1,720,954 research outputs found
Exploring servant leadership in multiple-deprived rural contexts: a multiple case study of four schools in KwaZulu-Natal
No full textA thesis submitted in the fulfilment of the academic requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Education, Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2020This thesis presents the findings of a qualitative case study on participants’ conceptualisations, practices and challenges when enacting servant leadership in multiple-deprived rural school contexts in KwaZulu-Natal. The study further sought to ascertain what we could learn from this leadership theory to enhance leadership and management in the researched schools. The study was actuated by the noticeable lack of servant leadership in many multiple-deprived rural schools which often manifests itself in a myriad of professional malpractices, a clear decline in ethical and moral fibre and educational values leading to poor learner performance. Four schools were identified within which twelve participants were conveniently selected to share their conceptualisations, practices and challenges of servant leadership with the researcher. Further, interpretivism was used to foreground the study. Content analysis was utilised to meticulously analyse the data which were generated through semi-structured interviews and documents reviews.
The findings seem to suggest that some educators had very limited knowledge of servant leadership principles despite the Batho Pele policy which has existed in the public service since 1996. This policy promotes servant leadership behaviour by ‘putting people first’ and improving service delivery in the public service and schools in particular. Consequently, despite the anticipated servant leadership practices such as school vision, centrality of teaching and learning, educator professional development, implementation of educational laws and policies and rewarding excellence, there was still evidence of a multiplicity of professional malpractices such as educator-learner sexual relationships, late-coming and absenteeism by educators and rampant fraud, corruption, educator union militancy and dominance in a number of schools. In addressing some of the above ills, this paper concludes that the school stands and falls on its vision adopted by the leadership. Notwithstanding the challenges faced by participants, school principals should learn to be agile, be adaptable and transformational leaders, be excellent communicators, and promote the culture of selfless service and Ubuntu-based values and these skills are likely to assist them to implement the servant leadership practices (Batho Pele policy and other policies) meant to transform their schools into effective educational institutions.TL (2020
Subject advisors as instructional leaders : a case study of six subject advisors in Ilembe District.
No full textM. Ed. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2015.The aim of this study was to investigate the subject advisors’ instructional leadership practices in schools. It sought to establish whether instructional leadership is given a central role it deserves, both inside and outside the classroom or is being overshadowed by other leadership theories and practices. The pre-democratic era was characterised by four different education departments, namely, House of Delegates (for Indians), House of Representatives (for Coloureds), House of Assembly (for Whites) and KwaZulu Department of Education and Culture (for Blacks). In the past, there were no subject advisors that supported teaching and learning in some South African schools, especially the KwaZulu Department of Education and Culture. The instructional leadership was a sole responsibility of the school principal. Further, the school principal worked as principal, deputy principal, School Head of Department and a classroom-based educator. That is one of the reasons why they paid too much attention to teaching and office administration at the expense of instructional leadership which was supposed to be the heartbeat of any teaching and learning organisation. Even though, teaching and learning remained the core-business of the school but in the contrary, the management part of it suffered greatly. Leadership was not distributed but it revolved around one person who was projected as a glorified leadership figure and perceived to be a source of all wisdom. The participants raised various concerns about the status of instructional leadership in this education district’s schools.
One education district was purposively selected as a research site on the basis of proximity and the consistent unsatisfactory learner performance. A total number of six subject advisors participated in this research study after having satisfied all research ethical requirements. A qualitative research design was utilised to guide this study. The research is located in an interpretivist paradigm because of the nature of the participants and the phenomenon under investigation. It utilised semi-structured interviews and documents review as data generation methods. The findings revealed that subject advisors’ instructional leadership was hindered by a number of factors such as lack of resources, School Heads of Department’s lack of curriculum management capacity, teacher unions’ power struggles and non-availability of well structured training programmes informed by subject advisors’ professional and academic
needs. Lastly, various conclusions based on Chapter Four and recommendations were presented in Chapter Five
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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