Investigating the take-up of open educational resources for maths teacher education : a case study in six higher education sites in South Africa.

This study has investigated the take-up, at a range of South African tertiary institutions, of Open Educational Resources (OER) designed for mathematics teacher education. Although numerous studies (e.g. Darling-Hammond, 2006; Jonassen & Rohrer-Murphy, 1999; Loughran, 2006) have identified criteria for the development of quality materials for teacher education, and have investigated ways in which these have been and should be used, little attention has been paid to the implications of these findings for the use of OER in teacher education. In 2006 the South African Institute of Distance Education (SAIDE) initiated the ACEMaths project to pilot a collaborative materials design and adaptation process in response to a Department of Education call for large scale teacher upgrading programmes leading to an Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE) in priority areas. Nine South African tertiary institutions formed the collaborative group for the development of Mathematics teacher education materials. Six of these institutions committed to using the pilot materials in their teacher education programmes in 2007. Methodologically, the research is a case study of cases (Adler & Reed, 2002), in which the varying uses of the materials in these six institutional sites constituted the individual cases. At each site data were gathered from session observations, questionnaires and interviews. Artefacts, such as examples of customised materials, were also collected. Cross case analysis revealed that institutions used the ACEMaths materials in both similar and different ways and in a range of programmes. Findings from this analysis and their implications for both initial inter-institutional designing and subsequent intra-institutional re-designing and re-use of OER are discussed

Popular politics and the rationalization of "urban native" administration in Brakpan, 1943 - 1948

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: Structure and Experience in the Making of Apartheid, 6-10 February, 1990

Bones of contention: the return of Nonteta, an Eastern Cape prophet

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 3 August, 1998Bones and burial places have been invested with special meanings in South Africa's recent political history. Before 1994 funerals of anti-apartheid martyrs often created public spaces for activists to renew resistance against the apartheid regime. Since 1994, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has highlighted the iniquities of apartheid government hit squads by locating the graves of their victims and returning their remains to their families. However, as the public outcries over Saartje Baartman and Chief Hintsa indicate, the interest in the fate of remains extends back into previous centuries

The female condom (Femidom) - a study of user acceptability

No Abstract

African political mobilisation in Brakpan in the 1950s

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented March 1989With the notable exception of Tom Lodge's recent work, much of the literature which addresses itself to the turbulent decade of African politics of the 1950s focuses almost exclusively on formal political organisations and their national leaders. Rarely do the roles and consciousness of local political figures and the "led" or rank and file come into view. The foreground is invariably occupied by national middle class African figures planning, forming alliances, overhauling the structures of their organisations and directing mass activity. Beyond this phalanx, we can barely make out the blurred and somewhat undifferentiated feature of the urban masses. Occasionally their profiles are illuminated in a "flashpoint" of class conflict or their actions may momentarily be sighted in a flare-up of rioting during one of the major political campaigns of the decade. But all too rarely are these moments of resistance situated in their immediate terrain. This absence of sensitivity to the sociology and social history of urban African communities of the 1950s is especially glaring, as it was in this decade that urban Africans were subjected to unprecedented measures of social restructuring and social engineering with the implementation of apartheid. Similar criticisms can be levelled at the writings of Marxist scholars who are concerned with the social composition and changing ideological discourse of the major political organisation of the period, the ANC. Like the institutional historians, they fail to locate the growth of political organisations and the development of a mass-based politics within the changing sociological realties of South Africa's towns and ci ties, and thereby to probe their assumptions about the history of urban African societies and the class bases of political movements. The institutional focus has also meant that a variety of urban constituencies, idioms of protest, ideologies and forms of consciousness which fed into the overall mass political culture of the decade rarely surfaces, while the social groupings which were neither reflected in nor embraced by the ANC, remain invisible in most accounts. The crucial role that "dummy" or "collaborationist" institutions, such as the Location Advisory Board could, and sometimes did play in mobilising African communities around the ANC programmes, for example, has been little understood. Conversely, although much direct action occurred outside the scope of formal organisation, many urban constituencies in which the ANC failed to strike strong roots, have been obscured or ignored altogether. The history of urban squatter movements in the 1950s is thus almost unknown. Finally, the institutional bias of historians has meant that the immense regional variations in political cultures and styles of protest have not been explained and that the notoriously uneven responses to the ANC campaigns of the decade have not been adequately understood. This paper does not aim to provide a comprehensive corrective but it is concerned, through the Brakpan case to point to aspects of urban social history which may enhance our understanding of the complexity and variability of black political mobilisation in the 1950s. It emphasises the value of examining the local permutations in the unfolding of the huge processes of industrialisation and African urbanisation and in the municipal administration of African communities for understanding popular responses to political organisation in the decade. Thus, this paper demonstrates the laggard industrial growth in Brakpan, the delayed implementation of apartheid social engineering and the peculiarly harsh administration of "the native location" had crucial implications for the social nature of political organisation and for the modes of resistance and protest employed

The clinical and biochemical effects of two combination oral contraceptive agents

No Abstrac

African settlement and segregation in Brakpan, 1920 - 1927

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: The Making of Class, 9-14 February, 198

The Prince and Afrikaners: The Royal Visit of 1925

For three months in 1925, Prince Edward (Prince of Wales) conducted an extensive tour through the Union of South Africa. While royal visits to dominions and colonial dependencies in the interwar years were promoted by the British government as a means of cohering the empire at crucial moments of dominion devolution, a special purpose of the South African royal progresses was to effect a reconciliation between the ruling white ‘races’ (whites of British descent and Afrikaners) and reconcile Afrikaners to the imperial tie. This article explores the complex and unexpected ways in which Afrikaners engaged with the young ‘ambassador of empire’ at the midpoint of a tumultuous decade in South African politics. Originally proposed by the renowned South African politician and imperial statesman, Jan Smuts, the tour took place when government was led by Afrikaner nationalists and included avowed republicans. Notwithstanding lingering resentments over the South African War (1899–1902) and Boer rebellion (1914–15), the Prince’s visit was reckoned a success in softening anti-British prejudices of Afrikaners, boosting Englishspeakers’ morale, and saving South Africa for the Empire. Probing beneath breathless newspaper narratives of dour Afrikaners charmed into loyalty by a glamorous Prince, this chapter explains the apparent volte-face in Afrikaner elite and popular attitudes. Unlike the iconic royal visit of 1947 when nationalist dissent was openly expressed, discontents in 1925 were sublimated or masked by gestures of deference and satire. The article offers alternative perspectives on a pivotal decade in the fashioning of modern monarchy and on Afrikaner cultural politics

The Prince and Afrikaners: the royal visit of 1925

For three months in 1925, Prince Edward (Prince of Wales) conducted an extensive tour through the Union of South Africa. Whilst royal visits to dominions and colonial dependencies in the interwar years were promoted by the British government as a means of cohering the empire at crucial moments of dominion devolution, a special purpose of the South African royal progresses was to effect a reconciliation between the ruling white ‘races’ (whites of British descent and Afrikaners) and reconcile Afrikaners to the imperial tie. This article explores the complex and unexpected ways in which Afrikaners engaged with the young ‘ambassador of empire’ at the midpoint of a tumultuous decade in South African politics. Originally proposed by the renowned South African politician and imperial statesman, Jan Smuts, the tour took place when government was led by Afrikaner nationalists and included avowed republicans. . Notwithstanding lingering resentments over the South African War (1899 – 1902) and Boer rebellion (1914 -15), the Prince’s visit was reckoned a success in softening anti-British prejudices of Afrikaners, boosting English-speakers’ morale, and saving South Africa for the Empire. Probing beneath breathless newspaper narratives of dour Afrikaners charmed into loyalty by a glamorous Prince, this chapter explains the apparent volte-face in Afrikaner elite and popular attitudes. Unlike the iconic royal visit of 1947 when nationalist dissent was openly expressed, discontents in 1925 were sublimated or masked by gestures of deference and satire. The article offers alternative perspectives on a pivotal decade in the fashioning of modern monarchy and on Afrikaner cultural politic