1,720,961 research outputs found
Assessing Stakeholder Perceptions in Participatory Infrastructure Upgrades - a Case Study of Project Silvertown in Cape Town
Get PDFThis study articulates the perceptions and expectations stakeholders involved in sanitation infrastructure projects in informal settlements have to determine the implications their contrasting views have towards strengthening participatory processes. It involves the critical identification of stakeholder groups and their perceptions of the roles and responsibilities that the identified groups play. The investigation was conducted using the single case study of Project Silvertown, the project that led to the controversial 2010 “toilet war saga” in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha Township. Documentary resources on the case study were used to gather secondary data on stakeholder groups and analysed using Critical Systems Heuristics, a systems thinking-based framework. The key findings in this study were that • there were disjunctions within the spheres of government relating to policy interpretations; • there were known disjunctions on project vision and outcomes between stakeholder groups that were not resolved; • there were disjunctions relating to stakeholder expectations of community participation and decision making • there was poor capacitation of community members in the participatory process • there was illegitimate representation of the residents by community leaders Findings of the conflicts between stakeholders in a given system can contribute towards identifying what stakeholder assumptions ought to be considered and built into planning public infrastructure projects to reduce participatory project failure
Does subject matter? A comparative study of framing and classification in the online and contact versions of two postgraduate management courses and the implications for student learning
Get PDFThis study is positioned in the context of the South African higher education landscape, which is currently grappling with issues of access and inequality. Online education is one of the potential approaches to expand access to South African students, but has often been met with skepticism as to its pedagogical quality, and has been perceived as an inferior alternative to traditional contact education. A comparative research design is followed in which two courses within a postgraduate marketing management qualification at a South African public university are compared. This qualification is offered in both contact and online format. The same courses within different modes of education are compared, as well as different courses within the same mode of education. A coding system was created based on Basil Bernstein’s concepts of framing and classification, and the courses were compared based on various dimensions of framing and classification. The study aimed to explore the affordances and limitations of both contact and online education. It was found that the ‘sequence’ and ‘pace’ aspects of framing are impacted by mode of education, with the online learning environment allowing students more agency in determining the pace and sequence of their learning. The ‘hierarchical rules’ aspect of framing is also impacted by mode, with the online courses offering an inherently non-hierarchical learning environment. It was found that weaker framing over these elements can present either an affordance or limitation, depending on the subject matter, with some types of subject matter being well suited to weaker framing over sequence, pace, and hierarchical rules, and others being constrained by it
Knowledge structures in engineering design: integrating multiple ‘ways of knowing’
No full textIn this paper I discuss the different‘knowledges’ needed to design, and their implications onthe nature of reasoning in design. Donald Schön andHerbert Simon offer useful models of design thatprivilege different knowledge types, both needed to design.Schön describes a form of case-based reasoning built onmaterial examples. Simon’s focus is on abstract reasoning,defined within academic disciplines by formal rationalrelations between theoretical concepts. Andrew Abbott’smodalities of diagnosis, treatment, and inference helpto show what underpins the different ways of knowing, buthis modalities fail to account explicitly for translationbetween the various knowledge structures.A focus on knowledge shows challenges studentsmay face transitioning from sciences to design. It suggestsways that design project briefs constrain the way in whichstudents work with, and between, different knowledgestructures. It also potentially offers ways to think aboutintroducing design reasoning into engineering sciencecours
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
Exploring the role of Disciplinary Knowledge in Engineering when learning to Design
Get PDFThree mechanical engineering teams are followed through their capstone design project as they navigate the ambiguous and contradictory requirements of a typical engineering design course. The pedagogy tends to be both weakly classified and weakly framed in terms introduced by Sociologist of Education, Basil Bernstein; leaving the decisions about what knowledge to draw on, in what sequence, and how, to the discretion of the students. The differential success of the three teams is analysed in terms of their use of disciplinary and practical knowledge to make decisions about their design and to produce a prototype. The semantics dimension of Legitimation Code Theory was used to analyse the data. The analysis suggests that meaning was completely encapsulated in the material product of design, at the expense of reflective or conceptual reasoning. While technical knowledge was evident in the process of design, it was the relation of this knowledge to the material artefact that mattered, but only secondarily to the functioning of the artefact. Consequently, simple artefacts were privileged over more complex artefacts, understandable in terms of simplifying the solution to a particular problem, but raising questions about dealing with more complex problems. When performance can be asserted with certainty without evidence of reflective or conceptual reasoning, it raises questions about technical solutions in the face of the uncertainty of the complex problems. If we want engineers to contribute to the grand challenges of our era, we need to think about how to reward both complexity and reflection, without losing simplicity and practicality
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
- …
