Educational attainment in South Africa: a view from the census 1865–2011

Population censuses record considerable volumes of personal information, which when aggregated and tabulated provide significant insights into national societies. South African censuses have recorded levels of educational attainment since their inception in the mid-nineteenth century, initially measuring literacy and later the level of education completed. The statistics demonstrate deep long-term inequalities within South African society and the changing emphases placed upon them by governments of widely varying viewpoints. Temporal changes have been of constant concern, with the comparison of the results of one census with another to assess the effectiveness of government programmes. However, it has been the differences based on race or population group that have attracted most attention and remain the most contentious in the post-apartheid era. The census collects comprehensive statistical information independent of other sources and so provides a highly valuable and reliable record for a wide variety of investigations.     

Heidegger’s Reinscription of Paideia in the Context of Online Learning

Abstract

One of the questions that Heidegger presents in his paper, ‘Plato’s Doctrine on Truth’, is the distortion as he sees it of paideia—that is the loss of the essential elements in education. This loss is characterised according to Heidegger, by a misconception of Plato’s concept of teaching and learning. By undertaking an historical examination, Heidegger provides a means to rectify this loss. With reference to past, present and future philosophical perspectives of teaching and learning as particular spaces, an attempt is made in this paper to examine Heidegger’s reading of paideia within the context of online learning. This, for many contemporary writers on education, is an encounter with new literacies, new knowledge and the adoption of an online environment that challenges the hegemonic order of the institution as the purveyors of knowledge. Teachers within this new environment are, however still constituted as experts and their knowledge is seen as ultimately inviolate. Heidegger in his re-interpretation of Plato sees the teacher as leading the students to where they might make themselves intelligible within the space of their being. This alignment forms an acceptance and a challenge to the metaphysical concepts of uniformity of being and place that limits the potential of knowledge as something that is fixed and complete. The experience of the social web or Web 2.0 has seen a shift in learning premised upon dialogue, exchange and constantly shifting horizons. Within this context, the teacher is recast as a craftsman, creating learning opportunity within dialogic exchange. The heightened sense of involvement that is revealed in this context lays the ground for a future visioning of education where emergence is seen as essential, unlike a re-working of authorisation to learn that inhibits student and teacher alike in new attempts at revitalising education.     

Fuzzy books and sideways looks: discourses of schooling on Australian television advertisements

Media constructions of schooling provide suggestions about what should be expected of the school experience. Studies on discourses of schooling have examined how the school is framed in media discourses, but few have examined how it is formed mundanely and repeatedly in advertisements promoting products that are not directly educational. This paper examines how the school is constructed in a range of television advertisements that sell products that are not directly educational such as cereal and broadband Internet, focusing on how schools come to be framed negatively in advertising narratives. The television advertisements often use the technique of governmentality, whereby they attempt to direct the conduct of viewers by suggesting that self-improvement is achievable through personal enterprise. These advertisements position parents as agentive consumers of education, whose consumption habits are central to their children's scholarly success within problematic educational spaces.     

Assessing the Need and Potential of Community Networking for Development in Rural India

This article reports the results and conclusions of a mixed-methods research strategy designed to assess the potential of community networking in rural Tamil Nadu, India. The data reported and analyzed in this article include socioeconomic and household spending, agricultural marketing and price search, availability and use of information on agricultural problems, and communication media use. We use these data to define a framework of existing sources of information for various community agents, with a special emphasis on farmers. We analyze the methods and costs at which these agents obtain information, and identify information and communication gaps that information and communication technologies (ICTs) may help alleviate. This study allows us to demonstrate opportunities for socioeconomic development through ICT-enabled information access. The article concludes by stating the importance of basic communication technologies and contextually relevant information services, and suggesting recommendations for future research in this area.     

Coping with Complexity: How do educational psychologists assess students with emotional and behavioural difficulties?

This paper explores the issue of how educational psychologists (EPs) deal with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) referrals. Self-reported EP practice is highlighted and discussed using data gathered from a survey of EPs ( n =107) drawn from 16 local education authorities. Data relating to the age and gender of students referred, the types and frequency of tests used, and specialist interventions recommended/used are presented. A number of findings are emphasised; for example, the gender imbalance of referrals, the extensive range of behaviours deemed by referrers to provide evidence of EBD, and the considerable variations in the assessment and intervention practices of individual EPs.     

Learning Styles and Training and Development in Work Settings: lessons from educational research

Abstract While human resource development (HRD) practioners are interested in learning style, there has been relatively little empirical research in work settings. This paper reviews the research on the interaction effect of learning style and the learning style orientation of the learning environment on learning outcomes, and discusses how the findings from educational research can inform training and development practice. The need for more research in work settings is discussed and the dearth of valid and reliable measures of cognitive (learning) style that can be easily administered to employees is considered as a factor which may have inhibited research The advantages and disadvantages of a number of measures that could be used in work settings are discussed.     

Electrokinetic focusing and filtration of cells in a serpentine microchannel

Focusing cells into a single stream is usually a necessary step prior to counting and separating them in microfluidic devices such as flow cytometers and cell sorters. This work presents a sheathless electrokinetic focusing of yeast cells in a planar serpentine microchannel using dc-biased ac electric fields. The concurrent pumping and focusing of yeast cells arise from the dc electrokinetic transport and the turn-induced ac∕dc dielectrophoretic motion, respectively. The effects of electric field (including ac to dc field ratio and ac field frequency) and concentration (including buffer concentration and cell concentration) on the cell focusing performance were studied experimentally and numerically. A continuous electrokinetic filtration of E. coli cells from yeast cells was also demonstrated via their differential electrokinetic focusing in a serpentine microchannel.