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- 2019| PONTE Journal and Am...This theoretical enquiry was geared towards the formation and advancement of a scholarly discourse in the context of higher education practitioners’ levels of assessment literacy. Despite having recently gained an unprecedented level of currency among academics, assessment literacy, as a higher education professional attribute, remains largely not theorised. The related scholarly thought has mostly evolved around a particular emancipatory discourse. Such thinking is also underpinned by a certain degree of subservience to the conventional notions of professional ethics and morality that subsumes assessment literacy. The emergence of the higher education transformation discourse has also resulted in trepidations felt at individual and institutional levels, further confounding assessment-related professional attributes as a ripple effect. A conceptual consolidation of the idea of assessment as a professional literacy, together with its associated constructs, is therefore mooted here. The practice of assessment-literacy-related professional development subscribing to the notions of critical theory, critical reflection, and 21 st century skills, was hence philosophically substantiated, so that such practices assume a higher degree of legitimacy and credence. Assessment, the single most dominant student experience, as this article concludes, needs significant philosophical reaffirmation. Such a reaffirmation forms the basis for the continuance of progressive discourses, and is hence vital in the context of advancement of assessment literacy as an aspect of higher education professional literacy. Abstract should be between 200-500 words. Font Size 12, Times New Roman.
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- Familiarity with the Covid-19 pandemic-related statistical jargon is a requirement for the layman, who must stay abreast of developments apropos of rate of infection, spread, and mortality rate comprising the pandemic. Such a familiarity, termed statistical literacy (SL) in the related discourse, is increasingly becoming an important aspect of higher education (HE) studentship across universities, internationally. This article offers an extension to the extant theorisations of statistical literacy in the context of Covid-19. Formulation of a solid theoretical rationale for fostering the competency of SL at the HE level is therefore central to this article. The literature offers the notion of critical statistical literacy (CSL) as anchored in a social-justice paradigm. CSL is used here as a starting point for the theoretical extensions proposed in this article. A novel disciplinary idea called “social justice statistics (SJS)” is also introduced. The idea of “critical statistical consciousness (CSC)” as a new proposition for theorising the statistical sensibility of citizens is also put forward. The ways in which CSC rationalises CSL, and foregrounds SJS, are subsequently theorised. CSC, as a broad attribute, quality, or a higher-education trait, is thus positioned in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. These theorisations have implications for the practice of statistics, both at the levels of “producer” and “consumer” of statistical communications that characterise the way in which the pandemic is understood by the layman.
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- 2025| Tanta University, Fa...This empirical study deploys a partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to investigate the effects of Demographic factors such as gender, location and usage duration on Grade-12 mathematics learners‘ receptiveness to Siyavula Educational Application (SEA), a learning managements system (LMS) for basic schools in South Africa. The sample comprises 272 Learners chosen from six randomly selected schools out of a total of 52 high schools were actively using SEA in uMhlathuze circuit of King Cetshwayo District. Three of the sample schools are located in urban areas while the other three are located in rural areas. The study extended the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by conceptualizing perceived accessibility (PA), perceived social influence (PSI), perceived skill readiness (PSR) and computer self-efficiency (CSE), thereby developing a new integrated model (SEATAM) designed to understand the actual use of SEA in the context of learning mathematics by grade 12 learners. Analysis of the results indicates that three pathways (Attitude Towards Technology effect on Actual Usage, Perceived Social Influence effect on Attitude Towards Technology, and Perceived Usefulness effect on Actual Usage) are affected by gender; two pathways (Attitude Towards Technology effect on Actual Usage, and Perceived Usefulness effect on Actual Usage) are affected by the residential location variable; and that hours spent has no significant effect on learners‘ receptiveness to SEA. The implications of the findings were discussed with a recommendation for cogent LMS designs that can conveniently help rural students to be academically competitive with their urban counterparts. This study contributes further insights to the field of new technology usage, user acceptance research, LMS receptiveness, and information systems in its development of the SEATAM model.
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- Climatic variables such as rainfall and temperature have nonlinear and non-stationary characteristics such that analysing them using linear methods inconclusive results are found. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) is a data-adaptive method that is best suitable for data with nonlinear and non-stationary characteristics. The average monthly rainfall and temperature data for a selected region in South Africa are decomposed into intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) at different time scales using EEMD. The IMFs exhibit an inter-annual to inter-decadal variability. The influence of climatic oscillations such as El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) is identified. The influence of temperature variability on rainfall is also shown at different time scales. Based on the results obtained, the EEMD method is found to be suitable to identify different oscillations in the rainfall and temperature data.
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- The South African higher-education sector is currently undergoing a significant phase in its transition. The phase is marked by a sense of uncertainty felt across institutions and entities that make up the sector. This uncertainty, to a large extent, is brought about by the socio-political realities the transition entails. Compounding this situation is the advent of the 4th Industrial Revolution (Hadden), a phenomenon to which the higher-education sector needs a heightened degree of adaptability. The learning environments provided by the higher-education sector are therefore crucial in terms of advancing the cause of positive social change as a realisable educational objective. Against this backdrop, this conceptual article examines the issue of social change as a moral imperative. The purpose is therefore to contribute to the 4IR discourse currently evolving in the context of South African higher education and its social change agenda, with cognitive capitalism as a theoretical lens. Significant scholarly work has been done on the issue of technological advancement and its implications for the social practice of education. However, a concerted effort has not been undertaken to examine the 4IR as an inevitable educational experience with potential to be both materialistically transformative and morally enslaving. The article concludes that, as 4IR unfolds into a magnificent event and starts to control every aspect of human life in general, and education in particular, the moral and ethical affirmations that support the experience of education may run into troubled waters.
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