Exploring functionings and conversion factors in biodiversity teacher professional learning communities
- Authors: Tshiningayamwe, Sirkka Alina Nambashun
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2080 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021313
- Description: The study explores the conversion factors, functionings (valued beings and doings), agency and structures in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) for Life Sciences teachers’ biodiversity knowledge. The teachers’ valued beings and doings as well as conversion factors associated with these beings and doings were discussed within the conceptual framework of the capability approach using three PLCs in South Africa. Two PLCs were in the Eastern Cape Province (Grahamstown and Idutywa district), and one PLC was in the Western Cape (Cape Town) province. The PLCs involved in this study were course initiated and were positioned in the Fundisa for Change national teacher education programme. Fundisa for Change is a partnership programme that aims to enhance transformative environmental learning through teacher education. To illuminate constrained capabilities and how and to what extent the Life Sciences teachers’ empirical actions are related to these, the concepts of the capability approach were underlaboured with critical realism’s causal view of human action. A critical realist theory of causation was useful in explaining how the teachers’ valued beings and doings, conversion factors and capability sets can be partly accounted for via an understanding of underlying mechanisms that are generative of events and empirical experience. The study used a qualitative case study research methodology. Interviews, questionnaires, observations (of PLC activities), document reviews (of teachers’ portfolios of evidence, Fundisa for Change implementation plan, evaluation forms and resources materials, and policy documents) and reflection tools were used to collect data. Using the critical realism modes of inference (induction, abduction and retroduction), the data was analysed in two phases. Phase one analysis was primarily inductive and used thick descriptions (mainly in the form of quotes) to present and discuss the teachers’ valued beings and doings and associated conversion factors in the PLCs. This phase of analysis was abductive. The study reported four main functionings valued by teachers: subject content knowledge, teaching practices, assessment practices, and use of teaching and learning support materials. These valued functionings were discussed in light of the beings and doings in the PLCs and the underlying mechanisms related to teachers’ biodiversity teaching. Conversion factors that were associated with the teachers’ valued beings and doings in the PLCs were discussed in line with capability approach’s environmental, social and personal conversion factors. The study found that most of the conversion factors within the PLCs and the Fundisa for Change professional development programme (good facilitation, collaborative learning space, site where PLC activities happened, individual teachers’ capabilities, teaching and learning support materials and policy documents) were enablers to the teachers’ capabilities for biodiversity teaching, and thus enhanced teachers’ knowledge for biodiversity teaching. The study further found that teachers realised some of their achieved functionings in their actual teaching of biodiversity content in the Life Sciences curriculum, and that factors such as lack of resources, large class sizes, learners’ abilities and lack of interest among some teachers were amongst the factors that constrained teachers’ realisation of their achieved functionings in the PLCs. The study therefore revealed that if professional development programmes take account of underlying mechanisms and respond to teachers’ capabilities i.e. their valued functionings for biodiversity teaching in the Life Sciences curriculum, the professional development programmes can be an important conversion factor that enables the expansion of teachers’ capabilities (especially their biodiversity knowledge, pedagogical and assessment practice but also other capabilities) in ways that have the potential to reshape teachers’ classroom practices related to the teaching of biodiversity.
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(In)visibility and the exercise of power: a genealogy of the politics of drag spectacles in a small city in South Africa
- Authors: Marx, Jacqueline Greer
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Female impersonators -- Research -- South Africa Male impersonators -- Research -- South Africa Apartheid -- South Africa -- Psychological aspects
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:3013 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002522
- Description: This study investigates the politics of homosexual visibility in dressing-up, cross-dressing and drag performances that take place in a small city in South Africa over a period of sixty years, beginning in the 1950s and the inception of apartheid policy, through the socio-political changes in the 1990s to the 21st century post-apartheid context. The study draws on Butler’s notion of performative resistance and adopts a Foucauldian genealogy to examine the conditions that make visibility possible and through which particular representations of homosexuality are articulated and read, or remain unread or misread. Information about dressing-up, cross-dressing and drag performance was obtained in interviews, from documentary evidence, and from audio-visual recordings of drag shows and gay and lesbian beauty pageant competitions. Semiotics and a Foucauldian approach to analysing discourse were used to interpret the written, spoken, and visual texts. In this study I argue that the state prohibition of homosexuality during apartheid meant that people could not admit to knowing about it, and this ‘not knowing’ provided a cover for homosexual behaviour in public. At this time, the threat of being identified was associated with police raids on private parties. In the 1990s, homosexual visibility was more viable than it had been in the past. However, the strategies that were adopted to negotiate public visibility at this time were tailored to appease normative sentiments rather than challenge them. I argue that, historically, race and gender have played a role in diminishing and exacerbating homosexual visibility and its politics. Addressing the potential for harm that is associated with homosexual visibility in the 21st century post-apartheid context, this study considers the circumstances in which invisibility is desirable.
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Polymorphism and fighting in male fig wasps
- Authors: Vincent, Stephanie Louise
- Date: 1992
- Subjects: Fig wasp Chalcid wasps -- Morphology Wasps
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:5740 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005426
- Description: Male fig wasps (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea) exhibit a fascinating range of morphology and behaviour. A cluster analysis, based on descriptions of the males of several hundred species, distinguished six major morphological groups. Behaviourial observations suggest that male morphology is related to the levels of inter-male aggression. Three behaviourial groupings were identified. Fighting species generally mated in the fig cavity, pacifist species mated in the females' galls or outside the figs. Mating sites are thus the primary determinants of male morphology and behaviour. In fighting species males were larger than their females, whereas pacifists and aggressors were equal in size or smaller than conspecific females. The large males in fighting fig wasps appear to be a consequence of sexual selection because larger males tended to win fights. Within a species there were no differences in the size of the galls that produced males and females, even in species where sexual size differences were present, suggesting that there is a heritable component to wasp size. No alternative advantages for smaller males were detected. Although fights were sometimes fatal, damage was not always a consequence of fighting behaviour and was recorded in both fighting and pacifist species. Sex ratios in several species were more female biased at higher population densities. Sex ratios of species with 'internally' ovipositing species were heavily female biased, but approached 1:1 in more outbred species with 'externally' ovipositing females. Levels of matedness, among females ranged from 73% to 99%. No evidence for sperm exhaustion was obtained. Species of Philotrypesis with both winged and flightless males were present only in southern African Ficus species from subsections Platyphyllae and Chlamydodorae. No species had only winged males. The flightless males of some Philotrypesis species were themselves polymorphic. In one polymorphic Philotrypesis species, winged males were found to be rare at high densities, but common at low densities. Digitata and religiosa males of Otitesella differed in coloration, size and behaviour. Digitata males were aggressors while religiosa males were fighters. Digitata males escaped from the figs whereas religiosa males remained inside the figs, perhaps because only digitata males were attracted to Light. Proportionally more digitata than religiosa males were present in low density populations and females were found to respond differently to the two morphs.
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