Making sense of the transitional maelstrom of part-time students and their conceptions of learning as mediated by conceptional domains of work, family and self. A case study of undergraduate, part-time political studies students at a university in South Africa

The traditional trajectory of young students in higher education in South Africa is currently under sharp scrutiny and the general provision is considered to be inadequate in terms of quality, diversity and quantity. There is a proposal to increase the participation rate of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 from 16% (in 2011) to 23% by 2030 (DHET, 2012). Already, the increase in access to young school leavers without the concomitant resource allocation has resulted in the inability of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) to continue to provide access to ‘non-traditional’ working adults in some of its programmes. The large classes for young undergraduates, the necessary foundation/support programmes to assist under-prepared school leavers, recent demands to increase postgraduate study output and to publish are related pressures influencing the decisions to limit undergraduate part-time studies for adult learners. To address this ‘dilemma’ an action research project was launched to introduce lifelong learning opportunities that are conceptualised and provided in flexible ways. The intention is to challenge both the university and workplaces to interrogate understandings and approaches to professional development and to support innovation that will enhance successful access and success for working people. The Political Studies department at UWC is one of the pilot sites for the action research and initial reflections on the challenge to introduce flexible modes of teaching and learning revealed that the attempts may be constrained by prevailing conceptions of the trajectories of part-time students. Instead of the traditional, linear transition into higher education – normally associated with younger learners – trajectories for mature adult learners are less linear, more complex, and include ‘stop-outs’ and discontinuities within transitions (Stevenson & Clegg, 2012). This paper describes the national transitional context of higher education in South Africa and the precarious location of working adults studying at UWC within this context. It further explores the transitional maelstroms as shared by a sample of part-time Political Studies students; it considers the roles and influence of the contextual domains of work, family and self; and examines the implications for mature students, their workplaces and the Political Studies department at the university

High streets: Constructing the public realm in a low income area

Includes bibliographical referencesThe lack of high streets in low income areas negate the socio-economic vitality of these towns. Through understanding how a high street functions one is able to appropriate the aspects of good streets to low income areas. Locally referred to as main streets, these streets are where most shops and other businesses and transport modes are found. Diversity is key in making a functional high street. Components that must be considered to create street diversity are the pace of the street, adaptability to rapid change and a concentration of things. This dissertation investigates the components that enable diversity by looking at how high streets exist within the Cape Town context. Developed high streets, emerging high streets and areas where there are no high streets are compared to further understand the components of street diversity. The dissertation proceeds to identify Main Road, Delft as an emerging high street. Main Road, Delft is then further analysed and findings reveal that the informal and institutional uses constitute the street. From further analysis, the institutional buildings reveal a lack of positive street making characteristics. The dissertation attempts, through a design of a Further Education and Training College, how to construct an institutional building that aids a positive public realm. The objective is to reinforce the emerging high street in Delft by facilitating diversity. The components of street diversity are explored by developing three building types that make various street conditions namely; a building onto a town square, a building as a thoroughfare and a building as an edge. Brick construction is adopted to construct the public realm and creates an enduring new civic image that speaks of robustness and low maintenance. The construction methods are appropriated to available skills and thus create job opportunities

A realist assessment of the implementation of blended learning in a higher education context: the case of the Library and Information Science Department at the University of the Western Cape

Opportunities for further studies by working adults came under threat as the University of the Western Cape stopped the offering of after-hours classes in most of its Faculties. Unqualified and under-qualified librarians were directly affected by this decision. This paper outlines an assessment of the conceptualisation and implementation of an action research project initiated by the Division for Lifelong learning. Using a realist evaluation approach, the assessment focuses on the implementation of strategies aimed at showing how lifelong learning opportunities, conceptualised and provided in flexible ways, could support innovation in learning and teaching in order to enhance access and success to learning by working people in the context of the Library and Information Science Department

A realist assessment of the implementation of blended learning in a South African higher education context

Opportunities for further studies by working adults came under threat as the University of the Western Cape stopped the offering of after-hours classes in most of its Faculties. Unqualified and under-qualified librarians were directly affected by this decision. This article outlines an assessment of the conceptualisation and implementation of an action research project initiated by the Division for Lifelong learning. Using a realist evaluation approach, the assessment focuses on the implementation of strategies aimed at showing how lifelong learning opportunities, conceptualised and provided in flexible ways, could support innovation in learning and teaching in order to enhance access and success to learning by working people in the context of the Library and Information Science Department.DHE

Keeping the doors of learning open for adult student-workers within higher education

The Freedom Charter of the African National Congress (ANC), the triumphant South African liberation movement, proclaims that ‘the doors of learning shall be open’ for all. Twenty years since coming to power, the doors of the universities are struggling to stay open for adult student-workers. An action research project into implementation of ‘flexible provision’ at one historically black university is described in response to these realities. Rich experiences from lives of working librarian student-workers illustrate the complex issues that confront individuals, workplaces and institutions in implementing innovative pedagogies within a university

Cauchy-perturbative matching and outer boundary conditions: computational studies

We present results from a new technique which allows extraction of gravitational radiation information from a generic three-dimensional numerical relativity code and provides stable outer boundary conditions. In our approach we match the solution of a Cauchy evolution of the nonlinear Einstein field equations to a set of one-dimensional linear equations obtained through perturbation techniques over a curved background. We discuss the validity of this approach in the case of linear and mildly nonlinear gravitational waves and show how a numerical module developed for this purpose is able to provide an accurate and numerically convergent description of the gravitational wave propagation and a stable numerical evolution.Comment: 20 pages, RevTe

Wildlife responses to anthropogenic disturbance in Amazonian forests

Legally inhabited indigenous, extractive and sustainable use tropical forest reserves, have been lauded as a solution to the intractable problem of how to assure the welfare and secure livelihoods of the world’s diverse forest-dependent people, whilst conserving the world’s most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems. This strategy has been critiqued by human rights advocates, who assert that legally inhabited reserves paternalistically restrict the livelihood choices and development aspirations of forest-dwellers, and by conservationists, who argue that sustained human presence and resource extraction erodes tropical forest biodiversity. This thesis examines both the anthropogenic impacts on tropical forests at the regional, landscape and household scales and the livelihood challenges faced by semi-subsistence local communities in the Brazilian Amazon. A spatially explicit dataset of 633,721 rural Amazonian households and an array of anthropogenic and environmental variables were used to examine the extent and distribution of structural (deforestation) and non-structural (hunting) human disturbance adjacent to 45 cul-de-sac rivers across the Brazilian states of Amazonas and Pará. At the landscape and household scales, a total of 383 camera trap deployments, 157 quantitative interviews and 164 GPS deployments were made in the agricultural mosaics and forest areas controlled by 63 semi-subsistence communities in the Médio Juruá and Uatumã regions of Central-Western Brazilian Amazonia, in order to quantify and explicate the (i) livelihood costs incurred through the raiding of staple crops by terrestrial forest vertebrates, (ii) degree of depletion that communities exert upon the assemblage of forest vertebrates and (iii) spatial behaviour of hunting dogs and their masters during simulated hunts. Our results indicate that at the regional scale, accessibility, fluvial or otherwise, modulated the drivers, spatial distribution and amount of anthropogenic forest disturbance. Rural household density was highest in the most accessible portions of rivers and adjacent to rivers close to large urban centres. Unlike the low unipolar disturbance evident adjacent to roadless rivers, road-intersected rivers exhibited higher disturbance at multiple loci. At the household and landscape scales semi-subsistence agriculturalists lost 5.5% of their staple crop annually to crop raiders and invested significant resources in lethal and non-lethal strategies to suppress crop raiders, and to avoid losses an order of magnitude higher. Crop raiding was heightened in sparsely settled areas, compounding the economic hardship faced by communities already disadvantaged by isolation from urban centres. A select few harvest-sensitive species were either repelled or depleted by human communities. Diurnal species were detected relatively less frequently in disturbed areas close to communities, but individual species did not shift their activity patterns. Aggregate species biomass was depressed near urban areas rather than communities. Depletion was predicated upon species traits, with large-bodied large-group-living species the worst impacted. Hunting dogs travelled only ~ 13% farther than their masters. Urban hunters travel significantly farther than rural hunters. Hunting dogs were recognised to have deleterious impacts on wildlife, but were commonly used to defend against crop raiders

The interaction between antipredator behavior and antipredator morphology: experiments with fathead minnows and brook sticklebacks

Abstract: Prey species have two fundamental strategies for reducing their probability of being killed by a predator: behavioural modification and morphological defenses. It is hypothesized that prey species which possess morphological defenses should exhibit less behavioural modification in response to predation risk than species lacking such defenses. Experiments were conducted to examine behavioural modification by armoured (brook sticklebacks, Culea inconstans) and unarmoured (fathead minnows, Pimephales promelas) prey species foraging in the presence of a predator (yellow perch, Perca flavescens). Two experiments measured habitat avoidance and reactive distance to an approaching predator. The results of these experiments were consistent with the hypothesis. Compared with fathead minnows, brook sticklebacks exhibited relatively little behavioural modification in response to the presence of a predator, both in terms of avoiding dangerous areas and in their reactive distance to an approaching predator. Sticklebacks, however, graded their reactive distance to an approaching predator in relation to both their body size and group size. These data suggest that the morphology of brook sticklebacks and their behavioural sensitivity to predation risk may allow them to efficiently exploit habitats that contain predators. RCsumi : 11 existe deux stratkgies fondamentales par lesquelles des proies peuvent rixluire leurs chances d'Ctre tuCes par un prkdateur : des modifications de leur comportement ou des systkmes morphologiques de dCfense. Une espkce de proie qui posskde un systkme morphologique de dCfense devrait hypothktiquement avoir moins recours a des modifications de son comportement en rCaction aux risques de prddation qu'une espkce sans dCfenses morphologiques. Des exgriences ont permis d'Ctudier les modification du comportement chez une esgce de proie armte (~~i n o c h e a cinq Cpines, Culaea inconstans) et une espkce non armCe (Tkte de boule, Pimephales promelas) cherchant leur nourriture en prksence d'un prCdateur (Perchaude, Perca flavescens). Deux expkriences ont servi a mesurer la fuite loin de l'habitat et la distance de rCaction a l'approche du prddateur. Les rksultats des expkriences confirment l'hypothkse. Comparativement aux mCnCs, les Cpinoches ont peu modifiC leur comportement en prCsence du prkdateur (fuite loin de l'habitat ou distance de rCaction a l'approche du prkdateur). I1 a cependant Ct C remarquC que les Cpinoches ajustent leur distance de rCaction au prkdateur en fonction de leur taille et du nombre de poissons dans leur groupe. Ces donnCes semblent indiquer que la morphologie de 1 '~~i n o c h e a cinq Cpines et sa sensibilitk aux risques de prtdation lui permettent d'exploiter efficacement les habitats ou se tiennent des prkdateurs. [Traduit par la RCdaction

Accountability autonomy and authenticity: assessing the development waltz conducted to a 'kwaito' beat in Southern Africa

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Development in Practice on 21 January 2008, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09614520701778348.For the purposes of accountability and uniformity, and as a way of giving insight into their intellectual capital regarding development practices, NGOs in Southern Africa are required by donor agencies to describe their intended activities in very clear, unambiguous terms. These requirements may include the expression of theoretical approaches, the development of logical frameworks, clear objectives, indicators for success, criteria for sustainable development, and relationships to government policies. However, the interface between reality and these planning measures and tools, most often completed without the input and contributions of the communities whom they are to serve/service, produces a much more messy, dynamic, and involved picture of the development process. None the less, the NGOs are still required to be accountable on the basis of their original proposal and planning. The author presents examples of this phenomenon and discusses the challenges facing an evaluator when dealing with competing principles of accountability, autonomy, and authenticity

Seasonal dynamics of terrestrial vertebrate abundance between Amazonian flooded and unflooded forests

The flood pulse is the main factor structuring and differentiating the ecological communities of Amazonian unflooded (terra firme) and seasonally-flooded (várzea) forests as they require unique adaptations to survive the prolonged annual floods. Therefore, várzea and terra firme forests hammer out a spatio-temporal mosaic of resource availability, which may result in landscape scale seasonal movements of terrestrial vertebrates between adjacent forest types. Yet the lateral movements of terrestrial vertebrates between hydrologically distinct neighbouring forest types exhibiting staggered resource availability remains poorly understood, despite the important implications of this spatial dynamic for the ecology and conservation of forest wildlife. We examined the hypothesis of terrestrial fauna seasonal movements between two adjacent forest types at two contiguous sustainable-use forest reserves in Western Brazilian Amazonia. We used camera trapping data on the overall species richness, composition, and abundance of nine major vertebrate trophic guilds to infer on terrestrial vertebrate movements as a function of seasonal changes in floodplain water level. Species richness differed in neighboring terra firme forests between the high-and low-water phases of the flood pulse and terra firme forests were more species rich than várzea forests. There were clear differences in species composition between both forest types and seasons. Generalized Linear Models showed that water level was the main factor explaining aggregate abundance of all species and three trophic guilds. Our results indicate that the persistence of viable populations of large terrestrial vertebrates adjacent to major Amazonian rivers requires large, well-connected forest landscapes encompassing different forest types to ensure large-scale lateral movements by forest wildlife