Preventing sexual and gender-based violence against refugee women in the workplace: perspectives of African refugee women living in Durban, South Africa.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.To achieve its objectives, the study begins by exploring and examining the extent of sexual and gender-based violence against female refugees in working place. It analyzes various effects of violence on refugee, examine the coping mechanisms as well as interventions by different stakeholders. It examines the existing policy that protect women at workplace and how such policy includes refugee women in South Africa; while identifying government and non­ governmental organizations' programs and methods to prevent violence abuses facing by refugee in the professional environment; and where applicable their functioning, effectiveness, and applicability. In nature, this is a qualitative study. Snowball sampling methods were useful in the selection of participants. 15 refugee women from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, as well as Burundi took part in the study. Private face- to face interviews were concluded with 15 women volunteers among the study participants and 3, leaders of humanitarian organizations from which the refugees were selected and which help women refugees, to cope with this scourge The findings showed that gender-work violence suffered by African's refugee women is dominant in the workplace inside Durban. The results also revealed that gender-based violence facing by female refugees in workplace possesses negative impacts. Examining coping mechanisms adopted by refugee women, the findings have shown a range of strategies adopted by refugee women. They all however seemed less effective in dealing with the growing level of gender­ based violence at workplace. Exploring an existing policy that protects women in the workplace and how this policy includes women refugees in South Africa, the results showed that the South African policy regarding the protection of women refugee in the workplace is not effective. It does not protect the refugee woman in her workplace. This is why refugee women turn to humanitarian organizations. These organizations have already put in place certain methods and programs to assist refugee women to prevent them from being exposed to violence in the workplace

English language teaching in Primary schools of the Moshaweng circuit in the Northern Cape

This study investigated the implementation of National Curriculum Statement’s English First Additional Language in three rural primary schools in Northern Cape Province. The focus of the investigation was on English First Additional Language learning, teaching and assessment in grade four. The purpose was to evaluate class activities in order to determine the level of achievement in English, and to establish whether classroom practices were being informed by National Curriculum Statement policy for English First Additional Language. The study employed a qualitative case study approach, using classroom observation and document analysis research tools. The findings revealed that the learners lacked literacy skills because they were not engaged in suitable and meaningful tasks to meet their linguistic needs. Most activities given to the learners were irrelevant, and not age, grade and language level appropriate. There was no evidence of communicative, text-based, reading and process writing activities in the learners’ portfolio files. It was also discovered that teaching, learning and assessment did not conform to National Curriculum Statement policy for English First Additional Language and the principles of OBE methodology. Recommendations to address the problems are proposed

Student support service excellence evaluation: Balancing the Iron Triangle of accessibility, cost-effectiveness and quality?

Recently, the University of South Africa widened access to academic facilities and services at one of its study centres. Although this is laudable and demonstrates a commitment by the university towards its students, it raises these three concerns (1) What is the occupancy rate of the facilities? (2) To what extent are these improved facilities cost-effective? (3) What is the quality of the services at these facilities? A modified iron triangle was employed to analyse and determine accessibility, cost-effectiveness and the quality of the facilities. Data mining techniques involving descriptive analysis indicated that the most utilised service facilities were the computer laboratories and the least utilised was the study space. Moreover, perceived service quality of the facilities was rated good to excellent by the majority of the respondents. The modified iron triangle was found to be useful in helping us understand Student Support Excellence Project’s (SSEP) improvements at the identified study centre

Exploring the quality of students' support services in distance learning environments

Delivering education through open and distance learning (ODL) mode imposes upon ODL institutions a responsibility to provide support services deemed adequate to address students’ expectations and learning needs. Student support services are a vital part of academic success in distance learning environments because of the nature of distance education. Therefore, it is critical to provide student support services whose quality levels are acceptable to those who use them. Quality and its measurements are a contentious issue in higher education and distance education. Efforts to help service quality researchers in distance education understand service quality and its evaluation have come from marketing researchers. Among different approaches of service quality assessment is the SERVQUAL model. This study explored and examined the quality of students’ support services in distance learning environments from students’ perspective, using a modified SERVQUAL model. The objectives of the study were to examine students’ expectations and perceptions of the quality of support services; analyse the gaps between expectations and perceptions; develop and validate a service quality model and a scale to evaluate the quality of distance education students’ support services. A sequential mixed methods design was used to collect and analyse the data. Data were collected in two phases. The first phase involved collecting data qualitatively. The qualitative data were used to develop a context specific service quality model and a scale. The model and the scale were validated in the second (quantitative) phase of the study. The results of the study showed that the students’ expectations exceeded the perceived performance levels of the student support services. The largest gaps related to feedback, study material delivery and spaces for quiet learning. The study also found that distance education student support services can be measured by four service quality dimensions, namely: tangibles, reliability, delivery and assurance.Curriculum and Instructional StudiesD. Ed. (Curriculum Studies

Internal Marketing Practices, Job Satisfaction and Service Quality in the Airline Service Industry: A Case Study of Entebbe Handling Services, Uganda

There are limited studies on the relationship between internal marketing and service quality in Uganda though in the west interest in internal marketing seems to have intensified from 2006 onwards,[1]. Customers no longer simply pay for services: they co –produce with the contact employees at the time of transaction and therefore the customer buying experience has to be understood from both the employees’ and customer perspectives, [2] The purpose of this study was to establish the relationship between internal marketing, employee job satisfaction and service quality. Survey research method was used with the primary data being collected from 91 employees and 96 clients of one selected firm in the aviation industry in Uganda. The study results showed that Internal marketing has a strong positive correlation with service quality (r=0.723**, p-value\u3c 0.01) while internal marketing and employee job satisfaction are significantly correlated (r=0.871**, p-value\u3c 0.01) and are strongly positively correlated. Employee job satisfaction showed a significant positive correlation with service quality (r=0.895**, p-value\u3c0.01). The practical implication of our study is that internal marketing has a fundamental contribution in the delivery of service quality. The study findings inform managers, who have hitherto tended to put more emphasis on the external customer, to change their perspective as taking the internal customer for granted may result in negative outcomes for their organizations

Performance evaluation and modelling of a small-scale biomass gasifier

Many parts of the World have remained underdeveloped due to the lack of access to electricity. Developing and promoting alternative energy sources from renewable materials would assist to mitigate the energy crisis in many parts especially in the World. This research examined the possibility of using a 10KW power pallet as a sustainable energy generation system especially for energy poor areas. This was achieved through the gasification of woodchips at varying moisture content, varying gasification times and at varying electrical loads while investigating the numerous changes in the major factors affecting gasification such as temperature, fuel consumption rate, equivalence ratio (ER), quality of the producer gas, heating value, carbon conversion efficiency as well as the cold gasification efficiency of the gasifier. Experimental data was analysed and interpreted by one way Analysis of Variance (Anova) to establish a relationship on the effect of the major factors affecting gasification as investigated in this study. It was discovered that the gasifier is an autothermal system that maintains a steady state of thermodynamic equilibrium for longer hours as long as the gasifier is constantly supplied with a drier fuel. The gasifier stably and optimally operates with woodchips of moisture content less than 10% to produce an energy rich gas for gasification times longer than six hours to yield a gas rich in Hydrogen (H2), Carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH4) at a respective concentration of up to 18.1%, 25.3% and 2.2% with a corresponding Higher Heating Value (HHV), Cold Gas Efficiency (CGE) and gas production rate of 6.4MJ/m3, 75.8% and 2.34m3/kg respectively. The reactor takes longer time to attain thermodynamic equilibrium once operated with woodchips of moisture content above 15%. This subsequently affects the quality of producer gas yielding a gas of low calorific value that would even clog the engine. The moisture content of the wood chips was found to play a very significant role in determining the values of temperatures attained and subsequently determining the quality of producer gas. The gasifier was found to produce the required energy up to the design capacity of 10KW required for several industrial applications. Increasing the engine throttle valve increased the frequency of the engine and subsequently the voltage. The designed energy output of up to 10KW could only be produced if the engine frequency was 60HZ and could be lower if the engine operated at a lower frequency. A thermodynamic equilibrium model was further developed to predict the composition of producer gas going to the engine. The thermodynamic equilibrium model yielded a gas composition of 25.99%, 23.92%, and 0.42% for CO, H2 and CH4 respectively that was in good agreement with the experimental results at 850 ºC and ER of 0.27. Similarly, the modelled gasification temperature of 870.85ºC corresponds with a minor deviation of 2.5% with the experimental gasification temperature of 850ºC. The exhaust stream composition contained Carbondioxide (CO2) of upto 20% which is on the higher side because air was used as the gasifying agent and the gasifier was completely autothermal. Such CO2 concentration ought to be lowered if the gasifier is to be adopted as a sustainable renewable energy system. The gasifier was found to operate better with wood chips in the size range between 1.3cm – 4.0cm as very fine wood chips would block the flow of air hence compromising on the sustainability of the exothermic reactions and bigger wood chip particles would not be easily broken down by the auger hence resisting the flow of the woodchips into the reactor. Operating the gasifier at optimal conditions yields a gas of high calorific value good enough to make it a reliable standalone system that could be integrated into sustainable bioenergy systems