scholarly journals Teaching Astronomy at the University of South Africa

1998 ◽  
Vol 162 ◽  
pp. 54-59
Author(s):  
W.F. Wargau ◽  
B. Cunow ◽  
C.J.H. Schutte

The University of South Africa celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Over this period it grew, becoming one of the largest tertiary distance education institutions and the largest university on the African continent.South Africa always had a mixed racial population with each group having its own culture. This difference between people is further aggravated by differences in the level of “westernisation”. Furthermore, South Africa also suffers from an extreme urbanisation problem where on the one hand we find modern cities and on the other tribal groups. All these factors led to a differentiation of the population into a first world and third world component.

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 185
Author(s):  
Hubert Kotarski

The issue of sustainable development combined with the quality of life of the inhabitants is one of the key problems of modern cities. Poland and Ukraine are two closest neighbours. Rzeszow and Lviv are both university cities, which are also partner cities. The main aim of the research was to learn the opinions of students of the University of Rzeszow and the Ivan Franko University of Lviv on selected problems related to the quality of life in Rzeszow and Lviv, as well as personal and professional aspirations of students in Poland and the Ukraine. The purpose of the study was both cognitive and practical, i.e. on the one hand it focused on obtaining information on specific topics related to various aspects of the quality of life in the city and the aspirations of young people, and on the other hand it attempted at obtaining information that could be useful for both university and city authorities in the context of exploiting the significant potential of young people living in these cities.Keywords: sustainable development, quality of life, students, Poland, Ukraine


Author(s):  
Julian Müller ◽  
Sheila Trahar

In this article, the two authors, academics from different contexts and both aware of their whiteness, focus on their own vulnerable selves. The aim is to reflect on their specific agency in this project and to create awareness for subjectivity in research. What are the challenges of two white academics – the one from a first world country with a baggage of colonialism, and the other from South Africa with the apartheid baggage? On the one hand, they are not ‘vulnerable’ selves but indeed very privileged selves. On the other hand, there is an awareness of the fact that this very privilege puts researchers in a vulnerable situation, especially in doing research on Ubuntu in an African context.


Author(s):  
Antje Daniel

Universities in South Africa are a microcosm of society and thus offer grounds for criticism. In 2015, the Rhodes Must Fall student movement emerged, which demanded decolonization. This movement became one of the most important social movements in post-apartheid South Africa. While the student movement was formed to protest against the university, students created a space for transformative learning within the frame of the university. This article examines the ambivalence of the university: on the one hand, as a target of criticism and as a space for experimentation and reflection on society and societal change; and, on the other hand, as a space for emerging collective processes of transformative learning which created alternative knowledge, for instance in respect of decolonization and thus also discrimination, racism and marginalization.


2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Luc Vandeweyer

In deze bronnenpublicatie ontleedt Luc Vandeweyer de parlementaire loopbaan van de geneesheer-politicus Alfons Van de Perre: hoe hij in 1912 feitelijk  tegen wil en dank  volksvertegenwoordiger werd, zich anderzijds blijkbaar naar behoren kweet van zijn taak en tijdens de eerste verkiezingen na de Eerste Wereldoorlog (1919) zijn mandaat hernieuwd zag maar meteen daarop ontslag nam. Volgens de bekende historiografische lezing was de abdicatie van de progressieve politicus een daad van zelfverloochening die enerzijds werd ingegeven door gezondheidsmotieven en  anderzijds was geïnspireerd door de wil om de eenheid binnen de katholieke partij te herstellen. De auteur komt op basis van nieuw en onontgonnen bronnenmateriaal tot de vaststelling dat Van de Perres spontane beslissing tot ontslag in de eerste plaats een strategische keuze was: in het parlement, waar hij zich overigens niet erg in zijn schik voelde, kon hij minder invloed uitoefenen op de Vlaamse beweging dan via de talrijke engagementen waarvoor hij voortaan de handen vrij had. Eén ervan was die van bestuurder én publicist bij het dagblad De Standaard.________Chronicle of the announcement of a resignation. Two remaekable letters by Alfons Van de Perre concerning his resignation as a Member of Parliament in 1919In this source publication Luc Vandeweyer analyses the parliamentary career of the physician-politician Alfons Van de Perre and he describes how Van de Perre became a Member of Parliament in 1912 actually against the grain, yet how he apparently did a good job carrying out his duties. During the first elections after the First World War (1919) Van de Perre found that his mandate was renewed, but he handed in his resignation immediately afterwards. According to the familiar historiographical interpretation the abdication of the progressive politician was an act of self-denial, which was prompted on the one hand by health reasons and on the other hand inspired by the will to restore unity within the Catholic political party. On the basis of new and so far unexplored source material the author concludes that the spontaneous decision by Van de Perres to hand in his resignation was above all a strategic choice: in the Parliament, which he did not much enjoy anyway, he could exert less influence on the Flemish movement than via his numerous commitments, which he was now free to take on. One of these was the post of director as well as political commentator of the newspaper De Standaard.


1878 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 633-671 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Macfarlane

The experiments to which I shall refer were carried out in the physical laboratory of the University during the late summer session. I was ably assisted in conducting the experiments by three students of the laboratory,—Messrs H. A. Salvesen, G. M. Connor, and D. E. Stewart. The method which was used of measuring the difference of potential required to produce a disruptive discharge of electricity under given conditions, is that described in a paper communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1876 in the names of Mr J. A. Paton, M. A., and myself, and was suggested to me by Professor Tait as a means of attacking the experimental problems mentioned below.The above sketch which I took of the apparatus in situ may facilitate tha description of the method. The receiver of an air-pump, having a rod capable of being moved air-tight up and down through the neck, was attached to one of the conductors of a Holtz machine in such a manner that the conductor of the machine and the rod formed one conducting system. Projecting from the bottom of the receiver was a short metallic rod, forming one conductor with the metallic parts of the air-pump, and by means of a chain with the uninsulated conductor of the Holtz machine. Brass balls and discs of various sizes were made to order, capable of being screwed on to the ends of the rods. On the table, and at a distance of about six feet from the receiver, was a stand supporting two insulated brass balls, the one fixed, the other having one degree of freedom, viz., of moving in a straight line in the plane of the table. The fixed insulated ball A was made one conductor with the insulated conductor of the Holtz and the rod of the receiver, by means of a copper wire insulated with gutta percha, having one end stuck firmly into a hole in the collar of the receiver, and having the other fitted in between the glass stem and the hollow in the ball, by which it fitted on to the stem tightly. A thin wire similarly fitted in between the ball B and its insulating stem connected the ball with the insulated half ring of a divided ring reflecting electrometer.


2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-47
Author(s):  
Claire Warden

The multi-spatial landscape of the North-West of England (Manchester–Salford and the surrounding area) provides the setting for Walter Greenwood's 1934 play Love on the Dole. Both the urban industrialized cityscape and the rural countryside that surrounds it are vital framing devices for the narrative – these spaces not simply acting as backdrops but taking on character roles. In this article Claire Warden reads the play's presentation of the North through the concept of landscape theatre, on the one hand, and Raymond Williams's city–country dialogism on the other, claiming that Love on the Dole is imbued with the revolutionary possibility that defines the very landscape in which it is set. From claustrophobic working-class kitchen to the open fields of Derbyshire, Love on the Dole has a sense of spatial ambition in which Greenwood regards all landscapes as tainted by the industrial world while maintaining their capacity to function independently. Ugliness and beauty, capitalist hegemony and socialistic hopefulness reside simultaneously in this important under-researched example of twentieth-century British theatre, thereby reflecting the ambivalent, shifting landscape of the North and producing a play that cannot be easily defined artistically or politically. Claire Warden is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Lincoln. Her work focuses on peripheral British performances in the early to mid-twentieth century. She is the author of British Avant-Garde Theatre (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012) and is currently writing Modernist and Avant-Garde Performance: an Introduction for Edinburgh University Press, to be published in 2014.


Finisterra ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (72) ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Pinto Correia ◽  
António Cancela Abreu ◽  
Rosário Oliveira

IDENTIFICATION AND CHARACTERISATION OF LANDSCAPE IN PORTUGAL –This paper presents the concepts and methodology used in the study «Identification and characterisation of landscape in continental Portugal» undertaken by theDepartment of Landscape and Biophysical Planning of the University of Evora for the General Directorate for Spatial Planning and Urban Development (DGOT-DU) at the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, between 1999 and 2001. On the one hand, the methodological approach developed is based on the methodologies used recently for the same purpose in different European countries and on the way landscape has been considered in various European documents in the last years. On the other hand, it is also based on the team’s concern to approach the landscape as an holistic entity, and to examine its various components: ecological, cultural, socio-economic and sensorial. The set aim has been to define landscape units and to characterize these units in relation to the present landscape and the recorded trends, related problems and possibilities. Thus, the cartography relative to selected variables has been combined and related to satellite images and field surveys. The results of cross-referencing all this information has than been combined with expert examination of landscape coherence and character within each unit. The assessment was completed after careful bibliographic research and consultation with regional experts. The result is a flexible approach that combines objective analysis with a more subjective assessment, which the team considered fundamental for a true understanding of landscape.


THE BULLETIN ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (390) ◽  
pp. 44-49
Author(s):  
R. Aetdinova ◽  
I. Maslova ◽  
Sh. Niyazbekova ◽  
O. Balabanova ◽  
Zh. Zhakiyanova ◽  
...  

The article justifies for the need to identify and to keep track, in practice, of different groups of risks inherent in educational institutions under current conditions of pandemic and post-pandemic transformation of education under the influence of modern world uncertainty. Transformation of education functions in the epoch of digital economy changes the content and types of risks concomitant to the activities carried out by schools. Schools belong to the most conservative types of organizations. However, the environment in which schools operate is constantly changing. An educational institution, as any enterprise, has to engage in the activity aimed at risk management. Manifestation of the risk is, on the one hand, fraught with threats and damage, on the other hand, with opportunities. Assessment of possible threats and risks allows timely projection of undesirable results, creation of a system for situational response to unforeseen circumstances and, in the final analysis, formulation of a strategy for development of the university which would allow achievement of modern high quality education, its fundamentality and conformity to important topical requirements of the personality, society and state. Causes of developing risks characteristic of educational institutions are disclosed. External and internal risks characteristic of educational institutions, sources generating them and the importance of managing them are analyzed. The analysis of risks made reveals multi-varied threats and opportunities in the external and internal envi-ronment of the institution and their ability to have a significant effect on educational, organizational and financial activities of the schools.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Rosoux ◽  
Laurence van Ypersele

This article examines the gradual deconstruction of the Belgian national identity. Is it possible to speak of a de facto differentiation or even ‘federalization’ of the so-called ‘national past’ in Belgium? How do Belgians choose to remember and forget this past? To contribute to an understanding of these issues, the article considers two very different episodes of Belgian history, namely the First World War and the colonization of the Congo. On the one hand, the memory of the First World War appears to provide the template for memory conflicts in Belgium, and thus informs the memories of other tragedies such as the Second World War. On the other hand, the memory of the colonial past remains much more consensual – providing a more nuanced picture of competing views on the past. Beyond the differences between the ways in which these episodes are officially portrayed, the same fundamental trend may be observed: the gradual fragmentation of a supposedly smooth and reliable national version of history.


Author(s):  
Stephan F. De Beer

This article reflects on the unfinished task of liberation – as expressed in issues of land – and drawing from the work of Franz Fanon and the Durban-based social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. It locates its reflections in four specific sites of struggle in the City of Tshwane, and against the backdrop of the mission statement of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria, as well as the Capital Cities Research Project based in the same university. Reflecting on the ‘living death’ of millions of landless people on the one hand, and the privatisation of liberation on the other, it argues that a liberating praxis of engagement remains a necessity in order to break the violent silences that perpetuate exclusion.


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