1,720,954 research outputs found
Child guides of visually impaired parent beggars in Zimbabwe
No full textThesis(Ph.D.(Development Studies))--University of the Free State, 2023Zimbabwe is experiencing an economic crisis and increased street begging has resulted. Consequently, there has been an increase in the use of minor children guiding visually impaired parent beggars. The study explores the experiences of child guides who beg with and on behalf of their visually impaired parents, through the perspectives of the visually impaired parent beggars. The child guides miss opportunities and freedoms in the process of begging. Child guides need to be assisted to enhance their opportunities, capabilities and freedoms (to act as agents in making choices from the many opportunities available to all the children) as an alternative to guiding their visually impaired parent beggars in Zimbabwe’s streets.
This intrinsic multiple case qualitative study researched the visually impaired parent beggars and key informants (social workers) to provide insights into the begging experiences of the child guides. A sample of ten visually impaired parent beggars, ten child guides and three social workers was purposively selected for collecting (generating) data through interviews and observations. The data generation was guided by the descriptive and interpretive phenomenological reporting methods which were this study’s methodology and research process.
Thematic analyses guided the process of identifying and understanding the recurring data patterns and relationships that were relevant to answering the study’s research questions. Consequently, the findings of the study were guided by the emerging themes.
The main findings revealed the impact guided begging has on the child guides and the interventions that can be applied to free them from begging. Factors, such as poverty, deprived and socially excluded child guides from a range of capabilities when begging with and on behalf of their visually impaired parent beggars. These deprivations are related to specific rights which constitute missed opportunities or capabilities and freedoms such as education, health (rest), leisure, play and recreation.
It was also found that the child guides failed to enhance their capabilities and opportunities or child rights through interdependence with others. Thus, the deprivations were detrimental to the child guides’ wellbeing and development. Hence, it was argued that the child guides needed the application of the capability approach which sees development as possible through Ubuntu/Hunhu: interdependence with others, so that they are not socially excluded from various functions of society.
The study made some recommendations which were directed at the government, particularly the Department of Social Development and Harare City Council. The recommendations centred on satisfying the needs of child guides and were grounded on the capabilities approach and Ubuntu/Hunhu (An African theory of humaneness) inspired by social inclusion model to ensure that child guides were not socially excluded from their beings and doings
Teacher resilience in Zimbabwe: case study of Tasima Teachers' Training College during 2007 to 2009 economic crisis
No full textThe study explores the competences or strategies used by teachers to remain
resilient at the peak of the economic crisis in Zimbabwe during the period
2007 to 2009. The study used the Lecturers from Tasima Teachers' Training
College to provide insights into the thinking, perceptions, interpretations and
values of the Lecturers' working conditions in adverse circumstances.
A total of 12 Lecturers were purposively sampled for generating data; 6
individual interviewees and a 6 member focus group discussion. Hence the
data generation was guided by the descriptive and interpretive reporting
methods which were the centre of this study's methodology and research
process.
The specific research questions guided the thematic presentation of the main findings. Consequently, the main findings are divided into two parts; (i) how Lecturers described their experiences during the economic crisis and (ii)
Lecturers' descriptions of characteristics of resilience that emerged as themes that contributed to their resilience building process. The main findings of the research therefore, show that challenges that participants of the study faced, negatively affected their work and the ethics around which the work was conducted.
The participants devised varied survival strategies to maintain their positions
at their work stations though some of the strategies were morally wrong thus
Tasima Teachers' Training College was cheated of the engagement time that
was supposed to be offered to the students. However, the unorthodox survival strategies merely emerged as ways of facilitating family and individual survival during the peak of the economic crisis.
The study also noted that past experiences help in preparing teachers to deal with recurrences of similar adverse situations. But since the study was limited to Tasima College only, it would be difficult to generalise the Lecturers' resilience factors at national level.
The participants made some recommendations which were directed to the
leaders of institutions and the two ministries; Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education and Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education. The
recommendations centred around factors that satisfy the needs of educators
that are grounded on Maslow (1998)'s hierarchy of needs
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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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