313 research outputs found
‘There’s a hippo on my stoep’: Constructions of English second language teaching and learners in the new National Senior Certificate
No full textThe focus of this paper is an analysis of the conceptualisation of language teaching and the construction of learners in the new National Senior Certificate grade 12 curriculum and examinations taken by students for whom English is an additional language. The paper examines the values, attitudes and beliefs, as well as the required levels of cognitive engagement and notions of reading and writing. The authors argue that the curriculum represents a significant improvement on the previous version. However, there is a considerable mismatch between the Curriculum Statement and the examination papers. The curriculum emphasis on the role of language as a tool for critical, independent thinking is not evident in the examination papers, which reinforce traditional gender norms and essentialised notions of Africa. The examination papers are cognitively undemanding, requiring only the most basic understandings of texts. The authors argue that, by making it possible to pass at a very basic level, the examination system in effect obscures the contradiction that although the majority of learners have to use English as a first language across the curriculum, the language itself is taught as a second language. </em
Guidelines for Measuring and Reporting Environmental Parameters for Experiments in Greenhouses
No full textThe importance of appropriate, accurate measurement and reporting of environmental parameters in plant sciences is a significant aspect of quality assurance for all researchers and their research. There is a clear need for ensuring research across the world can be compared, understood and where necessary replicated by fellow researchers. A common set of guidelines to educate, assist and encourage comparativeness is of great importance. On the other hand, the level of effort and attention to detail by an individual researcher should be commensurate with the particular research being conducted. For example, a researcher focusing on interactions of light and temperature should measure all relevant parameters and report a measurement summary that includes sufficient detail allowing for replication. Such detail may be less relevant when the impact of environmental parameters on plant growth and development is not the main research focus. However, it should be noted that the environmental experience of a plant during production can have significant impact when subsequent experiments investigate plants at a molecular, biochemical or genetic level or where species interactions are considered. Thus, researchers are encouraged to make a critical assessment of what parameters are of primary importance in their research and these parameters should be measured and reported.© 2015 Both et al. This article is distributed under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons License, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Peer reviewe
9. ‘It Was Hardly about Writing’: Translations of Experience on Entering Postgraduate Studies
No full textRevealing the Janus face of literacy: text production and the creation of trans-contextual stability in South Africa's criminal justice system
No full textIncludes bibliographical referencesThe thesis researches literacy practices in South Africa's criminal justice system by focusing specifically on the production and flow of police dockets across institutional boundaries in a police station and regional courts renamed Blue Hills police station and Blue Hills regional courts in the Western Cape Province respectively. Through the use of ethnography, the production and flow of police dockets are tracked across three moments - Moment One, Moment Two and Moment Three - in the criminal justice system. The three moments also show how the production of the police docket allows humans and nonhumans to be displaced across these institutional boundaries. Apart from drawing on the New Literacy Studies (also referred to as Literacy Studies in this thesis), the research draws extensively on Actor Network Theory - a theory which argues that the social world and therefore reality are constructed through the creation of networks of associations or networks of relations consisting of human and nonhuman entities. In this study, these associations or relations are referred to as material - semiotic relations. When the relations between human and nonhuman entities achieve some form of stability, that is when they hold, they can have intended and unintended ordering effects on the social world. Therefore, the primary focus of the research is to understand how trans-contextual order is created by building the network of the criminal justice system - referred to as "the network" in this study - through the production of the police docket by police officers (Uniform Branch police officers and detectives) and state prosecutors. The three moments that are identified in the study highlight the complexity of the literacy practices which lead to the production and flow of the police docket across institutional contexts. These moments are snapshots of the possible ways in which the network can be built through assemblies of con figurations of material - semiotic relations. Moment One focuses on the opening of a police docket. During this moment the literacy practices between Uniform Branch police officers and detectives are highlighted when they attempt to classify the crime which should be recorded in the police docket after a member of the public visited the police station to report a possible crime. Moment Two deals with the investigation of crimes. This moment documents the literacy practices of detectives as they attempt to produce written witness statements for inclusion in the police docket from potential state witnesses. The literacy practices that are highlighted here focus on the strategies detectives employ to encode potential state witnesses with meaning and their strategies to ensure that witnesses do make it to court to act as spokespersons on behalf of the network and circulate in the network. Moment Three, the final moment, deals with how state prosecutors animate witnesses and their written witness statements in court so that the network can secure a successful prosecution. By highlighting the literacy practices and text production that characterize the three moments, the research concludes that network stability is contingent on three factors which are inter-related. The first, 'material durability', refers to the level at which material - semiotic relations are successful at staying intact. The second, 'strategic durability', refers to the successes of various strategies (which include specific literacy practices) employed by officials to ensure that entities in the network perform their specific functions in order to ensure trans-contextual stability. Finally, 'discursive stability' refers to institutional ways of measuring productivity in the criminal justice system and which must have trans - contextual reach and ordering effects on literacy and literacy practices across the three moments so that the network can achieve some form of stability
Constructing the gap between past and present literacy practices in the South African Police Service
No full textBibliography: leaves 160-164.The study seeks to answer the research question: "What constructs the gap between past and present literacy practices in the South African Police Service (SAPS)?" To answer the research question, ethnographic methods were employed to gather data in a police station on the Cape Flats, renamed Phatisanani police station. In researching the gap between past and present literacy practices of police officers in the station, the effects the shift in institutional discourses from the early years of the South African Police (SAP), to after the 1994 democratic elections in South Africa had on police officers' professional discourses and their associated literacy practices were illuminated. The study suggests that institutional discourses after 1994 are conflicting with the professional discourse and associated literacy practices of police officers at Phatisanani police station. The research argues that the conflict between contemporary institutional discourses in the SAPS and the professional discourse of police officers in the station is leading to 'disorder of discourses' (Wodak, 199B). Drawing on theories from the New Literacy Studies the research concludes that the gap between past and present literacy practices in the SAPS is embedded in the 'disorder' between contemporary institutional and professional discourses, the 'disorder' between the social roles of 'insiders' and 'outsiders'; and the recontextualisation of literacy practices across various sites of practice in the SAP prior to 1994
Lijphart Elections Archive: Lijphart Country Catalog: Brazil
No full textThe Lijphart Elections Archive is a static research collection of district level election results for approximately 350 national legislative elections in 26 countries that was maintained through 2003.
When Arend Lijphart began his comparative study of electoral systems in the early 1980s, he discovered that no library anywhere in the world had a collection of the detailed statistics of national elections in democratic countries -- although such statistics were being collected by many government and non-government agencies and, at least in principle, obtainable from these agencies. This was the origin of the Elections Archive in the University Library of the University of Calif
ornia, San Diego. The objective of the Archive is to systematically collect election statistics in as much detail as possible, including, as a minimum, the results at the level of the individual election districts in which votes are converted into seats.
The original scope of the Archive was the national election results in hard-copy format for the lower or only house of the legislature and for any directly elected upper house in the twenty-seven older democracies from 1945 on (the West European democracies plus the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, India, Israel, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand). The scope has expanded in several directions: more countries, a longer time span, sub-national as well as national elections, and d
ata in machine-readable format.
Arend Lijphart is Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Comparative Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) and many articles on elections and electoral systems in Electoral Studies and other journals. The Archive Director is Gary W. Cox, Department of Political Science, University of Califor
nia, San Diego
Lijphart Elections Archive: Lijphart Country Catalog: Italy
No full textThe Lijphart Elections Archive is a static research collection of district level election results for approximately 350 national legislative elections in 26 countries that was maintained through 2003.
When Arend Lijphart began his comparative study of electoral systems in the early 1980s, he discovered that no library anywhere in the world had a collection of the detailed statistics of national elections in democratic countries -- although such statistics were being collected by many government and non-government agencies and, at least in principle, obtainable from these agencies. This was the origin of the Elections Archive in the University Library of the University of Calif
ornia, San Diego. The objective of the Archive is to systematically collect election statistics in as much detail as possible, including, as a minimum, the results at the level of the individual election districts in which votes are converted into seats.
The original scope of the Archive was the national election results in hard-copy format for the lower or only house of the legislature and for any directly elected upper house in the twenty-seven older democracies from 1945 on (the West European democracies plus the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, India, Israel, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand). The scope has expanded in several directions: more countries, a longer time span, sub-national as well as national elections, and d
ata in machine-readable format.
Arend Lijphart is Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Comparative Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) and many articles on elections and electoral systems in Electoral Studies and other journals. The Archive Director is Gary W. Cox, Department of Political Science, University of Califor
nia, San Diego
Lijphart Elections Archive: Lijphart Country Catalog: Thailand
No full textThe Lijphart Elections Archive is a static research collection of district level election results for approximately 350 national legislative elections in 26 countries that was maintained through 2003.
When Arend Lijphart began his comparative study of electoral systems in the early 1980s, he discovered that no library anywhere in the world had a collection of the detailed statistics of national elections in democratic countries -- although such statistics were being collected by many government and non-government agencies and, at least in principle, obtainable from these agencies. This was the origin of the Elections Archive in the University Library of the University of Calif
ornia, San Diego. The objective of the Archive is to systematically collect election statistics in as much detail as possible, including, as a minimum, the results at the level of the individual election districts in which votes are converted into seats.
The original scope of the Archive was the national election results in hard-copy format for the lower or only house of the legislature and for any directly elected upper house in the twenty-seven older democracies from 1945 on (the West European democracies plus the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, India, Israel, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand). The scope has expanded in several directions: more countries, a longer time span, sub-national as well as national elections, and d
ata in machine-readable format.
Arend Lijphart is Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Comparative Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) and many articles on elections and electoral systems in Electoral Studies and other journals. The Archive Director is Gary W. Cox, Department of Political Science, University of Califor
nia, San Diego
Lijphart Elections Archive: Lijphart Country Catalog: France
No full textThe Lijphart Elections Archive is a static research collection of district level election results for approximately 350 national legislative elections in 26 countries that was maintained through 2003.
When Arend Lijphart began his comparative study of electoral systems in the early 1980s, he discovered that no library anywhere in the world had a collection of the detailed statistics of national elections in democratic countries -- although such statistics were being collected by many government and non-government agencies and, at least in principle, obtainable from these agencies. This was the origin of the Elections Archive in the University Library of the University of Calif
ornia, San Diego. The objective of the Archive is to systematically collect election statistics in as much detail as possible, including, as a minimum, the results at the level of the individual election districts in which votes are converted into seats.
The original scope of the Archive was the national election results in hard-copy format for the lower or only house of the legislature and for any directly elected upper house in the twenty-seven older democracies from 1945 on (the West European democracies plus the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, India, Israel, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand). The scope has expanded in several directions: more countries, a longer time span, sub-national as well as national elections, and d
ata in machine-readable format.
Arend Lijphart is Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Comparative Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) and many articles on elections and electoral systems in Electoral Studies and other journals. The Archive Director is Gary W. Cox, Department of Political Science, University of Califor
nia, San Diego
Lijphart Elections Archive: Lijphart Country Catalog: Columbia
No full textThe Lijphart Elections Archive is a static research collection of district level election results for approximately 350 national legislative elections in 26 countries that was maintained through 2003.
When Arend Lijphart began his comparative study of electoral systems in the early 1980s, he discovered that no library anywhere in the world had a collection of the detailed statistics of national elections in democratic countries -- although such statistics were being collected by many government and non-government agencies and, at least in principle, obtainable from these agencies. This was the origin of the Elections Archive in the University Library of the University of Calif
ornia, San Diego. The objective of the Archive is to systematically collect election statistics in as much detail as possible, including, as a minimum, the results at the level of the individual election districts in which votes are converted into seats.
The original scope of the Archive was the national election results in hard-copy format for the lower or only house of the legislature and for any directly elected upper house in the twenty-seven older democracies from 1945 on (the West European democracies plus the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, India, Israel, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand). The scope has expanded in several directions: more countries, a longer time span, sub-national as well as national elections, and d
ata in machine-readable format.
Arend Lijphart is Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Comparative Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) and many articles on elections and electoral systems in Electoral Studies and other journals. The Archive Director is Gary W. Cox, Department of Political Science, University of Califor
nia, San Diego
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