The Impact of Language on Educational Access in South Africa

The role of Medium of Instruction (MoI) or Language of Learning and Teaching (LoL&T) has not received sufficient attention as a factor denying meaningful access to education in South Africa. Yet the majority of under-performing learners are also children who learn in a language that is not their mother-tongue. This research aims to assess how recent language policies have changed the linguistic practices of schools and how this impacts on 'meaningful' access (understood as learners' access to the curriculum and therefore broad content knowledge). Interviews and open discussions were conducted with principals, teachers and parents from various township schools located in Mlazi (KwaZulu Natal) and in Soweto and Attridgeville (Gauteng) to illustrate the problems. The paper unpicks the different solutions - taken and proposed – to the disjuncture between MoI and meaningful access, whilst taking into account the legacy of past policies. Several proposals have been made to improve educational outcomes within the existing policy regarding medium of instruction (MoI) and language in general. Other proposals, in order to give transformation in education more immediate and concrete content, seek to exploit to its limit, or even alter, the official framework. They claim that such a move is a condition to reverse the overall poor outcome among learners from disadvantaged backgrounds. The MoI issue has sometimes been invoked in the debate on the relevance in societies of the periphery of what some see as essentially a Western educational model, a debate that the African renaissance ideology has helped rekindle in South Africa

Target Acquisition in Multiscale Electronic Worlds

Since the advent of graphical user interfaces, electronic information has grown exponentially, whereas the size of screen displays has stayed almost the same. Multiscale interfaces were designed to address this mismatch, allowing users to adjust the scale at which they interact with information objects. Although the technology has progressed quickly, the theory has lagged behind. Multiscale interfaces pose a stimulating theoretical challenge, reformulating the classic target-acquisition problem from the physical world into an infinitely rescalable electronic world. We address this challenge by extending Fitts’ original pointing paradigm: we introduce the scale variable, thus defining a multiscale pointing paradigm. This article reports on our theoretical and empirical results. We show that target-acquisition performance in a zooming interface must obey Fitts’ law, and more specifically, that target-acquisition time must be proportional to the index of difficulty. Moreover, we complement Fitts’ law by accounting for the effect of view size on pointing performance, showing that performance bandwidth is proportional to view size, up to a ceiling effect. The first empirical study shows that Fitts’ law does apply to a zoomable interface for indices of difficulty up to and beyond 30 bits, whereas classical Fitts’ law studies have been confined in the 2-10 bit range. The second study demonstrates a strong interaction between view size and task difficulty for multiscale pointing, and shows a surprisingly low ceiling. We conclude with implications of these findings for the design of multiscale user interfaces

Essentially nonoscillatory postprocessing filtering methods

High order accurate centered flux approximations used in the computation of numerical solutions to nonlinear partial differential equations produce large oscillations in regions of sharp transitions. Here, we present a new class of filtering methods denoted by Essentially Nonoscillatory Least Squares (ENOLS), which constructs an upgraded filtered solution that is close to the physically correct weak solution of the original evolution equation. Our method relies on the evaluation of a least squares polynomial approximation to oscillatory data using a set of points which is determined via the ENO network. Numerical results are given in one and two space dimensions for both scalar and systems of hyperbolic conservation laws. Computational running time, efficiency, and robustness of method are illustrated in various examples such as Riemann initial data for both Burgers' and Euler's equations of gas dynamics. In all standard cases, the filtered solution appears to converge numerically to the correct solution of the original problem. Some interesting results based on nonstandard central difference schemes, which exactly preserve entropy, and have been recently shown generally not to be weakly convergent to a solution of the conservation law, are also obtained using our filters

High order filtering methods for approximating hyberbolic systems of conservation laws

In the computation of discontinuous solutions of hyperbolic systems of conservation laws, the recently developed essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) schemes appear to be very useful. However, they are computationally costly compared to simple central difference methods. A filtering method which is developed uses simple central differencing of arbitrarily high order accuracy, except when a novel local test indicates the development of spurious oscillations. At these points, the full ENO apparatus is used, maintaining the high order of accuracy, but removing spurious oscillations. Numerical results indicate the success of the method. High order of accuracy was obtained in regions of smooth flow without spurious oscillations for a wide range of problems and a significant speed up of generally a factor of almost three over the full ENO method

A Predictive-reactive Approach for JSP with Uncertain Processing Times

The paper is supported by the Asia-Link project funded by the European Commission (CN/ASIA-LINK/024 (109093)), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (50705076, 50705077), and the National Hi-Tech R&D Program of China (2007AA04Z187)JSP with discretely controllable processing times (JSP-DCPT) that are perturbed in a turbulent environment is formulated, based on which, a time-cost tradeoff based predictive-reactive scheduling approach is proposed for solving the problem. In the predictive scheduling process, on the basis of a proposed three-step decomposition approach for solving JSP-DCPT, a solution initialization algorithm is presented by incorporating a hybrid algorithm of tabu search and simulated annealing and a fast elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm; in the reactive scheduling process, Pareto-optimal schedules are generated, among which every schedule that is not dominated by any initial schedule can be selected as the responding schedule so as to maintain optimality of the objective that is to minimize both the makespan and the cost. Experimental simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach

Axes de recherche linguistique en Afrique du Sud : usage des langues africaines a l'école, modélisation des langues africaines,

fichier son : http://www.etudes-africaines.cnrs.fr/ ficheateliers.php?recordID=25 ou http://www.etudes-africaines.cnrs.fr/Description and justification of a research program on language in South AfricaLa question linguistique en Afrique du Sud prend une importance croissante, ce qui justifie un programme de recherche dédié

N’y a-t-il point quelque danger à contrefaire Molière?

Comment rendre compte du fétichisme d’un mythe, nourri de plus de légendes que de faits avérés, quand il prend pour forme une iconographie qui dissimule ses sources dans l’éclatement de séquences volontairement illisibles ? En dessinant la mosaïque des références, sans doute, mais aussi en confrontant le discours postmoderne aux épitaphes du XVIIe siècle, qui ne célèbrent rien d’autre que le vertige du comédien pris au piège de son interprétation. C’est dans cette confrontation que se révèle le véritable enjeu de La Mort de Molière, non point seulement filmée, mais rejouée par Robert Wilson qui exorcise la mort de l’acteur, victime impénitente du même exercice, dresse la stèle d’une agonie exemplaire, pour ériger, avant l’heure, le tombeau de l’artiste contemporain.How can one study the fetichism of a myth, nurtured more by legends than actual fact, when it takes an iconographic form which conceals its sources through the multiplication of sequences deliberately made incomprehensible ? By drawing the mosaic of available sources, of course, but also by allowing for the confrontation of postmodernist discourse with the 17th century’s epitaphs, which celebrated the vertigo of the actor trapped in his own interpretations. It is through this confrontation that the true stakes surrounding La Mort de Molière can be illustrated. Not only filmed, this death was also acted out by Robert Wilson who exorcizes the historical death of an actor, unrepentant victim of his interpretation, by engraving on a tombstone the eternity of all actors

Des fictions "toutes proches" : une certaine identité de la France. Enjeux politiques des séries télévisées de France 3 en soirée (Louis la Brocante, Famille d’Accueil, Un Village Français)

International audienceFrance 3, national and regional television channel, always produced stories about territories in a national way. This role is reflected by the production of specific TV series. In this article, we focus on episodes with a large audience in prime time over the period 2005-2011. Three series stand out : Louis la Brocante, Famille d’accueil, Un village français. Finally, the purpose is to understand how this TV channel produces national political fiction in connection with television producers.France 3 canal de televisión, tanto a nivel nacional y regional, siempre ha hecho discursos en los territorios en une manera nacional y integradora. Este papel se refleja en la producción de series de televisión adaptadas : son considerados episodios con una gran audiencia en el prime time durante el período 2005-2011. Tres series se destacan: Louis la Brocante, Famille d’accueil, Un village français. Finalmente, después de haber caracterizado a la política de ficción de France 3 (y los productores), es analizado el trabajo de ficcionalización de esta cadena y sus principales aspectos políticos.France 3, chaîne de télévision à la fois nationale et régionale, a toujours mis en discours les territoires dans un cadre national intégrateur. Ce rôle se traduit notamment par la production de séries télévisées adaptées, qu’il s’agit d’étudier dans cet article en ne retenant que les épisodes à forte audience en prime time sur la période 2005-2011. Trois séries se détachent nettement : Louis la brocante, Famille d’accueil, Un village français. En fin de compte, après avoir caractérisé la politique de fiction de la chaîne en lien avec les producteurs, il s’agit d’analyser le travail de fictionnalisation de cette chaîne et ses principaux ressorts politiques