The management and governance of racial integration in public secondary schools in Gauteng

The main purpose of this paper was to establish the effectiveness of school management and governance structures in managing racial integration in public secondary schools. A qualitative study was conducted utilising Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Lewin’s Change Management Theory. A sample of grade 10 learners and educators, which included members of the School Management Team (SMT), School Governing Body (SGB), which represented the four previous education departments, was purposefully selected. Semi-structured, individual interviews and focus group discussions, including a questionnaire with open-ended questions, were used to gather data. The findings, obtained through content analysis, indicate that SMTs and SGBs experience difficulty in managing and governing racial integration in public schools due to the following: policy and practice issues, poor interrelationships, need for capacity building of educators, and on-going racial conflict. Based on the findings, recommendations are made on how SMTs and SGBs could effectively manage racial integration in public secondary schools. Keywords: governance, management, racial integration; Critical Race Theory, Lewin’s Change Management Theor

Self-Directed Learning in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted teaching and learning at higher education institutions (HEIs), and this book disseminates research findings on a series of cross-campus online initiatives of the North-West University (NWU) to ensure high-quality self-directed learning, whilst simultaneously attending to the need for inclusion and diversity in this challenging context. The golden thread running through the 13 chapters is how this HEI responded to the pandemic in a creative way through its investment in online virtual student excursions, based on problem-based, cooperative learning and gamification principles to support self-directed learning. Whereas virtual excursions usually refer to learning opportunities where ‘a museum, author, park or monument is brought to the student’ (Hehr 2014:1), the virtual excursion in our context is an activity system (Engeström 1987) where students’ learning is scaffolded across the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978) and where their ‘social and pedagogical boundaries are stretched or expanded’ (De Beer & Henning 2011:204). Students engage as Homo ludens, the playing human (Huizinga 1955), in learning activities embedded in an ill-structured problem, and through reflective activities, they are encouraged to reflect on their own naïve understandings or biases. This ‘tension’, or in Veresov (2007) parlance, ‘dramatical collisions’, provides a fertile learning space for self-directed learning

Self-Directed Learning in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted teaching and learning at higher education institutions (HEIs), and this book disseminates research findings on a series of cross-campus online initiatives of the North-West University (NWU) to ensure high-quality self-directed learning, whilst simultaneously attending to the need for inclusion and diversity in this challenging context. The golden thread running through the 13 chapters is how this HEI responded to the pandemic in a creative way through its investment in online virtual student excursions, based on problem-based, cooperative learning and gamification principles to support self-directed learning. Whereas virtual excursions usually refer to learning opportunities where ‘a museum, author, park or monument is brought to the student’ (Hehr 2014:1), the virtual excursion in our context is an activity system (Engeström 1987) where students’ learning is scaffolded across the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978) and where their ‘social and pedagogical boundaries are stretched or expanded’ (De Beer & Henning 2011:204). Students engage as Homo ludens, the playing human (Huizinga 1955), in learning activities embedded in an ill-structured problem, and through reflective activities, they are encouraged to reflect on their own naïve understandings or biases. This ‘tension’, or in Veresov (2007) parlance, ‘dramatical collisions’, provides a fertile learning space for self-directed learning

The source counts of submillimetre galaxies detected at 1.1 mm

The source counts of galaxies discovered at sub-millimetre and millimetre wavelengths provide important information on the evolution of infrared-bright galaxies. We combine the data from six blank-field surveys carried out at 1.1 mm with AzTEC, totalling 1.6 square degrees in area with root-mean-square depths ranging from 0.4 to 1.7 mJy, and derive the strongest constraints to date on the 1.1 mm source counts at flux densities S(1100) = 1-12 mJy. Using additional data from the AzTEC Cluster Environment Survey to extend the counts to S(1100) ~ 20 mJy, we see tentative evidence for an enhancement relative to the exponential drop in the counts at S(1100) ~ 13 mJy and a smooth connection to the bright source counts at >20 mJy measured by the South Pole Telescope; this excess may be due to strong lensing effects. We compare these counts to predictions from several semi-analytical and phenomenological models and find that for most the agreement is quite good at flux densities > 4 mJy; however, we find significant discrepancies (>3sigma) between the models and the observed 1.1 mm counts at lower flux densities, and none of them are consistent with the observed turnover in the Euclidean-normalised counts at S(1100) < 2 mJy. Our new results therefore may require modifications to existing evolutionary models for low luminosity galaxies. Alternatively, the discrepancy between the measured counts at the faint end and predictions from phenomenological models could arise from limited knowledge of the spectral energy distributions of faint galaxies in the local Universe.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables; accepted for publication in MNRA

Becoming a teacher

This book disseminates original research on learning in and from practice in pre-service teacher education. Authors such as Lederman and Lederman describe the student teaching practicum (or work-integrated learning [WIL]), which is an essential component of pre-service teacher education, as the ‘elephant in the room’. These authors note that 'the capstone experience in any teacher education programme is the student teaching practicum… [a]fter all, this is where the rubber hits the road'. However, many teacher educators will agree that this WIL component is sometimes very insufficient in assisting the student teacher to develop their own footing and voice as a teacher. This is the ‘gap’ that this research book addresses. Most of the chapters in the book report empirical data, with the exception of two chapters that can be categorized as systematic reviews. WIL is addressed from various angles in the chapters. Chapter 6 focuses on research related to what makes Finnish teacher education so effective, and in Chapter 4 researchers of the University of Johannesburg disseminate their findings on establishing a teaching school (based on Finnish insights) in Johannesburg. Chapter 3 highlights the challenges faced in open-and distance learning teacher education contexts. Several of the chapters disseminate research findings on alternative interventions to classic WIL, namely, where “safe spaces” or laboratories are created for student teachers to learn and grow professionally. These could either be simulations, such as software programmes and avatars in the intervention described in Chapter 2; student excursions, as the findings in chapters 5, 7 and 10 portray; or alternative approaches to WIL (e.g. Chapters 11 and 12). The book is devoted to scholarship in the field of pre-service teacher education. The target audience is scholars working in the fields of pre-service teacher education, work-integrated learning, and self-directed learning. The book makes a unique contribution in terms of firstly its extensive use of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory as a research lens, and secondly in drawing on various theoretical frameworks. Both quantitative and qualitative research informed the findings of the book

Dielectric disorder in two-dimensional materials

Understanding and controlling disorder is key to nanotechnology and materials science. Traditionally, disorder is attributed to local fluctuations of inherent material properties such as chemical and structural composition, doping or strain. Here, we present a fundamentally new source of disorder in nanoscale systems that is based entirely on the local changes of the Coulomb interaction due to fluctuations of the external dielectric environment. Using two-dimensional semiconductors as prototypes, we experimentally monitor dielectric disorder by probing the statistics and correlations of the exciton resonances, and theoretically analyse the influence of external screening and phonon scattering. Even moderate fluctuations of the dielectric environment are shown to induce large variations of the bandgap and exciton binding energies up to the 100 meV range, often making it a dominant source of inhomogeneities. As a consequence, dielectric disorder has strong implications for both the optical and transport properties of nanoscale materials and their heterostructures

Diversity of Cl− Channels

Cl− channels are widely found anion pores that are regulated by a variety of signals and that play various roles. On the basis of molecular biologic findings, ligand-gated Cl− channels in synapses, cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductors (CFTRs) and ClC channel types have been established, followed by bestrophin and possibly by tweety, which encode Ca2+-activated Cl− channels. The ClC family has been shown to possess a variety of functions, including stabilization of membrane potential, excitation, cellvolume regulation, fluid transport, protein degradation in endosomal vesicles and possibly cell growth. The molecular structure of Cl− channel types varies from 1 to 12 transmembrane segments. By means of computer-based prediction, functional Cl− channels have been synthesized artificially, revealing that many possible ion pores are hidden in channel, transporter or unidentified hydrophobic membrane proteins. Thus, novel Cl−-conducting pores may be occasionally discovered, and evidence from molecular biologic studies will clarify their physiologic and pathophysiologic roles

Religious Reasons for Campbell's View of Emotional Appeals in Philosophy of Rhetoric

This is the author's accepted manuscript.Reading Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric from a rhetorical perspective--as an attempt to address issues relevant to religious rhetoric--I argue that Campbell's aims of preparing future ministers to preach and defending the authority of revealed religion shaped, first, his conception of inventing and presenting emotional appeals and, second, his key assumptions about reason and passion. The essay adds a chapter to accounts of the relationship between reason and passion in sacred rhetorics and in rhetorical traditions more generally, and addresses the question of what Campbell's theory of rhetoric may aim to inculcate or cultivate emotionally and why

Climate Change Impacts on Net Ecosystem Productivity in a Subtropical Shrubland of Northwestern México

The sensitivity of semiarid ecosystems to climate change is not well understood due to competing effects of soil and plantâ mediated carbon fluxes. Limited observations of net ecosystem productivity (NEP) under rising air temperature and CO2 and altered precipitation regimes also hinder climate change assessments. A promising avenue for addressing this challenge is through the application of numerical models. In this work, we combine a mechanistic ecohydrological model and a soil carbon model to simulate soil and plant processes in a subtropical shrubland of northwest México. Due to the influence of the North American monsoon, the site exhibits net carbon losses early in the summer and net carbon gains during the photosynthetically active season. After building confidence in the simulations through comparisons with eddy covariance flux data, we conduct a series of climate change experiments for nearâ future (2030â 2045) scenarios that test the impact of meteorological changes and CO2 fertilization relative to historical conditions (1990â 2005). Results indicate that reductions in NEP arising from warmer conditions are effectively offset by gains in NEP due to the impact of higher CO2 on water use efficiency. For cases with higher summer rainfall and CO2 fertilization, climate change impacts lead to an increase of ~25% in NEP relative to historical conditions (mean of 66 g C mâ 2). Net primary production and soil respiration derived from decomposition are shown to be important processes that interact to control NEP and, given the role of semiarid ecosystems in the global carbon budget, deserve attention in future simulation efforts of ecosystem fluxes.Key PointsModel simulation accurately captured the seasonality of vegetation activityNet ecosystem productivity decreased under reduced summer rainfall and increased temperature scenariosElevated CO2 scenarios offset the negative impacts of meteorological conditionsPeer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142969/1/jgrg20992_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142969/2/jgrg20992.pd