Open Journals@UKZN
Not a member yet
870 research outputs found
Sort by
Youth understanding of citizenship rights and responsibilities in the Lesotho context: implications for civic education
No full textThis paper reports on findings from a recent PhD study which explored how young adults in Lesotho understood and applied their citizenship rights and responsibilities. It is written with a view to informing proposed revisions to the 1995 Lesotho National Youth Policy which highlighted concerns that young adults are caught between the tensions of traditional values and expectations for human rights that are internationally recognised and to which Lesotho is a signatory. The focus in this paper is on exploring the extent to which Basotho youth understood and behaved in relation to communitarian, civic republican and cosmopolitan style citizenships. It also explores how and where youth learned their citizenship values with a view to recommending curriculum reform in the country’s non-formal youth programmes. This was a qualitative study which interviewed youth from three different groups and included invitations to provide and discuss photos of their citizenship activities. Recommendations included the need to develop a broader understanding of cosmopolitan and civic republican civic values and to include in a youth curriculum an opportunity to discuss intergenerational tensions that challenged how youth reconciled their human rights entitlements with traditional community responsibilities
The Perceived Motivational Impact of Voice-over-PowerPoint™ on Part-time Adult Learners in a Distance Learning Environment
Get PDFThe primary purpose of this study was to determine whether well-designed instructional material based on motivational theory and blended learning theory has the intended impact on the learning motivation of adult learners in a distance education environment. This study used Voice-over-PowerPoint™ technology as a medium to deliver subject specific instruction based on motivational theory as supplementary content to the course curriculum. This empirical study was conducted over a period of approximately two months on a sample of 57 adult learners who were enrolled for a distance education course for non-degree purposes at a tertiary education institution. Quantitative research methods were applied and data was collected using two motivation-measuring surveys: (1) The Course Interest Survey; and (2) The Instructional Materials Motivation Survey, which were both developed by Keller. Motivational strategies were designed for the chosen educational technology, Voice-over-PowerPoint™ (VoP) videos, using Keller’s Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction (ARCS) model of motivation. These strategies were then delivered via the learner management system for learners to use at their convenience. This research suggests that overall, learner motivation can be affected by external conditions such as well-designed instructional material, and further supports the ARCS model. Furthermore, the use of VoP videos as a viable medium for delivering motivational strategies in a blended, distance learning environment was validated
Governance and Local Economic Development in Three Southern African Countries: Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe
Get PDFThe Local Economic Development (LED) terrain in Southern Africa is punctuated by a high attrition rate of initiatives, which triggers both development practitioners and scholars to search for solutions to this challenge. This work explores the centrality of Governance in the process of LED implementation. The thrust of the work is to explore governance issues that may help improve economic development performance of localities in Southern Africa. The article unpacks both concepts with a goal of uncovering essential linkages so as to determine what entails good governance for LED. Despite its popularity as one of the vehicles to attaining Millennium Development goals, LED has had a number of setbacks in its implementation. This work endeavours to critically examine the aspect of governance as a key factor in the success of LED. Using lenses of bottom-up approach to development, the governance challenges are discussed as some of the main setbacks to the success of LED in the region. Subsequently, the article discusses the possible ways of strengthening governance for the success of Local Economic Development
Hands-on Postgraduate Research Proposal Design
Get PDFThe purpose of this article is to provide an account of empirical research among postgraduate first-time researchers regarding what skills are required to develop sound quality research proposals. The authors identify challenges that novice researchers encounter when designing their research proposals. The first of these challenges is to design a problem statement. The second challenge is how the researcher identifies an appropriate theoretical framework that is compatible with the problem set under investigation. This contribution also explains how the matrix method of literature review could be used ensure a review only references that relate to the problems under investigation
Southern African Strides in Geography Education
Get PDFFor the purposes of this Editorial, I want to sub-title it, ‘A Focus on Geography Education Research: North and South’. My reasons for reflecting on this topic will become clear in the course of the Editorial.Geography Education, at times termed Geographical Education, has been a growing tangent discipline of Geography internationally. There is a plethora of literature in the discipline of Geography Education (GE) from the global north but limited literature comparatively from Africa, especially in the southern African region. Literature does indeed abound from countries taking stock of GE in for example, the United States (Bednarz 2002; Bednarz 2008; Brysch 2014), United Kingdom (Lambert & Morgan 2010; Morgan 2011), France (Graves 2001), Australia (Robertson 2003), Turkey (Şahin & Karabağ 2005; Karabağ & Şahin 2007a; Öztürk 2005; Karabağ & Şahin 2007b; Taş 2007) and Korea (Seo & Kim 2012). There are also cross-country analyses of aspects of GE, such as between Turkey and the USA (Demirci 2004); Europe and the USA (Bednarz & Schee 2006) or on concerns on environmental education (Rickinson & Lundholm 2008; Marcinkowski 2009; Morgan 2015). Eight years ago, Yecit (2010) undertook an international study on research in Geography Education between the period 2000 - 2009 by accessing archives, magazines and papers submitted to national and international conferences in addition to post-graduate and PhD theses
Lessons for GIS Implementation in Zimbabwe from the South African Experiences
Get PDFIn recent years Geography Information System (GIS) implementation in schools has emerged as one of the most important threads deserving academic inquiry globally. This paper seeks to draw lessons from the South African experience on GIS implementation by engaging in an in-depth documentary analysis of the Geography syllabus in the updated Zimbabwe curriculum and the South Africa (SA) Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) Geography syllabus. This paper draws from the Normalisation Process Theory (2009) and the Extended Normalisation Process Theory (2013). The researcher purposively selected the Ordinary Level Geography Syllabus in Zimbabwe and CAPS Geography Syllabus Grade 10 - 12. This paper argues that there are numerous lessons that Zimbabwe can draw from South African experiences. Among the lessons that can be drawn from the CAPS Geography syllabus are the following; the fusion of GIS across Geography topics instead of taking GIS as a standalone topic; allocating adequate financial resources to schools, allocating GIS more time in the syllabus among others. The researcher recommends that Zimbabwe adopt a paper-based GIS educational packag
Towards decolonising teaching strategies: How to ‘domesticate’ and ‘infuse’ Western science with indigenous knowledge.
Get PDFBoth under and in post-apartheid South Africa many African science education scholars vehemently criticised the school science curriculum with regards to the exclusion of indigenous knowledge. Through recent violent protests university students across South Africa, in support of including indigenous knowledge into the curriculum in general, demanded for a decolonised curriculum. In response to the demand for a decolonised curriculum, the aim of this paper is threefold. Firstly, drawing on the work of various African science education scholars the paper examines why it is important to incorporate both indigenous knowledge and Western science into the school science curriculum. Secondly, the paper discusses Jegede’s ‘collateral learning’ theory, in order to explain how African learners learn science and the cognitive challenges they might face when the focus is only on Western knowledge. Thirdly, the paper offers teachers effective teaching approaches on how to give due recognition to both Western and indigenous knowledge, and infusing the two knowledge traditions. To do so, the paper also presents practical examples of the way that teachers can teach both bodies of knowledge to make science more meaningful and appropriate to most African learners. This paper intends to evoke thinking about the importance of indigenous knowledge in school science today, and the implications for a shift in teacher pedagogy that a decolonial curriculum requires
Management, Informatics and Governance
Get PDFThe article by Matete Lerutla and Renier Steyn is titled ‘Definition of Leadership in Africa within the Twenty-first Century Context: Empirical Research on Leadership in Africa’. Granted that leadership is a widely used construct and there are numerous articles across multiple disciplines that researche the ‘leadership’ phenomenon, this research investigates the construct of leadership in Africa. Much of what is written is conceptual, and empirical articles on African leadership remain sparse. The article reports on the findings of a systematic literature review that was conducted on leadership in Africa. It presents a qualitative review of empirical research, highlighting key findings and implications for future research. The research investigation followed the traditional body of knowledge framework of concepts, statements, definitions, and conceptual frameworks to systemize reports on leadership in Africa. Articles were identified, selected and analysed using the systematic literature review methodology. Articles, statements, definitions, models, typologies, theories, and paradigms were explored and interrogated in each article, so as to understand how they are linked to leadership in Africa
A critical analysis of CAPS for Life Skills in the Foundation Phase (Grades R–3)
Get PDFThe Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement Foundation Phase Life Skills curriculum (DBE, 2011) is composed of four focus areas: Beginning Knowledge; Personal and Social Well-being; Creative Arts; and Physical Education. These areas draw on a number of disciplines and this makes the curriculum dense. This density is, in turn, a challenge for teachers and teacher education. We perform an historical analysis of Life Skills curriculum documents from 1977 to the present and a content analysis of the CAPS document. Using Bernstein (1971, 1996) we show that this curriculum is weakly classified and that epistemological orientations are blurred, if not rendered invisible. The specificity of different disciplinary lenses that have different objects of enquiry, methods of analysis, and criteria for truth claims is lost in an overemphasis on everyday knowledge. If teachers are not themselves schooled in the languages of the disciplines that underpin Life Skills they may not be able to give children access to them, nor are they likely to be able to help them understand how different parts of the system relate to one another