How can doctoral supervision be improved? Views from doctoral students in two faculties of education at South African universities

This study aims to address the void left by earlier researchers by establishing how full-time doctoral students’ views can be employed to improve doctoral studies. By employing habitus, field, social and cultural capital, and agency as a theoretical framework for this article, open-ended questions in a qualitative study were designed and executed purposively among sampled doctoral candidates at two faculties of education in South African universities. This approach was hinged on the thought that what PhD candidates were going through was vital when thinking of improving PhD supervision. Out of this study, PhD students point to some of their experiences as the starting point for possible supervision improvement. The study findings reveal that if academic leadership at the faculty level is actively involved in this process at the strategy formulation level, the experiences of students can change for the better. This can be done through the introduction and establishment of seminars, small and large group engagements, and the widening of social capital. Widening of social capital will ensure that both PhD supervisors and PhD students share productive supervision experiences while buttressing multidirectional relationships between supervisors, students and their peers aimed at improving completion rates and the doctoral journey

Comparing financial and social performances of traditional and participation banks in Turkey (2005- 2016)

06.03.2018 tarihli ve 30352 sayılı Resmi Gazetede yayımlanan “Yükseköğretim Kanunu İle Bazı Kanun Ve Kanun Hükmünde Kararnamelerde Değişiklik Yapılması Hakkında Kanun” ile 18.06.2018 tarihli “Lisansüstü Tezlerin Elektronik Ortamda Toplanması, Düzenlenmesi ve Erişime Açılmasına İlişkin Yönerge” gereğince tam metin erişime açılmıştır.Bu çalışmada; Bilanço, gelir tablosu, varlık, kârlılık, mevduat, kredi, özkaynak, sermaye yeterliliği, likidite ve diğer bazı oranlardaki gelişmelerin ardından; hem katılım hem de konvansiyonel bankaların finansal performansları karşılaştırılmıştır. Bu çalışmada, BDDK ve TKBB'den toplanan yılık bülten verileri (2005-2016) sayesinde CAMELS derecelendirme sistemi, rasyo oran analizi, trend analizi, tablolar ve grafikler aracılığıyla kullanımı incelenmiştir. Çalışmanın sonunda, Konvansiyonel Bankaların Katılım Bankaları'ndan daha iyi performans göstermektetir. Ancak, Katılım Bankalar Konvansiyonel Bankalara göre daha istikrarlı ve en hızlı büyüyen bankacılık sektörü olduğu görülmektedirFollowing the evolution of the balance sheets, income statements, assets, profitability, deposits, loans, equity, capital adequacy, liquidity, and some other ratios; financial performances of both participation and conventional banks are compared in our study. In this study, the usage of CAMELS rating system, ratios analysis as well as trend analysis through tables and graphs thanks to the interactive annually bulletin data (2005 – 2016) collected from BDDK and TKBB. At the end of the study, it is seen that Conventional Banks perform better than Participation Banks, but it is essentially noticed that Participation Banks are the fastest growing industry with more stability and constancy than Conventional Banks

In the Technological Footprints of Urbanity: A Socio-political History of Water and Sanitation in Nairobi, 1899-2015

While History of Technology as a discipline has developed more strongly in the Global North, a huge lacuna exists in the Global South, particularly in Africa. In addition, the few texts that have given attention to the South have more often than not continued to bracket these localities and the experiences of its peoples as either a historical or lacking agency. The over-emphasis on the perspective of the colonizers rather than the colonized that is evident in most of the literature has led to inconclusive typologies common to many syntheses of Africa’s past especially its urban experiences. In many instances, the dichotomous and a symmetrical analysis results into the African practices of the city being reduced to a colonial perception of disorder. To envision Africa’s cities only in terms of their colonial and postcolonial relationships may preclude a fuller understanding of the multifaceted ways in which they have engaged with the larger world. Furthermore, most studies on technology and infrastructure to be particular have employed dominant paradigms like the theory of Large Technical Systems (LTSs) and propagated the imagination of most urban spaces within the lenses of the ‘networked city model’. These theoretical frameworks have produced incomplete narratives that see the South as chaotic, disorderly and operating on the brink of collapse. It is this fact that has driven contemporary social science and technology studies to call for a departure from the ‘old’ to a new scholarship that acknowledges the localities in the South as not only ‘sources for data’ but also as ‘sites for theorization in their own right’. What is needed in history of technology is a shift from focusing on ‘origin and invention’ to ‘use, meaning and effect’ so as to avoid the reproduction of knowledge that continues to ‘privilege’ the North. Towards the development of Global History of Technology, the gap needs to be bridged by giving attention to the historical particularities of the Global South rather than the South being approached as exceptional. It is on this backdrop that this study of Nairobi was undertaken. Moving between the formal level of engineering and planning and the informal level of daily practice, the dissertation investigated how urban water and sanitation technologies were adopted, appropriated, and contested by various actors. Archival investigations in Nairobi, London and Oxford (UK) and oral accounts of users were employed and analyzed qualitatively. By departing from the dominant LTS perspective, the study zeroes in on the role of users as participants in the making of the histories of the city and as non-passive recipients of migratory ideas and ideals, especially in the process of procuring their daily needs. Technical infrastructural artifacts are looked at as multilayered and possessing a powerful political and economic nature that determines their access and ‘allocative’ role. Nairobi’s water and sanitation socio-spatial outlay was unbundled to reveal a quilt of a heterogeneous techno-scape. Nairobi, like any city in the world has its urban materialities embodying aspirations of various actors but historically, its engineer sociologists continue to define both the characteristics of the technical artifact and the social universe in which they are to function. As a colonial city and an urban space, Nairobi was loaded with imprints of social differentiation, social control and domination and the post-colony has seen elitist ideals augmented in parallel with a rapidly expanding group of urban poor. However, much as infrastructure supply has for several years followed a variegated path, this study sought to push the boundaries beyond the conventional asymmetries of race, class and ‘legal’ versus ‘illegal’ as explained through the formal and informal binary that is common in Urban Studies. It is not enough to conclude that the deployment of key infrastructures adheres to racialized (later elitist or class) planning. Rather, the question of access is informed by many factors that include the political nature of artifacts themselves and people as non-passive recipients; the cost-recovery component of ‘modern’ infrastructure projects as juxtaposed to the socio-cultural constructs of water and sanitation provisioning. Nairobi in retrospect attains a techno-collage or patchwork of modalities of provisioning that affirms the heterogeneous nature of most urban spaces. Furthermore, juxtaposed against the ‘splintering urbanism’ thesis, this work reverses the narrative by pointing out that the Global South cities have traditionally been fragmented and ‘splintered’ in terms of their socio-technical topologies. Nairobi for instance has from its foundation been marked by a quilt of different socio-technical arrangement of water and sanitation provision that combine both top-down approaches that are characterized by highly centralized municipal governance and bottom-linked modalities. These include shallow wells, boreholes, rain-water-harvesting, cesspits, and pushcarts amongst others. There are also ‘mediative’ hybridized arrangements like the ‘spaghetti’ pipes and standpipes cum water kiosks. The centrality of some of these methods from below, as espoused in this study, has witnessed a process of streamlining. This is acknowledged by the utility companies through public-private partnerships that combine the large and the small to plug into the technological gaps existing especially in the informal settlements that are melting pots of both technological innovation and contestation. Heterogeneity and ‘decentered’ or devolved small scale modalities of provision have been and will always remain a permanent marker of most cities as their history goes hand in glove with that of the cities themselves. Nairobi’s checkered sociotechnical outlay is as old as the city itself. Perhaps, as the writing of a Global History of Technology takes center stage, future scholarship needs to focus more on the multilayered nature of human and knowledge flows that go beyond the North-South binary to encompass South-North, South-North-South, South-South amongst many other shifts and counter-shifts, as we grapple with the challenge of knowledge production on histories of technology that is highly representative

Challenging gender equality in South African transformation policies - a case of the White Paper: A programme for the transformation of higher education

Using a post structural lens, I make arguments against homogenizing people’s conditions and circumstances. In particular, I acknowledge that the post 1994-reform agenda intended to streamline the previously fragmented and segregated landscape. Black women, who are the main target of this article suffered triple marginalization- race, social class and sexism.  The aim of the article is to show the tensions within White Paper (1997)- (A programme for the transformation of higher Education) that have not enabled gender gaps within post 1994 South African higher education addressed successfully- the gaps are still gapping.  I state that we should not take for granted phrases such as “equal opportunities” and “equal access” in policies.   Instead, we should seek their meaning and achievement inter alia in earnest for the targeted group.  Therefore, I postulate that gender and gendering is complex and very fragmented.  For this reason, formulating transformation interventions on the premise of equality for all does not necessarily guarantee gender equality or gender equity.    With this in mind, a “one-size fits all” approach is implausible and does not suffice in addressing salient gender injustices.   I propose a multifaceted approach, which encompasses a realistic and holistic outlook on the divergent needs of black women as a possible solution to the current challenges.

“I Was Just Done With Calculations…. I Realized That I Like Working With People” Understanding Why Women Abandon Careers In Mathematics

Contemporary research on women and the learning of science in higher educational institutions has persistently focused on equal representation and access. This study sets out to find out why women, after successfully completing their degrees in mathematics at undergraduate and/or masters, quit the field. This is despite the popular view that the anticipated value of a career in mathematics to one’s social- economic status cannot be under-estimated. This happens at a time most governments worldwide are committing more resources in education to encourage women to study mathematics and science. This paper reports interviews conducted among three women (from different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa) who studied mathematics at undergraduate and have since abandoned it to take on new careers in humanities and social sciences. The findings reveal that as women engage with mathematics at higher levels, their expectations and value of mathematics starts weathering off. Some develop the feeling that mathematics limits one’s ability to interact with people as compared to other fields of social science such as management. More surprising findings revealed that relatives still play an instrumental role in discouraging women to pursue mathematics to higher levels. Key words: women, gender, mathematics, caree

The son-father relationship and christological symbolism in the gospel of John

The relationship between Jesus the Son and God the Father plays a crucial role in the Johannine revelation of Christ. The Gospel of John symbolically portrays Jesus as the Son of God who is relationally inseparable from his Father. This research proposes that the Son-Father Relationship (SFR) is at the center of the network of Christological symbols in the Fourth Gospel. The SFR serves to fulfill the author’s stated purpose of John 20:31 and acts as an organizing principle that integrates and structures the Gospel’s unique symbolism. The uniqueness of Johannine symbolism is illustrated in the definition and theory of symbol formulated in this research using principles from theories propounded by Paul Ricoeur and Wilbur Urban. Two key passages in this study are the Prologue (John 1:1-18) and the Prayer (John 17:1-26). These passages are strategically positioned in the Gospel narrative and contain similar clusters of symbols, symbolic language, and themes centered on the SFR. The Prologue subtly and symbolically introduces the SFR; both SFR and symbolism are then developed through the words and actions of Jesus’ teaching ministry. The Prayer culminates Jesus’ teaching ministry and elevates the SFR to its highest point in the narrative, utilizing most of the symbolism introduced in the Prologue. This research unveils a symbolic network referred to as John’s Christological Symbology, through which the Gospel presents Jesus the Son in close relationship with God the Father. The Symbology, commencing in the Prologue and culminating in the Prayer before ending in the remainder of the Gospel, reveals the centrality of the SFR in Johannine symbolism.https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/1557/thumbnail.jp

Gender equity tensions in higher education: a critique of post-apartheid gender equity policy

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Wits School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2016.Gender inequality has been an area of concern internationally, regionally and nationally. Black South African women in general suffered triple oppression during the apartheid regime, based on race, gender and class oppression. Higher education mirrored the varied forms of marginalisation that existed in society and therefore the majority did not have the access to quality higher education afforded their white minority counterparts. The few black women who did have access were concentrated in historically disadvantaged institutions or studied through correspondence (Chisholm & September, 2005). The courses for which they were enrolled were aimed at perpetuating male dominance in the public sphere and domesticating them through women’s traditional roles of nurturing and caring. With the advent of democracy in 1994 the gates of higher education were opened to students who had previously been excluded. Effectively, black people in general and women in particular benefitted from race and gender categories of equity, according to the Department of Education, White Paper (1997). The equity clause that has been integrated in higher education policies encapsulates a clause that targets the redress of gender-related inequities and inequalities, aimed at ameliorating women’s access to higher education. Although race, gender and disability were identified, the National Plan (2001) notes that race equity had been given primacy in policies over gender equity. I argue that aggregated data emanating from recent studies in higher education indicate that 57% of the current female population are accessing public higher education. Although the figures from documentary evidence affirm a high presence, on examination of other factors this study found a more nuanced picture. Specifically, a change in equity deduced from the same data indicates that fewer women were enrolled in courses such as Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) or in postgraduate studies. Other areas of concern include high dropout rates, attrition and throughput (CHE, 2010; Draft Green Paper, 2012). This argument is made using theoretical and thematic exploration of post-apartheid South African gender equity reform agenda in higher education. In addition, higher education policy documents (National Council for Higher Education, 1996; White Paper, 1997; Higher Education Act, 1997; National Plan for Higher Education, 2001) and gender laws and frameworks have informed the study. It has aligned itself to one of the goals of White Paper (1997) that noted that in order for equity to be meaningful to the formerly disadvantaged; access and success have to run concurrently. Ultimately, the study has contended that by homogenising women the particular contexts of social justice have not been recognised (Young, 1990). The implication of the misrecognition of the particular and specific experiences of black women in higher education could be contributing to the enigmatic low throughput, high dropout rates and high levels of attrition currently being experienced in higher education. This thesis poses a challenge to policymakers and institutions of higher learning to shift their attention from viewing the attainment of gender equity and equality through notions of expanded access (global participation). To narrow the current gap it proposes a hybridisation of equity and equality policies (macro) with initiatives that target the particular and specific conditions (micro) of black women who access higher education. Key words: gender, equity, higher education, post-apartheid, policy, women

Pedagogies of doctoral supervision in South African universities

Abstract: This study focused on doctoral supervisors, their students, and the pedagogies they adopt in a South African context. In reviewing the literature, the study paid attention to the meaning associated with the term supervision and how it varies with time. This was to unpack the models and approaches doctoral supervisors adopt as they supervise doctoral students. A brief look at global and institutional doctoral supervision does not privilege contextual issues about doctoral supervision. Using a qualitative approach anchored in post-modern epistemologies, the study explored how PhD supervisors and their students are positioned respectively to undertake and undergo doctoral supervision in the South African context. Globally, doctoral supervision takes the German model where a supervisor in a discipline deals with a PhD student whose topic strictly falls within his/her discipline. In some cases, in English speaking countries, supervisors do take on topics that go beyond their own discipline. In South African studies, the focus has been on doctoral students and the role of supervisors in the cohort model of supervision (Govender & Dhunpath, 2011; Samuel & Vithal, 2011; ASSAF, 2010; Backhouse, 2009; Dietz, Dietz, Jansen, & Wadee, 2006). ..Ph.D. (Curriculum Studies

Cost-effective banana (musa paradisiaca) waste management and the welfare of banana farmers in Kakamega county Kenya

Horticultural waste management is global war that must be won particularly in Kenya. Utilisation of banana waste can mitigate the dwindling welfare of banana farmers in Kakamega County. Unlike India’s preferred processing approach, on-farm management of banana waste was a cost-effective strategy compatible to Kenya given the Climate change and Covid-19 pandemics. Unfortunately, knowledge on fitting 7Rs denoted by reducing, rethinking, refusing, recycling, reusing, repairing and refilling strategy onto the banana waste generated; banana waste utilisation technologies; and challenges of on-farm banana waste management was scanty in Kakamega County. Therefore, this paper examined the influence of cost-effective banana waste management on the welfare of banana farmers in Kakamega County, Kenya. It particularly established the: on-farm and off-farm weight of banana waste; appropriate innovative on-farm banana waste utilisation; and on-farm banana waste management challenges experienced in Kakamega County, Kenya. Across sectional design was adopted. A purposive sample of 150 from 600 banana farmers with at least 100 banana plants was studied. Frequency tables and plates were used to analyse data Kakamega County. Primary data was complemented by Key informants and secondary sources. The results revealed that out of the 7Rs, reuse, reduce and refill (3Rs) facilitated banana waste management. The weights of peeled banana fruit and waste were 10.1% and 89.9% of the entire banana plant respectively. Banana waste was the driver of integrated organic innovative crop farming, animal husbandry and agro-forestry. Dogmatic beliefs and low agricultural innovation adoption rate hindered banana waste utilization. It is concluded that 7Rs minimized the quantity; enhanced utilization; and mitigated challenges of banana waste, culminating to the improved welfare of banana farmers. Adoption of optimal innovative cleaner banana production technologies to streamline the 7Rs was recommended to achieve sustainable banana waste management and improve livelihoods in Kenya

Challenges in doctoral supervision in South African universities

This article addresses the challenges encountered by doctoral supervisors as they interact with their doctoral students in the contexts of South African universities. In a qualitative study of seven doctoral (PhD) supervisors and six PhD students, data was collected using interviews to examine the challenges supervisors experience as they supervise doctoral students. The PhD students were included in this study in because their responses would confirm or refute supervisor's views/opinions that emanated from their experiences in a social, cultural, and political context. Data analysis showed that doctoral supervisors experienced multiple challenges including overworking, time, and a set of academic characteristics of PhD students. Overall, the results of this study suggest that certain aspects among doctoral students who have completed doctorates in South African context, and their supervisors in different parts of the world would provide a starting point in the understanding of the implications of these aspects and their effect on the selection of doctoral students and the ongoing research in doctoral supervision in the South African context.  doctoral supervision