This paper addresses the affective human experiences in terms of the emotions of South African teacher-students while attaining computer competencies for teaching and learning, and for ODL. The full mixed method study investigated how computers contribute towards affective experiences of disadvantaged teacher-students. The purposive sample related…

This paper reports on the design and evaluation of a UK University's global eLearning MBA programme. The aims of the research were to investigate the learning experiences of the students on the course and to evaluate the effectiveness of the support system so as to improve the programme. The primary research method was a longitudinal…

The problem with assessment in South African public schools persists. In 2008 thousands of candidates taking South Africa's first ever National Certificate Examination could not be resulted because of a failure to report school-based assessment (SBA) tasks. Only 62.5% of candidates prepared for the final external examination through a process of…

The aim of this article is twofold. First, the final results of two research projects, which investigated the impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on primary schools teachers in disadvantaged areas in Brazil (BET k-12) and South Africa (MELISSA), are presented and discussed. Second, the Self-Efficacy construct is proposed as a…

The creation and implementation of strategies that could improve student development is receiving new research interest. The main objective of the research was to establish whether hypnosis-induced mental training programmes as a strategy could alter the self-concept of students which in turn could improve their overall academic functioning. Two…

Education law and policy currently focus on broader physical aspects of safety and security at schools, as well as, for example, on pedagogical insecurity such as is caused by discriminatory teaching, but law and policy have yet to pay attention to the overall and far-reaching pedagogical safety and security of learners. By means of a descriptive…

Putting inclusive education into practice and within diverse classrooms, teachers have to support and teach according to a variety of needs and preferences of learners, among them learners with ADHD. Teachers are seen as some of the most valuable sources of information with regard to referral and diagnosis of this disorder. They are also…

As an academic institution that is still in its early phases of organisational growth, Monash University, South Africa does not have a pool of postgraduate students that can be utilised for teaching assistance in units with large groups of students. This necessitated the selection of high-calibre honours candidates and third-year students that…

It is commonly assumed that better living standards will boost subjective well-being. The post-apartheid South African government subscribes to this idea; its social policies aim to provide "a better life for all". Since the coming of democracy in 1994, the state has built over 3 million houses and supplied electricity and clean water to…

In the era of mobile devices and services, researchers in the educational domain have been interested in how to support learning with mobile technology in both local and global contexts. Recent human-computer interaction (HCI) research in the educational domain has particularly focused on how to develop mobile learning services and how to evaluate…

I report on an analysis of the alignment between the South African Grade 12 Physical Sciences core curriculum content and the exemplar papers of 2008, and the final examination papers of 2008 and 2009. A two-dimensional table was used for both the curriculum and the examination in order to calculate the Porter alignment index, which indicates the…

The relationship between the academic labour market and the global labour market provides an important context for this research. There appear to be growing numbers of part-time lecturers at universities worldwide, which is seen as an extension of casualisation of labour more generally. From a social justice perspective, it is therefore of concern…

This paper reports on the development of an instrument which was used to gather information on the views of science students on the social responsibility of scientists. The methodology is based on a "Views on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS)" instrument which was developed in Canada. It involves three phases, employing interviews and…

In this article, we report on the results of a project devoted to improving literacy in South Africa's rural schools; specifically we report the results of an intervention study that centered on improving mother-tongue literacy instruction offered to learners in Grades 1 and 2 in South African schools. Our findings demonstrate that there are…

There is an inextricable link between democracy, education and the law. After 15 years of constitutional democracy, the alarming percentage of dysfunctional schools raises questions about the efficacy of the system of local school governance. We report on the findings of quantitative and qualitative research on the democratisation of schools and…