A social connectedness intervention as pathway to teacher resilience in primary schools in challenged spaces

Evidence from Africa and other challenged contexts is scant in the emerging teacher resilience knowledge base. This study aimed to investigate the utility of a school-level social connectedness intervention as a pathway to promote teacher resilience given structural disparity and chronic and multiple challenges. A concurrent mixed-methods intervention study design was employed to describe teacher resilience and social connectedness of conveniently sampled teachers (n=36) from six purposively selected peri-urban primary schools from lower socio-economic neighbourhoods in the Eastern Cape, South Africa before and after a social connectedness intervention. Following a year-long, Participatory Reflection and Action process, the Isithebe Social Connectedness Intervention was co-constructed with teacher participants, implemented over six months, and quantitative and qualitative teacher resilience and social connectedness data were collected at pre-, process and post-intervention timepoints. Whereas qualitative data (verbatim transcriptions and visual data) were thematically analysed, quantitative data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Irrespective of the social connectedness intervention, teacher resilience and social connectedness were high amongst teachers–despite the challenged context. The intentional gatherings between teachers led to a significant increase in trust. The teachers acted on a heightened awareness of social connectedness by leveraging school and school-community networks to bond across school spaces. The bonding signifies an enabling pathway to respond to needs using social networks and resources to provide and receive social support from peers, learners, parents, and caregivers. Following the social connectedness intervention, evident enablers of quality education included teacher professionalism (opportunities for professional development via social networks, peers and schools) and teaching and learning competencies (creativity, adaptability, compassion). Enablers of occupational well-being included social connection, acknowledgement of occupational inputs, and experiencing occupational purpose. This study contributes evidence of an accessible, school-level intervention that, when implemented with teachers working under extreme challenges and constrained structural support, forges trusting school communities. The socially connected spaces enable teachers to capitalise on bonded networks within and across schools and school communities. Plausibly, teacher well-being and quality education are enabled as teachers provide and receive compassionate implicit social support to acknowledge one another and a shared career purpose. Teachers also use pragmatic explicit social support to share teaching and learning competencies and opportunities for professional development.Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2022.NRF UP POSTDOC BURSARYEducational PsychologyPhDUnrestricte

On the auditory discrimination of spectral shape

VIII+142hlm.;24c

The contact stabilization activated sludge process

Includes bibliographical references.In 1978 Ekama and Marais put forward a general model for the activated sludge process based on an energy requirement for adsorption of the nutrient onto the organisms. They briefly outlined an alternative bi-substrate hypothesis in which the energy requirement for adsorption fell away. No evidence in support of this alternative hypothesis was presented. The objective of this thesis was to investigate which of the two hypotheses gave the better description of the activated sludge process kinetics. When the adsorption hypothesis was replaced by the bi-substrate hypothesis in the general model and applied to the completely mixed activated sludge process and their predictions compared with experimental data, it was not possible to establish conclusively which hypothesis is to be preferred. As a consequence it was decided to test the two models under extreme conditions. The contact stabilization process was selected as the one presenting a most severe test of the predictive power of any hypothesis on activated sludge kinetics, and most likely therefore to establish the superiority of one hypothesis over the other. In order to obtain experimental data against which the hypotheses could be evaluated a series of laboratory scale tests on the contact stabilization process were conducted under time invariant and cyclic flow and load conditions at two temperatures, 12°C and 20°C. From a comparison of the experimentally observed and theoretically predicted data it was concluded that an additional factor had to be taken into account before a valid comparison could be made - whereas the general activated sludge theory accepted a rapid and complete enmeshment of influent particulate COD, in the contact reactor the experimental data indicated incomplete enmeshment in the short contact time available. When allowance was made for partial enmeshment in the predicted response of the system it was concluded that the bi-substrate hypothesis was superior to the adsorption one

An investigation into the relationship between the development of rotation of the hip motor control

Although the relationship between increased anteversion and abnormal motor control in children with cerebral palsy is well documented there are no published studies that look at the possible links between motor control and femoral anteversion in children without neurological deficits. Children with intoeing gait are reported to be clumsy; but this clumsiness is usually ascribed to the gait angle. The aim of this study, therefore, is to explore the possible relationship between detorsion of the femur during growth and the development of hip posture and movement. Hip internal and external rotation are commonly used as a clinical measure of anteversion of the femur. In this study the range of hip internal and external rotation (as a clinical measure of anteversion) was related to performance of motor tasks requiring control of the posture and movement of the hip. If the degree of femoral anteversion is linked to the development of motor control, the next step would be to investigate the effectiveness of exercise programmes on the process of detorsion of the femur in children with excessive medial femoral torsion

Analysis of Bounded Distance Decoding for Reed Solomon Codes.

Bounded distance decoding of Reed-Solomon codes involves finding a unique codeword if there is at least one codeword within the given distance. A corrupted message having errors that is less than or equal to half the minimum distance corresponds to a unique codeword and therefore, the probability of decoding error is one for a minimum distance decoder. However, increasing the decoding radius to be slightly higher than half of the minimum distance may result in multiple codewords within the Hamming sphere. In this study, we computed the probability of having unique codewords for (7, k) RS codes when the decoding radius is increased from the error correcting capability t to t+1. Simulation results show a significant effect of the code rates on the probability of having unique codewords. It also shows that the probability of having unique codeword for low rate codes is close to one.MvdH201