Liberation pedagogy in the South African Context

This was a keynote address given by Neville AlexanderWe have arrived at a time to reflect on what has been done in the field of education for liberation, alternative education or People’s Education during the last few years. We have to analyse and theorise our experience in this country because it is imperative that beacons be set for future action, that direction and goals be determined so that energies now being expended are not wasted or misdirected. That there has been an explosion of liberation pedagogy, in the form of a multiplicity of educational projects and experiments inside and outside of the formal system of schooling since the early ’seventies more or less, is a well known fact. In recent years, many learned articles have appeared that attempt to contextualise this renaissance of learning in South Africa. Most of these have been programmatic and rhetorical or prescriptive insofar as they have dealt with the macro-educational issues involved, or descriptive and tentative insofar as they have confined themselves to micro-educational issues

Language policy, symbolic power and the democratic responsibility of the post-apartheid university

Recent articles by John Higgins (1999) and André du Toit (2000), both of the University of Cape Town and a forthcoming article by Roger Southall and Julian Cobbing have contextualised the discussion of this perennial question in both time and place. Du Toit, in particular, has put the cat among the pigeons by querying the relevance in the era of globalisation and the corporatisation of institutions of higher learning, of the classic liberal interpretation of the T.B. Davie formula deriving from the 1950s, i.e., the freedom of "the university" to decide whom to teach, what to teach, how to teach and who should teach. The gist of his argument is that the danger no longer comes from outside the walls of the university, in the guise of the racist apartheid state, for instance. Instead, the threat comes from inside the institutions themselves as the result of the so-called managerial revolution, which is a manifestation of the shift of power from the collegium academicum to the administrative officials, since the curricular and pedagogical, i.e., academic, freedom of the lecturing and research staff is thereby put at risk. He maintains that the manner in which Higgins and others have addressed the question is anachronistic in that the political terrain and the institutional dynamics in which universities operate in post-apartheid South Africa are light years removed from the apartheid university. At the very least, one-quarter of the composite formula, that which refers to "whom to teach" has been rendered irrelevant, since there is no longer any barrier to access to tertiary education, besides those that operate in any "normal" capitalist democracy

The political economy of the harmonisation of the Nguni and the Sotho languages

The author believes that it is essential to revisit the issue of the harmonisation of the African languages of South Africa. He maintains that most people who have been writing on the subject locally have not understood the kernel of the original Nhlapo-Alexander proposal and restates the economic and political arguments for it. Because there are no "linguistic" barriers to the realisation of this proposal, he concludes that the main obstacle is the lack of political will and appeals to the relevant academics and political/cultural leadership of the country to reconsider the issue against the background of a similar movement in the rest of the continent. Keywords: standardisation; harmonisation; language planning; standard nguni; standard sotho; ethnicity; nation-building; african languages; ausbau languages; language engineering; mutual intelligibility; pan south african language board; language modernisatio

A cost-effective intelligent robotic system with dual-arm dexterous coordination and real-time vision

Dexterous coordination of manipulators based on the use of redundant degrees of freedom, multiple sensors, and built-in robot intelligence represents a critical breakthrough in development of advanced manufacturing technology. A cost-effective approach for achieving this new generation of robotics has been made possible by the unprecedented growth of the latest microcomputer and network systems. The resulting flexible automation offers the opportunity to improve the product quality, increase the reliability of the manufacturing process, and augment the production procedures for optimizing the utilization of the robotic system. Moreover, the Advanced Robotic System (ARS) is modular in design and can be upgraded by closely following technological advancements as they occur in various fields. This approach to manufacturing automation enhances the financial justification and ensures the long-term profitability and most efficient implementation of robotic technology. The new system also addresses a broad spectrum of manufacturing demand and has the potential to address both complex jobs as well as highly labor-intensive tasks. The ARS prototype employs the decomposed optimization technique in spatial planning. This technique is implemented to the framework of the sensor-actuator network to establish the general-purpose geometric reasoning system. The development computer system is a multiple microcomputer network system, which provides the architecture for executing the modular network computing algorithms. The knowledge-based approach used in both the robot vision subsystem and the manipulation control subsystems results in the real-time image processing vision-based capability. The vision-based task environment analysis capability and the responsive motion capability are under the command of the local intelligence centers. An array of ultrasonic, proximity, and optoelectronic sensors is used for path planning. The ARS currently has 18 degrees of freedom made up by two articulated arms, one movable robot head, and two charged coupled device (CCD) cameras for producing the stereoscopic views, and articulated cylindrical-type lower body, and an optional mobile base. A functional prototype is demonstrated

The Pathology of Adrenocortical Hyperfunction and the In Vitro Biosynthesis of Adrenal Androgens

Abstract Not Provided

When communication breaks down or what was that? – the importance of communication for successful coordination in complex systems

Automation is increasingly prominent in today's vehicles. Initial systems will likely have some limitations, such as highway only automation. Thus, the designers such systems rely on the driver to resume control of the vehicle when the limits are reached. Such a system introduce similar problems that have been prominent in aviation, relying on the pilot to safely resume control. To resume control of the vehicle, collaboration and communication is key, as most system failures are associated with breakdowns in communication and “the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place” (- George Bernard Shaw). The paper outlook is from an Automated Driving perspective and AF447 serves as an illustrative example of the application of the explanatory capabilities of the Gricean Maxims in assessing Human-Agent communication in complex systems. Lastly, the paper discusses lessons learnt and potential application of the maxims in designing safe human-agent collaboration

Cidadania, identidade racial e construção nacional na África do Sul

This article examines the relationship between affirmative action as applied in post-apartheid South Africa and the concomitant perpetuation of racial identities that were shaped by the colonial and apartheid history of the country. It problematises this state of affairs and suggests an alternative, less divisive and dangerous course.Este artigo examina a relação entre a ação afirmativa, tal como aplicada na África do Sul pós-apartheid, e a concomitante perpetuação das identidades raciais formadas ao longo da história colonial e de apartheid do país. O autor problematiza a situação e sugere um curso de ação alternativo, menos perigoso e gerador de divisões

L’afrikaans: llengua i nació a Sud-àfrica. L’afrikaans com a llengua de reconciliació, restitució i de construcció nacional

En el número 58 de la revista L'Espill trobaràs un dossier monogràfic sobre "Un tombant social: la precarització de les capes mitjanes", amb contribucions de Sandra Obiol, Antonio Santos, Esteban Hernández, Rafael Castelló, Francisco J. Goerlich, David Muñoz, Mariano Urraco i Arnaldo Bagnasco. A més, articles de Rob Riemen, Richard Wolin, Simona Škrabec, Zira Box, Neville Alexander, Sherry Simon i Manuel Peris, així com documents de Walter Benjamin, un full de dietari de Jaume Subirana i converses amb Fina Birulés i Luka Lisjak

A psychological framework to enable effective cognitive processing in the design of emergency management information systems

Human cognitive processing and decision making are essential aspects in emergency management. Emergency situations imply additional demands to information processing. To meaningfully support decision makers in emergencies, a comprehensive understanding of the human perception and decision making processes and their underlying principles is required in the design of Emergency Management Information Systems (EMIS).This paper presents a psychological framework that models the stages and components of decision making in the context of emergency management. To this end, psychological research on human perception and information processing, knowledge and competence modelling, human judgement and decision making, individual and situational factors, stress, and self-regulation are identified as important compents of the framework. The psychological framework represents a comprehensive model of decision making of emergency managers, for a better understanding of the involved cognitive processes and influencing factors on the person level and on the context level. The paper posits the framework as a guide in the identification of requirements for emergency managers during systems analysis. This comprises systematically describing decision tasks in emergency situations and identifying needs for supporting them. The knowledge on human perception and decision making represented by the framework can also be used to inform the user interface design of the EMIS. It may also inform the evaluation of EMIS as it provides a theoretically founded representation of relevant aspects of human-computer interaction, which facilitates the identification of success indciators to be addressed in user-centred evaluation. The framework furthermore supports the design and implementation of training programmes through the differentiation and modelling of knowledge and competence relevant in emergency decision making. To demonstrate the application of the psychological framework in the design, development, and testing of EMIS a set of concrete design principles as well as exemplary paper prototypes applying these principles are presented