conducted at the level of the actual. Findings indicated that on average, an IELTS examination contained 14 cultural references of various kinds. Only 4% of all geographical references pertained to the Middle East with the biggest share being western locations. The most common question types were matching questions, fill in the blank questions, and yes/no questions with more than 50% of all questions requiring some form of higher order thinking due to text reinterpretation. The study also found that the question types were not consistently distributed over the examinations with each consisting of a different variety of questions and some even having repetitive question types on one reading examination. The second part of the study was the focus groups. Here, 21 Emirati students sat 5 different IELTS examinations. Upon test completion, these students underwent a semistructured interview to relate their experiences of the test. These experiences, at the level of the empirical, all shared 7 ideas: reading is hard, the questions are too difficult, the passages are too long and difficult, the topics are unfamiliar, the topics are not interesting, the vocabulary is too difficult, and there is not enough time. When the processes of retroduction and abduction were applied to both the content analysis and these common experiences, numerous structures and discourses at the level of the real were identified as having contributed to the emergence of the feeling of bias at the level of the empirical. These structures included such things as the students’ school system (eg. curriculum, assessment, instructors etc.), religion, literacy practices, and home. In the cultural domain, a number of discourses were found to contribute to the experiences at the level of the empirical. Amongst these were the ‘Unimportance of Reading’, the culture of ‘Obedience’, the rejection of the ‘un-Islamic’, and the students’ sense of ‘Entitlement’.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Knowledge and knowing in the public management and public administration programmes at a comprehensive university
- Authors: Lück, Jacqueline Catherine
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Knowledge and learning , Public administration -- Study and teaching (Higher) , Knowledge, Sociology of , Learning, Psychology of , Knowledge, Theory of , Educational equalization -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Literacy -- South Africa , Technical institutes -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1326 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013166
- Description: Knowledge is often tacit and under researched in educational fields. In order for student access to knowledge and its related academic discourses to be facilitated, a deep understanding needs to be gained of the form that this knowledge takes. This study interrogates the ways in which knowledge is constituted in the first year of a Public Management Diploma and a Public Administration Degree at a comprehensive university in South Africa. The study takes a social realist approach that understands reality as fact but sees our knowledge thereof as a social phenomenon. The study was concerned with knowledge structures and knower structures as it argues that these have not been adequately accounted for in the sociology of education research. But this study comes to this concern from a strongly ideological view of student reading and writing. This study calls on a social practices approach that sees literacy as embedded within specific academic discourses, which vary from context to context. It uses this ideological understanding of literacy as the orienting framework for the study of knowledge. The study takes place in a Higher Education mileu that has begun to transform from its divisive past. The transformation brought about new institutional formations such as the comprehensive university, with its mix of vocational, professional and formative programmes and varied emphasis on contextual and conceptual curriculum coherence. Increasingly, the transformation agenda also shifts concern from simply providing physical access to a previously disenfranchised majority to ensuring full participation in the context of high attrition rates in first year and low retention rates. The data was analysed using the Specialisation Codes of Legitimation Code Theory to see what was being specialised in the Diploma and Degree curricula of the Public Management and Administration fields. These fields are characterised in the literature by ongoing tensions about focus, and perceptions of there being a theoretical vacuum and an inability to deal adequately with challenges in the South African public sector. Analysis of lecturer interviews and first-year curriculum documentation showed that both the Public Management Diploma and Public Administration Degree have stronger epistemic relations (ER), with an emphasis on claims to knowledge of the world. The data showed relatively weak social relations (SR), in that there was not the valuing of a particular lens on the world or a specific disposition required for legitimation within this field. The combination of ER+ and SR- indicates that these curricula are Knowledge Codes, where legitimation is through the acquisition of a set of skills and procedures. The programmes were characterised by fairly low-level procedural knowledge, which may point to a workplace-oriented direction that is dominant in the comprehensive university. In keeping with concerns raised in the literature about this field, there was little evidence of theoretical or propositional knowledge in the Public Management Diploma and while the Public Administration Degree had some evidence of this, it was arguably not to the extent expected of a degree as described in the National Qualifications Framework. This study was limited to the first-year of the Diploma and Degree and subsequent years could present different findings. Lecturers showed awareness of student challenges with literacy practices and made concerned attempts through various interventions to address this but they were found to value the surface features of writing practices over personal engagement with the knowledge. Though the expectations of student literacy practices in tests and assignments were aligned to the ways in which knowledge was constructed in the curriculum, there was little evidence of student induction into disciplinary discourses of the field as knowledge was presented as being neutral and student writing primarily took the form of retelling objective facts. The implications of these findings could include student exclusion from higher-level academic discourse, more powerful knowledge in the workplace and, finally, constrain them from becoming producers of knowledge.
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- Date Issued: 2014
An exploration into the conditions enabling and constraining the implementation of quality assurance in higher education: the case of a small comprehensive university in South Africa
- Authors: Masehela, Langutani Meriam
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: University of Venda -- Evaluation , Education, Higher -- South Africa -- Evaluation , Universities and colleges -- South Africa -- Auditing , Quality assurance -- South Africa , Quality assurance -- Standards -- South Africa , Universities and colleges -- South Africa -- Evaluation , Educational accountability -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- Standards -- South Africa , Educational evaluation -- South Africa , Critical realism , Social realism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1334 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020312
- Description: At an international level, demands for accountability in respect of the quality of teaching and learning in higher education are increasing. This is also the case in South Africa. The response to these demands has taken the form of the introduction of quality assurance systems to higher education. In South Africa, a formal national external quality assurance was introduced to the higher education system in 2001 as a result of the establishment of the Higher Education Quality Committee. The Higher Education Quality Committee is a standing committee of the South African Council on Higher Education. Like other quality assurance agencies across the world, the Higher Education Quality Committee has the responsibility for i) auditing institutions of higher education and ii) accrediting learning programmes. The first cycle of institutional audits ran from 2004 until 2011. As quality assurance was introduced to the higher education system and the first cycle of institutional audits began, universities in South Africa developed policies and procedures intended to assure quality in three areas of their core functioning: research, teaching and learning and community engagement. The University of Venda, which is the focus of the study on which this thesis is based, was no exception. As a practitioner in the Centre for Higher Education Teaching and Learning at The University of Venda, it was my observation that the policies and procedures intended to assure quality in teaching and learning were not always implemented by academic staff members. This was in spite of poor student performance data which raised questions about the quality of the teaching and learning processes in place. The study underpinning this thesis was designed to explore this phenomenon. More specifically, it aimed to identify the conditions enabling and constraining the implementation of policies and procedures in two Schools in the University: the School of Health Sciences and the School of Human and Social Sciences. In order to explore these conditions, I adopted Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism as an under-labouring philosophy for the study. Critical realism posits a view of reality comprising three strata, none of which can be reducible to the other. The first of these strata is termed the level of the Empirical and consists of the experiences and observations which become apparent to us through the senses. The second layer, the Actual, consists of events from which these experiences and observations emerge. Underpinning both of these layers is a further layer, the Real, which is not accessible by empirical means and which consists of structures and mechanisms which generate both events at the level of the Actual and experiences and observation at the level of the Empirical. The design of my study sought to reach this deepest layer of reality to identify these mechanisms. Bhaskar’s critical realism is philosophy which needs to be operationalized using substantive, or explanatory, theory. For this purpose, I drew on Margaret Archer’s social realism. The design on my study drew on case study methodology and involved in-depth interviews with members of the two Schools which each formed cases within the more overarching case of the University itself. In addition to these interviews, I analysed a range of institutional documents related to the assurance of quality in teaching and learning. The exploration of enabling and constraining conditions at the level of the Real allow me to make a series of recommendations in the final Chapter of my thesis intended to enhance the quality assurance system introduced to the University.
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- Date Issued: 2015
Conditions enabling or constraining the exercise of agency among new academics in higher education, conducive to the social inclusion of students
- Authors: Behari-Leak, Kasturi
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Social integration -- South Africa , Students -- South Africa -- Social conditions , Educational change -- South Africa , College teachers -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Critical realism , Social realism , Agent (Philosophy)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1333 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020295
- Description: This study, which is part of a National Research Foundation project on Social Inclusion in Higher Education (HE), focuses on the exercise of agency among new academics, conducive to the social inclusion of students. Transitioning from varied entry points into higher education, new academics face numerous challenges as they embed themselves in disciplinary and institutional contexts. Given the complexity and contested nature of the current higher education landscape, new academics are especially vulnerable. Using Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism as meta-theoretical framing and Margaret Archer’s social realist theory, with its methodological focus on analytical dualism and morphogenesis, this study offers a social realist account of how new academics engage with enabling and constraining conditions at institutional, faculty, departmental and classroom levels. Through an analysis of six individual narratives of mediation, this study explicates and exemplifies the range of agential choices exercised by new academics to mediate their contested spaces. A nuanced social and critical account of the material, ideational and agential conditions in HE shows that the courses of action taken by these new academics are driven through their concerns, commitments and projects in higher education. Yet, despite the university’s espousal of embracing change, the current induction and transition of new academics is inadequate to the task of transformation in higher education. Systemic conditions in HE, conducive to critical agency and social justice, are not enabling. Bhaskar’s Seven Scalar Being, used as an analytical frame and heuristic, guides the cross-case analysis of the six narratives across seven levels of ontology. The findings highlight that, despite difficult contextual influences, the positive exercise of agency is a marked feature of new participants in HE in this study. This has immediate implications for ways in which professional and academic development, and disciplinary and departmental programmes, could create and sustain conducive conditions for the professionalisation of new academics through more sensitised practices. Using alternative research methods such as photovoice to generate its data, this doctoral study proposes that new research methodologies, located in the third space, are needed now more than ever in HE sociological research, to recognise the researcher and the research participants as independent, autonomous and causally efficacious beings. To this end, this study includes a Chapter Zero, which captures the narrative of the doctoral scholar as researcher, who, shaped and influenced by established doctoral practices and traditions in the field, exercises her own doctoral agency in particular ways.
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- Date Issued: 2015
Perceptions of being a learner: an investigation into how first year Journalism students at a South African university construct themselves as learners
- Authors: Lunga, Carolyne Mande
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Journalism -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa , Students -- Attitudes , Students -- Self-rating of -- South Africa , Discourse analysis, Narrative , Active learning -- South Africa , Learning -- Evaluation , Learning, Psychology of , College freshmen -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1332 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020026
- Description: The aim of the research reported in this document was to explore the ways in which first year Journalism students at a South African University construct themselves as learners. The research adopted a case study approach of purposively selected first year journalism students. In exploring this area, focus group and individual in-depth interviewing were employed which illuminated important aspects of learner identity construction. In order to make sense of these self-constructions, the research was located in the larger debates on discourse as espoused by Michel Foucault who argues that discourse constructs subjectivities. The research demonstrated that there were various discourses at play which influenced how these learners spoke and behaved. The influence of these discourses on learners' experiences varied at different times of the year. For example, the awarding of the Duly Performed (DP) certificate for students who met the minimum attendance and work requirements of a particular course, the giving of tests, exercises and examinations were some of the technologies that 'forced' students into compliance. In terms of identity formation, the heterogeneous nature of 'being' a journalism 'student' revealed that the different discourses at play influenced learner behaviour and that their identities continued to change over the year. Doing additional subjects such as Sociology, Drama, Art History and others at the same time as Journalism and Media Studies also meant that the learners had to negotiate the differing role requirements.
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- Date Issued: 2015
Reading identities: a case study of grade 8 learners' interactions in a reading club
- Authors: Scheckle, Eileen Margaret Agnes
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Group reading -- South Africa , Reading (Middle school) -- South Africa , Literacy programs -- South Africa , Identity (Psychology) in adolescence , Identity (Psychology) in adolescence -- South Africa , Discourse analysis -- Social aspects , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1329 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017766
- Description: This study offers an account of reading clubs as a literacy intervention in a grade 8 English class at a former ‘Coloured’ high school in South Africa. Using Margaret Archer’s social realist methodology, it examines different practices of ‘reading’ used by learners in talking and writing about text. Archer’s analytical dualism and morphogenetic model provided an explanatory framework for this study. Analytical dualism allows for the separation of the parts (structural and cultural elements) from the people (the grade 8 learners) so as to analyse the interplay between structure and culture. The morphogenetic model recognises that antecedent structures predate this, and any study but that through the exercise of agency, morphogenesis, in the form of structural elaboration or morphostasis in the form of continuity, may occur. This study used a New Literacies perspective based on an ideological model of literacy which recognises many different literacies, in addition to dominant school literacies. Learners’ talk about books as well as personal journal writing provided an insight into what cultural mechanisms and powers children bring to the reading of novels. Understandings of discourses as well as of Gee’s (1990; 2008) construct of Discourse provided a framework for examining learners’ identities and shifts as readers. The data in this study, which is presented through a series of vignettes, found that grade 8 learners use many different experiences and draw on different discourses when making sense of texts. Through the separation of the structural and cultural components, this research could explore how reading clubs as structures enabled learners to access different discourses from the domain of culture. Through the process and engagement in the reading clubs, following Gee (2000b), learners were attributed affinity, discoursal and institutional identities as readers. It was found, in the course of the study, that providing a safe space, scaffolding, multiple opportunities to practice and a variety of reading material, helped learners to access and appropriate dominant literacies. In addition, learners need a repertoire of literacy practices to draw from as successful reading needs flexibility and adaptability. Reading and writing inform each other and through gradual induction into literary writing, learners began to appropriate and approximate dominant literacy practices. Following others who have contributed to the field of New Literacy Studies (Heath, 1983; Street, 1984; Gee 1990; Prinsloo & Breier, 1996), this study would suggest that literacies of traditionally underserved communities should not be considered in deficit terms. Instead these need to be understood as resources for negotiating meaning making and as tools or mechanisms to access dominant discourse practices. In addition the resilience and competition from Discourses of popular culture need to be recognised and developed as tools to access school literacies.
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- Date Issued: 2015