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Using the van Hiele theory to analyse geometrical conceptualisation in grade 12 students: a Namibian perspective

  • Authors: Mateya, Muhongo
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: Hiele, Pierre M. van Hiele-Geldof, Dina van Geometry -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- Namibia Mathematics -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- Namibia
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
  • Identifier: vital:1820 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003706
  • Description: The study reported here utilised a theory of levels of geometric thinking. This theory was proposed and developed by two Dutch mathematics educators, Pierre van Hiele and his wife, Dina van Hiele-Geldof. The van Hiele theory enables investigations into why many students experience difficulties in learning geometry. In many nations, such as the UK, the USA, Netherlands, the USSR and to a certain extent, Nigeria and South Africa, research evidence has indicated that the overall students’ mathematical competencies are linked to their geometric thinking levels. This study is the first of its kind to apply the van Hiele theory of geometric thinking in the Namibian context to analyse geometrical conceptualisation in Grade 12 mathematics students. In all, 50 Grade 12 students (20 from School A and 30 from School B) were involved in this study. These students wrote a van Hiele Geometry Test adapted from the Cognitive Development and Achievement in Secondary School Geometry test items. Thereafter, a clinical interview with the aid of manipulatives was conducted. The results from this study indicated that many of the School A and School B students who participated in the research have a weak conceptual understanding of geometric concepts: 35% of the School A and 40% of the School B subsamples were at the prerecognition level. 25% and 30% of the School A, and 20% and 23.3% of the School B students were at van Hiele levels 1 and 2 respectively. An equal number of students but different in percentages, 2 (10%) in School A and 2 (6.7%) in School B, were at van Hiele level 3. Only one student from School B attained van Hiele level 4. These results were found to be consistent with those of previous similar studies in UK, USA, Nigeria and South Africa. The findings of this study also highlight issues of how the Namibian Grade 12 geometry syllabus should be aligned with the van Hiele levels of geometric thinking as well as the use of appropriate and correct language in geometrical thinking and problem solving.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Utopianism and educational processes in the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/184756 , vital:44269 , xlink:href="https://cjee.lakeheadu.ca/article/view/866"
  • Description: Recent international policy literature on Education for Sustainable Development puts forward utopian concepts of sustainable development and transformed learning as objects for educational thinking and practice. This paper, drawing on three illustrative educational investigations with youth in a South African context, critically examines how we might engage with utopian concepts such as those put forward in the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. It incorporates an engagement with other related utopian concepts such as democracy and social justice, which feature strongly in post-apartheid societal reconstruction in South Africa. The paper argues that if we are to avoid valuable utopian concepts such as democracy, sustainability, and social justice from becoming doxic knowledge, a reflexive realist orientation might best guide our educational engagements with such concepts. Such an approach to utopianism would take account of contextual realities and situated learning processes, and foster a creativity of action that is constructivist in nature, but not relativist.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Valuing preferences for freshwater inflows into five Eastern Cape and Kwazulu-Natal estuaries

  • Authors: Chege, Jedidah
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: Estuarine ecology -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Estuarine ecology -- South Africa -- Kwazulu-Natal , Freshwater ecology -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Estuaries -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Estuaries -- Management -- South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MCom
  • Identifier: vital:8990 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/932 , Estuarine ecology -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Estuarine ecology -- South Africa -- Kwazulu-Natal , Freshwater ecology -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Estuaries -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Estuaries -- Management -- South Africa
  • Description: An estuary, according to the National Water Act of 1998, is a partially or fully enclosed body of water which is open periodically or permanently to the sea within which the sea water can be diluted, to an extent that is measurable with freshwater from inland. Estuaries and the lands surrounding them are places of transition from land to sea, and from freshwater to saltwater. Although influenced by the tides, estuaries are protected from the full force of ocean waves, winds, and storms by the reefs, barrier islands, or fingers of land, mud, or sand that surround them. South Africa’s estuaries are important and irreplaceable habitats, especially for prawns, fish, wading birds and mangroves. They are home to numerous plants and animals that live in water that is partly fresh and partly salty. Estuaries are also homes to growing coastal communities as increasing number of people occupy watersheds. However, estuaries are also threatened. One of the threats is reduced river water inflow. This study applies the contingent valuation method (CVM) to elicit user’s willingness to pay to mitigate the negative impacts of reduced freshwater inflow into selected five Eastern Cape and Kwazulu-Natal estuaries: the Sundays, Gamtoos, Mdloti, Mgeni and Mvoti estuaries. In addition to the contingent valuation method, the travel cost method was used to generate comparative values. The contingent valuation method is a technique to establish the value of a good (or service) that is not bought or sold in an actual market. The CVM establishes the economic value of the good by asking the users of an environmental good to state their willingness to pay (WTP) for a hypothetical project to prevent, or bring about, a change in the current condition of the environmental good. The users’ WTP is aggregated to establish a total willingness to pay (TWTP) for the population of the users of the environmental good.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Valuing preferences for freshwater inflows into selected Western and Southern Cape estuaries

  • Authors: Akoto, William
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: Estuarine ecology -- South Africa , Freshwater ecology -- South Africa , Estuaries -- South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MCom
  • Identifier: vital:8992 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/915 , Estuarine ecology -- South Africa , Freshwater ecology -- South Africa , Estuaries -- South Africa
  • Description: An estuary is the last stage of a river. It is where the river meets the sea. Estuaries are one of the most significant features of the South African coastline. In recent years, South Africa has witnessed an increase in the demand for freshwater for both industrial and domestic purposes. At the same time, there has been a gradual deterioration of river systems and their catchments. To add to this, there has been a gradual reduction in the amount of recorded rainfall, which is the primary source of freshwater for rivers. This has resulted in decreased freshwater inflow into estuaries, a situation which poses a serious threat to the biological functioning of these estuaries and the services rendered to its recreational users. A deterioration of estuary services reduces the yield for subsistence households and their appeal for recration. This study uses the contingent valuation method as its primary methodology to elicit users' willingness-to-pay to reduce the negative impacts of reduced freshwater inflow into selected western and southern Cape estuaries. Eight estuaries were selected for this study; the Breede, Duiwenhoks, Great Berg, Kleinemond West, Mhlathuze, Swartvlei and Olifants estuaries. The contingent valuation (CV) method is widely used for studies of this nature because of its ability to capture active, passive and non-use values. The CV method involves directly asking people how much they would be willing to pay for specific environmental services. In this case, users were asked what they would be willing to pay to sustain freshwater inflows into selected estuaries in order to prevent the negative impacts of reduced inflows. The travel cost method (TCM) was uesed to generate an alternative comparative set of values for the purposes of convergence testing. This is because convergence testing is highly desirable as a validity test for CV estimates.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Van dagboek tot reisjoernaal : 'n literêre ondersoek na intertekstualiteit in Bidsprinkaan (2005) van André P. Brink

  • Authors: Nagel, Amilinda
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: Brink, André Philippus, 1935-2015. Bidsprikaan , Afrikaans fiction -- 21st century -- History and criticism
  • Language: Afrikaans
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:8457 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/1050 , Brink, André Philippus, 1935-2015. Bidsprikaan , Afrikaans fiction -- 21st century -- History and criticism
  • Description: The dissertation offers a reception study followed by a critical analysis of Bidsprinkaan by André P. Brink [Praying Mantis, 2005], as well as a careful study of the relevant historical and anthropological intertexts pertaining to the text. This research adds to a fuller understanding of the history of Cupido Kakkerlak and the missionaries. Brink encoded the novel with certain historical and anthropological codes, well-hidden beneath the surface of his fictional writing, thus achieving a finely balanced interaction between fact and fiction in his novelistic construct. This novelistic amalgam of the imaginative world with the historical and anthropological material, gives multidimensionality to the text which is not visible at a first superficial reading. Failing to recognize the traces to these intertexts, would result in a lesser understanding of the conflicting fields in which the main character is positioned, specifically between indigenous belief and Christianity, as well as between indigenous culture and mythology on the one hand, and western culture on the other hand. The author ‘encodes’ the novel (to use the terminology of Jakobson’s communication model) with these historical and anthropological intertexts, which the reader has to ‘decode’ in order to unlock the novel. One central technique therefore, is that of interwoven fact and fiction. This is a technique employed in most of Brink’s novels, such as ‘n Oomblik in die wind, 1975 [An Instant in the Wind], Houd-den-Bek, 1982 [A chain of voices,], Die eerste lewe van Adamastor, 1986 [The First Life of Adamastor, 1993], Inteendeel, 1993 [On the Contrary, 1993] and Duiwelskloof, 1998 [Devil’s Valley, 1998]. Khoi and San history, culture and identity also figure centrally in these novels. A further aspect of my hypothesis is suggested by the politically correct Afrikaans title, Bidsprinkaan (the common nomenclature for the praying mantis is “hotnotsgot”, which roughly translates as “hottentots’ god”, with obvious racial pejorative suggestion). Brink’s use of “bidsprinkaan” for his title, alerts the reader to contemporary political sensitivity, thus contrasting the society of two centuries ago with the present. The more sophisticated reading process followed here compares colonial and postcolonial South African societies, and attempts to tease out the implied ideological facet embedded in the novel.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Variability analysis of a sample of potential southern calibration sources

Vincent van Gogh : a psychobiographical study

  • Authors: Muller, Heather Ruby
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: Psychology -- Biographical methods
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:9880 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/1293 , Psychology -- Biographical methods
  • Description: The aim of this study is to create a psychobiography of Vincent Van Gogh who was born in 1853 and died 1890. To Van Gogh art was not merely a means for an income, he converted all his aspirations and anguish into his art works. In doing so his art became the first example of a truly personal art, to him art was a deeply lived means of spiritual salvation, which he used as a means to transform himself. It was well known that Van Gogh was unstable and felt misunderstood in life, often asking “What is the use?” . He had a method of fusing what he saw in the world, and what he personally felt, into works of art that were revelations of himself. Van Gogh lived a lonely life, although for the last seventeen years of his life he wrote to his brother, Theo, almost daily. These letters give much insight to the thoughts and inner world of a much misunderstood individual. Most of these letters have been preserved and much else has been written about Van Gogh’s life and art. In our modern day he is deemed one of the most famous artists, yet in his lifetime he only sold one painting. This psychobiography employs a qualitative psychobiographical research method, which aims to describe Van Gogh’s psychological development in terms of Erik Erikson’s psychosocial developmental stages. Van Gogh was chosen as the research subject because of personal interest, his value as a famous artist, and because of the unique way in which he saw and related to the world.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Vocational language learning and how it relates to language policy issues

Vocational language learning and teaching at a South African university: preparing professionals for multilingual contexts

  • Authors: Maseko, Pamela , Kaschula, Russell H
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: Intercultural communication in education -- South Africa , African languages , Cultural awareness , Communication and culture , Multilingualism -- South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: article , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59412 , vital:27597 , doi: 10.5842/38-0-60
  • Description: This paper highlights the methodology that has been used at Rhodes University and other South African universities in implementing vocation-specific African language learning programmes. Essentially, the paper links the curriculum design to the theoretical paradigm of intercultural communication. Intercultural theory is used as a basis to develop vocation-specific courses where language and culture are taught, for example, to second language learners of isiXhosa at Rhodes University. These courses include courses for Pharmacy and Law students. This paper offers a new theoretical paradigm for intercultural language teaching. Furthermore, examples from specific courses are provided in order to illustrate how this theoretical paradigm can be implemented in a practical way. The impact of multilingualism and intercultural communication in the wider legal and healthcare work environment in South Africa is also discussed.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Warthog as an introduced species in the Eastern Cape

  • Authors: Nyafu, Kanyisa
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: Warthog -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MSc
  • Identifier: vital:10701 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/1058 , Warthog -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
  • Description: The introduced common warthog, Phacochoerus africanus, in the Eastern Cape is increasing rapidly both in numbers and distribution, despite attempts by landowners to reduce numbers and exclude warthogs. These control attempts are motivated by concerns over the impacts of warthogs, on vegetation, soil and other animal species. This expansion of warthog populations is paradoxical given that a species of warthog occurred historically in this part of the world, apparently at low densities and was wiped out in the mid-1800s. The question therefore arises as to why warthogs are able to overcome population regulation attempts now, and this becomes an invasive species issue as the species now occurring in the Eastern Cape is in fact an introduced species. The objectives of the study were to investigate the status of warthogs as an introduced invasive species in the Eastern Cape by documenting the rate and direction of population expansion, ecological impacts and possible dietary shift of the introduced species, P. africanus compared to the extinct species P. aethiopicus. The research approach adapted here was to test the hypotheses that, (1) the success of P. africanus in the Eastern Cape reflects dietary differences of the two species based on observations of different dental adaptations, as P. africanus has functional incisors, which are absent in P. aethiopicus. Stable carbon isotope analysis of the tooth enamel was used to determine the diet of the two species. (2) Common warthogs are specialized grazers and will impact on a limited range of grass species, this hypothesis was addressed by describing the diet of common warthogs in one site in the Eastern Cape to identify plant species at risk due to invasion by P. africanus, and microhistological faecal analysis was used. (3) Common warthogs have successfully expanded their range in the Eastern Cape since their introduction and are now showing impact, this was addressed by describing the range of expansion of P. africanus in the Eastern Cape, as well as reviewing landowner perceptions of the impacts of warthogs, this was based on questionnaire surveys distributed in the Sundays and the Fish River valleys. The results of the study showed that there are differences in the diet of Cape warthog P. aethiopicus and common warthog P. africanus. The Cape warthog was largely a grazer (86 percent C4 grasses in their diet), while P. africanus is also a grazer (71 percent of C4 grasses in their diet), but with a larger proportion of browse in their diet. These results support the hypothesis that the presence of functional incisors in the common warthog might provide the common warthog with foraging advantages over the Cape warthog. This might be a contributing factor to the success of this invasive species in the Eastern Cape, and might explain the rapid disappearance of Cape warthogs in the 1800s, which coincided with rapid expansion of herds of domestic grazers. A total of twelve grass species are used by common warthogs and are therefore most vulnerable to impacts of this invasive species. Common warthogs are rapidly expanding their range particularly around the Sundays and the Great Fish River valleys and they are perceived by landowners to have impacts on grass cover, soils and fencing. This spread of warthog in the Eastern Cape exhibits characteristics of an invasive species. In light of the findings of this study, it is therefore important that government authorities and other parties concerned recognize that common warthogs are invasive in the Eastern Cape.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Water-soluble phthalocyanines mediated photodynamic effect on mesothelioma cells

  • Authors: Saydan, Nil , Durmus, Mahmut , Dizge, Meltem G , Yaman, Hanif , Gürek, Ayşe G , Antunes, Edith M , Nyokong, Tebello , Ahsen, Vefa
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/263480 , vital:53631 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1142/S1088424609000863"
  • Description: The new peripherally 2-mercaptopyridine tetrasubstituted zinc phthalocyanine (2) and its quaternized derivative (3) have been synthesized and characterized by elemental analysis, IR, 1H NMR spectroscopy, electronic spectroscopy and mass spectra. The quaternized compound (3) shows excellent solubility in water, which makes it a potential photosensitizer for use in photodynamic therapy (PDT) of cancer. Fluorescence and singlet oxygen quantum yield measurements were conducted on 2-mercaptopyridine appended zinc phthalocyanines in dimethylsulphoxide (DMSO) for both the non-ionic (2) and quaternized (3) derivatives, and in aqueous media for the water-soluble complex 3. General trends are described for fluorescence and singlet oxygen quantum yields of these compounds. In this study, the cells were incubated with a novel water-soluble zinc phthalocyanine derivative (3) and thereafter the cells were illuminated using broad-band incoherent light source of various energy levels. Cytotoxicity of PDT on two pleural malign mesothelioma cell lines was determined by colorimetric proliferation assay. In addition, after PDT treatment, determination of activity matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) were evaluated using gelatine zymography.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

We are all the public

  • Authors: Pithouse, Richard, 1970-
  • Date: 2009
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: vital:6198 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008562
  • Description: [from introduction]: Across the country the most vulnerable people in our society are being subject to brazenly unlawful and often violent action at the hands of the state. Homeless people, refugees, sex workers, street traders and shack dwellers are all being taught, in the most literal sense of the term, to know their place. But state illegality is not only aimed at the segregation of physical space. It is also about ensuring that the people on the margins of society know their political place.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

We need a conversation about development

  • Authors: Pithouse, Richard, 1970-
  • Date: 2009
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: vital:6199 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008563
  • Description: [From the introduction] From the Communist Party across to the corporate spin-doctors and down to the Development Committees in the shack settlements, more or less everybody in South Africa speaks the language of development. In some ways this is a good thing. It indicates a hard won agreement that the realities of inequality in our society are so cruel and perverse that any social project can only be credible if it will ameliorate these divisions and the suffering they cause.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Wealth differentiation in household use and trade in non-timber forest products in South Africa

  • Authors: Paumgarten, Fiona , Shackleton, Charlie M
  • Date: 2009
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: vital:6646 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006892
  • Description: Findings from southern Africa and internationally indicate the local use and trade of NTFPs to be significant however most present a composite picture, failing to account for intra-community socio-economic differences. These differences may have implications for policy and practice related to poverty alleviation and sustainable use. This paper reports on a study in South Africa which explored the relationship between household wealth and the use, procurement and sale of NTFPs in two villages. There was no influence of wealth on the proportion of households using or purchasing most of the NTFPs, or the number used. However, wealthier households bought significantly more resources per household, and poor households (at one village) sold significantly more. These results are discussed within the context of local conditions and poverty alleviation debates.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

What services and supports are needed to enable trauma survivors to rebuild their lives? Implications of a systematic case study of cognitive therapy with a township adolescent girl with PTSD following rape

  • Authors: Payne, Charmaine , Edwards, David J A
  • Date: 2009
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: vital:6278 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008279
  • Description: This systematic clinical case study describes the psychological assessment and treatment with cognitive therapy of Zanele, a Xhosa-speaking adolescent rape survivor with major depressive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A case narrative was developed to document the main features of the therapy process and progress was monitored using scales measuring symptoms of depression and PTSD. The narrative documents the operation in a local context of factors that maintain PTSD that have been identified in the international literature and, with the self-report scales, provides evidence for Zanele’s recovery from PTSD and the transportability to this context of an evidence-based psychological treatment. The narrative also documents the lack of safety for young women and girls in a South African township as well as significant limitations in the professional services available: in this case, Zanele was infected with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases but medical management had not been followed through, and criminal charges against the rapist were dropped, and dropped again even after he had committed another rape on a six-year-old girl. This provides a basis for examining the complementary roles that can be played by psychologists and other professionals in empowering trauma survivors to regain a sense of dignity and control over their lives.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

What's wrong with Walden Two?

  • Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305791 , vital:58612 , xlink:href="https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC96066"
  • Description: Despite being eminently forgettable from the literary point of view, B. F. Skinner's novel, Walden Two, provides us with an excellent opportunity, not so much to show what is wrong with mainstream accounts of free will, as Robert Kane thinks, but rather to explore another key and importantly neglected condition for genuine agency; namely, that properly lived human lives are those that are and must continue to be vulnerable to unforseable reversals, as Aldous Huxley speculates in his Brave New World. In short, I argue, perhaps scandalously, that one of the central conditions for genuine agency is that our lives are and must continue to be, to a large extent, out of our personal control. The promise of too much personal control, not too little (as Kane thinks), is what is wrong with Skinner's social utopia.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

White Guys Can't Beg

  • Authors: Krueger, Anton
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/229796 , vital:49711 , xlink:href="https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47812"
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Who uses the fishery resources in South Africa’s largest impoundment? Characterising subsistence and recreational fishing sectors on Lake Gariep

  • Authors: Ellender, Bruce R , Weyl, Olaf L F , Winker, A Henning
  • Date: 2009
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: vital:6778 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008088
  • Description: The African Union’s prioritisation of inland fisheries as an investment area for poverty alleviation and regional economic development will require the development of management plans. These should be based on sound knowledge of the social dynamics of the resource users. In South Africa the social dynamics of resource users of inland fisheries have never been assessed. The purpose of this study was to assess the human dimensions of the anglers utilising the fishery in Lake Gariep, South Africa’s largest impoundment. The study was based on 357 first-time interviews conducted on the lakeshore between October 2006 and December 2007. Anglers were categorised as recreational (39%) or subsistence (61%) based on their residency, occupation, primary motivation for angling, mode of transport and gear use. Subsistence anglers were local (99%), residing within 10 km of the place where they were interviewed, while recreational anglers included both local resident and non-resident members. The racial composition of anglers was dependent on user group and differed significantly (p ≤ 0.05) from the demographic composition of the regional population. Recreational anglers were predominantly White (≥ 60% of interviews) and Coloured (≥ 25%), while 84% of subsistence anglers were Coloured and 16% Black African. Most recreational anglers had permanent employment or were pensioners while <30% of subsistence anglers were permanently employed. Most recreational users (82%) accessed the lake with their own vehicle while subsistence anglers mainly walked (63%) or used a bicycle (28%). Recreational interviewees either consumed (59%), sold (11%), gave away (10%) or released (20%) some of their catch. Subsistence anglers either ate their catch (53%) and/or sold (41%) their catch. Within the subsistence sector no anglers released fish after capture or gave some of the catch away. We conclude that this inland fishery contributes to the livelihood of the rural poor who use the lake on a subsistence basis and that recreational-angler based tourism may contribute to increased income and employment opportunities through related service industries.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Why ontology matters to reviewing environmental education

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182646 , vital:43850 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620902807550"
  • Description: This paper responds to a keynote paper presented by William Scott at the 2007 World Environmental Education Congress held in Durban, South Africa. The keynote address reviewed 30 years of environmental education research. In this response to William Scott's paper I contemplate the way in which environmental education research may enable reflexivity in modernity and develop knowledge that can serve as cultural mediator between individual and society. Through emphasizing ontology, I consider the reality of global knowledge production in relation to the way in which ontology may influence the reasons how and why we come to do particular forms of research, providing an ontological reference for the ever‐expanding pluralism that characterizes the field of environmental education research. The paper comments on various aspects of the Scott paper, but presents an argument for not only valuing pluralism, methodological experimentation and ‘reaching out’, but for embracing the cosmopolitan implications of wider ontological referents of environmental concerns in environmental education research. The paper argues that research in environmental education ought to become ontologically defensible at both local and global scales.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Why we should avoid the use of the term “Post-Abortion Syndrome” : commentary on Boulind and Edwards (2008)

  • Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
  • Date: 2009
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: vital:6277 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008277
  • Description: Boulind and Edwards (2008) present a case study of Grace, a women suffering, in their words, from post-abortion syndrome (PAS). In this commentary I argue that while Boulind and Edwards’ (2008) report is useful in terms of documenting the therapeutic processes engaged in, they would have been better served in not hanging the distress experienced by Grace on the diagnostic category of post-abortion syndrome. Reasons for this are that: PAS is not a recognised category of diagnosis, despite having been initially proposed in 1981; applying a PTSD framework to abortion is questionable; PAS focuses attention on the abortion itself in isolation from the fact that abortion occurs in the context of severely problematic pregnancies and other important socio-cultural stressors; PAS, in the very manner in which it is formulated, invokes to a very complex politics of the foetus. Boulind and Edwards (2008) are careful in their documentation of the complexities of the case, and thus their use of PAS is unfortunate.
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  • Date Issued: 2009
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