1,720,959 research outputs found
The: The Case of One Village in Limpopo Province: Towards Empowerment
No full textThe study offers preliminary findings on the research project that was undertaken at One village in Limpopo Province. It was investigating the impact of the mining activity at one village whose residents languish in abject poverty notwithstanding that the mining sector in Limpopo Province are 108 and generates an annual revenue of R237,7 billion. Most villagers are victims of colonialism that created illusions such as that of education and Christian church to stunt and de-inferioritise villagers into believing the absurdity that the reason they are poor is because they lack knowledge and faith that God will intervene while the mining sector keeps eating away and contaminating their socio-ecological spaces. The results show that villagers are generationally stunted and de-inferioritised leading to years of inactivity. Agricultural and animal husbandry activities are history. Naturally growing fruits such as bananas, mango, avocados have been lost to a community that relies on social grants to survive. This has led to my new research which is community-driven I call Vukuzakhe research method. This method consists of various workshops of which the first two are dedicated to de-stunting and de-inferioritising the villagers.Socio-ecological spaces, Mining Activity, Agricultural activity, Animal husbandry, educatio
Fostering creativity in engineering undergraduates.
No full textSince their establishment in the 1960s, Universities of Technology in South Africa have
been taking pride in providing career-focused qualifications that match the intermediate
needs of the economy. In order to provide these career-focused qualifications, these
institutions have been focusing on enacting a curriculum framework that emphasizes
replication of industrial processes which tended to accentuate routinized, conventional
problem-solving. The shift in economic paradigm in the 21st Century and the general
dissatisfaction with graduate readiness in the workplace as evident in both local and
international literature, framed as employability skills or generic skills, suggest a new
impetus being placed on creativity, especially in engineering education. This study
attempted to develop final-year undergraduates’ creativity through making visible the
key features of a pedagogic practice, by analyzing the existing engineering
undergraduate pedagogic practices, and reconceptualizing and testing a pedagogy that
could potentially develop undergraduates’ creativity. The reconceptualized pedagogy,
enacted as “learnshops”, accentuated teamwork, collaborative inquiry, guided creative
problem-solving and the use of case studies to encourage students to seek the higher
designs of water, paper and energy technologies within their institution. Design-Based
Research (DBR) frames the methodology and methods of data collection and analysis.
The research results show that existing engineering undergraduate pedagogic practices
remain trapped in the skills training discourse that emphasizes conventional problemsolving
in curriculum enactment. Students’ meanings of creativity remain generally
eclectic prior and post involvement in the learnshops, although students’ creativity
conceptions become more focused on imagination and resourcefulness postlearnshops.
The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) scores show that students’
creativity increased as a result of exposure to learnshops. Students working in teams of
intermediate size to creatively solve given open-ended tasks related to sustainable
development were able to achieve cooperation and generate useful ideas with the help
of pedagogic interventions implemented during the learnshops. Itinerant membership as
an aspect of team formation has little effect on teams’ generation of ideas
GUERILLA TACTICS, ENTREPRENEURSHIP and ANCIENT HISTORY: : The Real story behind economic marginalisation and Zama-Zamas
Full text linkPurpose
To uncover the real story behind zama-zamas and the entrepreneurs behind their work: A Tale of Sustained Exploitation
Context
Limpopo villages are ensconced by 108 mining sector that contributes 72% to GDP by 2021 estimates totalling annual revenue of R237, 7 billion. Yet, poverty is almost 77% and the villages have to bear the brunt of devastation on their socio-ecological space which put them at considerable economic risk given that rehabilitation of disused mines is poorly handled at government level plus communities use the dwindling land for agricultural and pastoral purposes which means the impact of mining operations affect the livelihoods of neighbouring villages who benefit very little from mines. These are the breeding grounds for zama-zamas who are exposed to real exploitation because they have no access to the legal market.
Research Methodology
To uncover the real story of zama-zamas, there is a need to take a historical perspective, do Desktop research and conduct semi-structured interviews with select numbers of zama-zamas and members of the local communities where mining occurs.
Findings
The mining sector in Africa is ancient and begins in the 15th century when the Portuguese colonisers discovered gold on the coast of modern-day Ghana while in South Africa it started in 1867 when diamond was found on the banks of Orange River.
Most zama-zamas are driven by desperation and live in chronic poverty despite the fact that this illicit mining sector is making R14 billion in the legal market.
3. Zama-zamas have to negotiate the dark side of a nefarious mineral cabal that benefits the very ava
Ecology and conservation status of six medicinal plants commonly used to treat diabetes in the eastern Free State, South Africa
No full textDiabetes mellitus is a global disease with an extreme effect on the quality of life of the patients and it is increasing among South Africans. South African population is predominantly black and medicinal plants represent an important asset to their livelihoods as it is to many people in developing countries. The communities from both rural and urban areas still rely on medicinal plants for their primary health care and income generation. However, the growing population and the general field collection practices of healers, herbalists and commercial gatherers are posing a serious extinction threat to the wild populations of medicinal plants. Six medicinal plants viz.: Hypoxis hemerocallidea, Dicoma anomala, Morella serrata, Gazania krebsiana, Xysmalobium undulatum and Eriocephalus punctulatus were identified to be the most commonly used to treat diabetes in the eastern Free State. The purpose of this investigation was to (1) conduct a survey on the herbarium collection of six medicinal plants used to treat diabetes (2) conduct a survey to determine the collecting practices of traditional healers and herbalist and the impact these practices have on the wild populations and (3) to conduct an ecological survey to determine the current population trends of the six selected plants in their natural habitats. A total of six herbaria (Uniqwa Herbarium, Sterkfontein Dam Nature Reserve Herbarium, Geo-Potts Herbarium, National Museum Herbarium, Free State National Botanical Garden Herbarium and Bews Herbarium) were surveyed and there were only a few specimen of the studied plants found in four surveyed herbaria. The collection labels generally lacked information on the precise location, distribution and frequency of occurrence, and most of them were very old. The present study showed that most of the traditional medicine practitioners were women with a low education level and they had little appreciation of the impact of their activities on wild populations of the medicinal plants. The indiscriminate collecting practices posed a serious extinction threat to the plants used in traditional medicine. The ecological survey identified two species Eriocephalus punctulatus and Morella serrata as potentially threatened within the study area. Herbaria should strive to become aligned with the "13-point strategy to meet conservation challenges" and this would make integral part of conservation strategies. Extensive study to determine the extent of the threat to the two identified species needs to be undertaken and their status on the Red Data List need to be revised. Traditional medicine practitioners (healers, herbalists and commercial gatherers) need to be informed about sustainable usage of natural resources and about environmental legislation regarding their business. Strong working relationships between government (Department of Environmental Affairs), Universities, South African National Parks and traditional medicine practitioners need to be established to protect the environment. Failure to use medicinal plants in sustainable way will have a negative impact on both the biodiversity and to the general health of the population.Research Committee QwaQwa campu
Status of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in South African Universities
No full textThe Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has become a global reality and most universities use it to achieve different objectives which indicate variation in how it is understood, used and encouraged. Some universities view it as the tool for broadening scholarship and thus as additional to established scholarships of discovery, integration and application similar to Boyer’s (1990) meaning. Other universities employ the SoTL in promotion and tenure while others have not engaged it in meaningful ways. This article provides the findings of the year-long study that focused on examining the constitution of the SoTL in seven South Africa universities in terms of how it was understood, used and encouraged. Written, oral and episodic accounts were elicited and analysed to illuminate current SoTL standing, value and transformative potential on teaching and learning. Current SoTL conceptions illuminate a researcher-centred SoTL and its impact on teaching and learning practices occupy the backseat
Developing an Enabling Pedagogy for Fostering Effectual Logic in Students
No full textDeveloping students that demonstrate critical understanding of complex problems and the ability to resolve them as well as generate novel ideas that could be transformed into tangible results in addition to individually-graded skills that make students more productive is mostly at the heart of 21st Century teaching and learning. The historical focus on causation rationality in mostly research-intensive universities and replication of industrial processes in former Technikons has come under intense scrutiny in this century. At the heart of both this rationality and industrial processes replication is causal logic which has been guiding how knowledge is produced and taught. In this article, we problematise and critique causal logic as the underlying motif of teaching and learning in universities and advance the view that effectual logic holds better prospects of undergirding students' triarchic abilities of analysis, synthesis and application. We consider analytical abilities as key to critical understanding of complex issues and thus worthy of consideration in every pedagogic encounter. We also suggest that exploring new possibilities and generating new connections in every pedagogic encounter is a worthy cause. We propose that both these abilities be guided by consideration of means as the starting point with goals remaining open-ended. Iterative testing out of tentative goals developed in consideration of available means within the principle of affordable loss is an equally worthy cause in pedagogic endeavours. We explore these ideas further in the next sections as pivots around which an enabling pedagogy could be sketche
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
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