Browsing by Author "Steyn, Melissa"

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    Acquiring communicative competence for the world of work : a business needs analysis and its impact on curriculum development and delivery
    (2003) Grant, Terri; Steyn, Melissa
    This study, undertaken over a two-year period (2001/2) concerns the appropriate content for teaching communicative competence to contemporary graduates. It comprised two parts, phase one and phase two. Phase one set out to gauge the "fit" between the respective perceptions of Commerce students, staff and graduates in the field. Based on the findings of phase one, phase two then evaluated the extent to which students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) are being prepared for the commercial needs of their profession.
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    "Because the country says they have to change" : an analysis of a diversity intervention in a South African Police Service (SAPS) station
    (2011-12) Faull, Andrew
    This resource will be of value to scholars of transformation in South African organisations. The shift from apartheid to a constitutional democracy in South Africa brought with it a plethora of questions concerning ideas of nationhood, citizenship, and organisational transformation. Integrally caught up in the revolution, the South African Police Service (SAPS) faces transformative challenges on scales far larger than most other organisations in the country. From being the strong arm of the oppressive elite, it has had to restructure and re-articulate its function while simultaneously attempting to maintain law and order. Like many other corporations and organisations, the SAPS has engaged in interventions aimed at aiding the fluidity of this process. This report is an analysis of one such intervention. It attempts to ascertain the extent to which members are changing as a result of particular diversity workshops conducted in a region of the Western Cape. The analysis focuses on members at one particular station.
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    Being Different Together: case studies on diversity interventions in some South African organisations
    (2011) Steyn, Melissa
    There are few contexts where people are not confronted by differences in the workplace, in organisations and public spaces, and as an aspect of the general body politic. This textbook is intended for students and educators of Human Resource Management, Organisational and Management studies. It is also relevant for diversity practitioners based in South African and international contexts.
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    Black Adam: end of the white guy?
    (2010) Steyn, Melissa; McEwen, Haley; Wilhelm, Dominic
    This website features video material that can be used by educators and facilitators to generate discussion of whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa and the post-colonial world in general. While there are infinite ways in which an educator or facilitator could employ the DVD as a resource, below you will find instructions and discussion questions according to our vision for using it as a teaching tool as part of our Diversity Studies Honours and Masters programmes at the University of Cape Town. Ideally, the DVD will be used alongside relevant critical whiteness theory.
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    The carnival road : the eMzantsi Carnival and the promotion of intercultural interaction amongst the communities of Cape Town's southern peninsula
    (2007) Pearce, Sam; Steyn, Melissa; Kelly, Claire
    The power of carnival has long been appreciated and theorised. However, the potential for harnessing that power specifically to facilitate intercultural interaction has not previously been examined. This study considers the application of both carnival theory and intercultural communication theory in the context of the eMzantsi Carnival, an event that was initiated to assist integration between the culturally diverse communities of Cape Town's southern peninsula. Qualitative material gathered during six in-depth interviews with a culturally diverse range of people closely involved in the creation of the inaugural eMzantsi Carnival was examined against the backdrop of the larger eMzantsi Participatory Action Research project.
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    Colour-conscious or colour-blind? : how a group of minority Xhosa learners experience and make sense of the "colour of race" in a predominantly coloured school in Mitchells Plain, Cape Town
    (2009) Henriques, Kaylene; Steyn, Melissa
    This study represents qualitative research on the experiences of inclusion and exclusion of a group of the minority Xhosa learners at a predominantly Coloured secondary school in Mitchells Plain, in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2004 and 2006. The South African Schools Act (1996) and the National Curriculum Policy document (2005), both underpinned by the Constitution of South Africa (1996), envision an education system free of any discrimination. This study uses a social justice framework to focus on how racial construction includes and excludes. It also outlines and discusses the three main models that the education ministry has worked with in its endeavour to achieve its transformative agenda. This research is a longitudinal study conducted in the qualitative paradigm. Data was collected by means of semi-structured individual questionnaires, individual and group informal interviews and participant observation. While the aim of the study was to gain the Xhosa learners' perspectives on the processes of inclusion and exclusion, it includes a response from the principal and five teachers' perspectives, to balance the study and add validity. Permission to conduct this research was obtained from the Western Cape Education Department. The principal of the site gave consent for the research to take place, and written consent was obtained from the teacher participants and the parents of the learner respondents. The data was analysed and presented according to the responses of the participants to the research questions, using grounded theory. The findings revealed that the Xhosa learners at the site still experience marginalisation, fourteen years after democracy, with racism being the most prominent form of injustice. This study recommends that the teachers undergo training in social justice education by the Western Cape Education Department.
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    Community healing in BonteLanga : a space for social healing and reconciliation
    (2008) Ankersen, Imke Kristin; Steyn, Melissa
    The South Africa of today remains a largely divided society in which people of racialised groups often still regard one another with suspicion. This is not only a case of black and white since racially inflected attitudes and perceptions are just as rife amongst segments of the coloured and black community. This holds particularly true where resources are as scarce as in the townships of Cape Town's Cape Flats. The 'Community Healing Project' facilitated by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) uses dialogue and debate as main tools in a community-level reconciliation project between Langa, a black African township, and Bonteheuwel, a coloured township. Using the IJR's intetTention as a case study, this thesis deals with community dialogue as a means of correcting misconceptions and promoting attitudinal change. The aim of the study is to assess the impact of the intervention on some participants and its importance for the prevention of future conflict. The thesis draws on various disciplines to provide a theoretical framework for community dialogue interventions. Participant observation, indepth interviews as well as a critical discourse analysis of two IJR publications are then employed to identify and discuss some of the practical challenges as experienced in the implementation of the project. The analysis of the semi-structured in-depth interviews is centred on four distinct but closely interconnected themes. The analysis of the data suggests that despite some frustrations the community intervention has impacted significantly on participants' lives and the relations between the two communities and the IJR's approach proves meaningful for the participants. Includes bibliographical references (pages 77-87).
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    Consolidated report of DEISA case studies
    (2010) Steyn, Melissa; Kelly, Claire
    DEISA (Diversity and Equity Interventions in South Africa) was a research programme which studied the transformation "industry" in South Africa, exploring issues such as the kinds of interventions. The content of this report has been used as part of the Diversity Studies MPhil Programme at the University of Cape Town. Specifically, it has been used for the course "Diversity Implementation and Practice", a course which introduces students to the strategies used, and challenges faced by, diversity practitioners in South Africa. This report could also be useful for the study of human resource management and industrial sociology in post-apartheid South Africa.
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    Diversity intervention for health educators : a detailed description of diversity workshops with health educators at UCT
    (2011-12) Ismail, Salma; Steyn, Melissa
    This report is of value to scholars of organisational transformation in post-apartheid South African organisations. Also, diversity practitioners who work in the context of higher education will find this report to be of interest. The diversity workshops were held with academic staff who supervise fourth year medical students' research and health promotion projects in the Public and Primary Health Care Department at the University of Cape Town. These include staff who are site facilitators, lecturers and registrars in the Health Science Faculty. Many of them, except for the site facilitators, who mainly supervise the health promotion projects, have had no training in teaching methodology or educational theory. Therefore, the emphasis of the training was on the supervision of the research (Epidemiology) projects. The supervisors were facing complex challenges in establishing new ways of teaching to support the changing learning environment - small group learning in institutional and community settings, and the increasing diversity of the student body. To enable staff to respond to these challenges an Adult Educator from the Centre of Higher Education and Development was asked to run workshops with staff in which diversity is made an explicit presence in the learning process. This report documents the process of the workshop implementation.
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    Diversity Literacy
    (2012) Steyn, Melissa
    This resource provides the entirety of the Diversity Literacy course content. Melissa Steyn's (2010) notion of Critical Diversity Literacy is the conceptual foundation upon which the course is conceptualised. Diversity Literacy can be defined as a set of practices or conceptual tools which allow one to think critically about complex social issues such as identity, power and difference. The course engages many of the central problems which affect processes of transformation in the 'new' South Africa (class, racial, and gender inequality, postcolonial and globalised power relations) in addition to areas of social conflict (Affirmative Action, xenophobia, gender based violence, criminalization of the poor). Divided roughly into two aspects, the course focuses on theories of diversity and contemporary local and global social issues. These are presented in an integrated format, by critically examining and analysing how different authors foreground, think about and represent certain issues. The course is intended for senior level undergraduate students from all faculties. As a course offered to senior students from all disciplinary backgrounds, Diversity Literacy will prepare students to function effectively in diverse social contexts upon their entry into the work environment.
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    From Cradock, With Love: Affective Substantive Post -Apartheid Citizenship for Women of Colour
    (2010) Elder, Emily; Steyn, Melissa
    This qualitative case study examines conceptualizations of post-apartheid democratic citizenship. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in July 2009 with twelve voting age women of colour in the small town of Cradock in the Eastern Cape, it demonstrates how traditional theorizations are inadequate for understanding the substantive citizenship some small town women desire, live, and demand. Though the research design began with a traditional definition that citizenship rests on the knowledge of and ability to engage with claiming rights findings demonstrated the failings, and challenged the sufficiency, of this approach. Listening closely to the voices of the women interviewed revealed the importance of emotion. Further, the ways that emotion emerged from these interviews illuminate an under-examined aspect of substantive citizenship: its affective dimensions. The affective issues that emerged were those of perceived elite indifference to the people, conflicted feelings about the post-apartheid state, racialized and gendered hatred and hate speech, and the women's hopes for an ideal public life based on love and respect. Working from a race-conscious, post-colonial, feminist lens, I argue that while a rights-based approach to citizenship is necessary, it cannot fully encompass the complexities of post-apartheid substantive citizenship, especially for small-town women of colour. Considering affect leads to a more meaningful theory of citizenship, one that must rest on a loving, political ethic.
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    A history of the present : recognizing the complex and shifting nature of racism and resistance in the life narratives of the Khayelitsha Internal Forces
    (2008) Wale, Kim; Steyn, Melissa; Foster, Don
    This research attempts to represent and analyze the life-story narratives of a group of five former anti-apartheid combatants. Narratives were collected from a total often, in-depth, life-history interviews with five former-members of the Khayelitsha Internal Forces. The Internal Forces represent a group of ex-combatants who were operating in the Western Cape as a para-military Self Defense Unit (SOU) during the 1986-1994 period of popular township revolt. The first stage of analysis consists of five re-constructed summaries of each of the participant's narratives with a particular focus on common themes running through the experience of childhood to the experience of joining the internal forces.
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    "I don't see colour" : teacher discourses of integration in a selection of desegregated schools in Cape Town
    (2009) Davies, Claire Thandi; Steyn, Melissa
    This thesis examines the discourses twenty three teachers in desegregated classrooms in Cape Town schools adopt toward integration and various constructions of difference. Discourse analysis reveals how the constructions of language, class and culture are being positioned as signifiers for difference, in place of race. Teachers tend either towards 'colour-consciousness 'or 'colour-blindness' in their discourses of race, and many white teachers demonstrate equality approaches toward different learners. Language as a difference is being used as a 'gate-keeper' to resist integration in schools. The construction of the past is problematic among some teachers, with the tendency to evade impacts the past still has on learners today.
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    Identities at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality and class in a liberalising, democratising South Africa : the reconstitution of 'the Afrikaner woman'
    (2013) Van der Westhuizen, Christi; Steyn, Melissa
    This dissertation explores the extent to which the post-apartheid democratic space in South Africa has allowed for the emergence of new identities for Afrikaans women beyond the normative Afrikaner nationalist volksmoeder [mother of the nation] ideal. The study interrogates Afrikaner subjectivities through the interpretive lens of ordentlikheid - an ethnicised respectability - at the intersections of gender, sexuality, class and race. Framed by the theoretical perspectives of Laclau and Mouffe, Foucault, and Butler, the study employs discourse analysis across three phases: Firstly, an analysis of Sarie women's magazine, as an instrument of a culturally-sanctioned, normative discourse; secondly, an analysis of texts generated in focus group interviews with subjects who self-identify as women, white, heterosexual, middle-class and Afrikaans-speaking; and thirdly, an analysis of texts from individual in-depth interviews.
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    The integration of adolescents of immigrant origin into the German education system : investigating everyday racism and xenophobia : a case study of an integrated public secondary school in Germany
    (2008) Foflonker, Khairoonisa; Steyn, Melissa
    This case study is an ethnographic account of the experiences of immigrant origin adolescents of an integrated public comprehensive school. Field work was conducted from March - April 2007 in Oldenburg, Germany. The aim was to investigate the experiences of everyday racism and xenophobia; and in doing so, give voice to the experiences of marginalized groups within the German education system.
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    Intercultural learning and community mobilisation within eMzantsi
    (2013) Gwatirisa, Ruvimbo Valerie; Steyn, Melissa
    This dissertation is a study of intercultural learning and community mobilisation within eMzantsi, an organisation that seeks to bring together previously segregated communities in the Southern Peninsula, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa, through various artistic activities and programmes. The programmes all culminate in a Carnival, which has occurred annually since 2005. This dissertation seeks to show how, if at all, eMzantsi is serving as a site for intercultural learning within the communities and how, if at all, it is promoting community mobilisation. In order to conduct this study, I interviewed key leaders in the organisation. I also did a document review of the current thinking on intercultural communication research in South Africa, with reference to the Southern Peninsula in the Western Cape. The study deals with the perceptions that key participants in eMzantsi have of the communities they work with and the possibilities they foresee for mobilisation and intercultural learning. This is linked to their perceptions of South African identities. Intercultural communication was an all-encompassing theme that brought to the fore varied dynamics of culture, communication and power that in turn led to the different ways in which eMzantsi staff mobilised community based organisations. These core themes underlie the main findings of the project. The dissertation findings are discussed in several categories, based on the perceptions of black, coloured, and white communities in the Southern Peninsula. These categories include the positionality of the members being interviewed, the concept of intercultural learning, what draws people in to the project, who is excluded from the project, challenges that have been faced over the years, the successes of the programme, the importance of community support, and lastly, ideas and recommendations for the project with a special focus on intercultural learning. These different aspects of the dissertation reveal that there are differing dynamics in intercultural acceptance and engagement within the communities of the Southern Peninsula. The research also shows that there are different ways of learning culture, and that culture in itself, is not static.
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    An investigation into the impact of diversity training on a community service organisation
    (2006) Achen, Harriet; Steyn, Melissa
    The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of diversity training in a Community Service Organisation in Cape Town. The impact of such training is gauged / measured by monitoring staff's perceptions towards training. A strategic sample of 31 staff was chosen, ranging across different race groups (White, Coloured, Indian and African), professional ranks (senior managers, middle managers and staff) and genders. The sample was taken exclusively from one section in the finance department (Revenue). The research methodology was qualitative, in that in-depth interviews, observation and document study was used. With the aid ofcomputer assisted software for qualitative data analysis (Nvivo), the analysis was conducted in three phases. The first phase entailed initial coding, the second phase. required focused coding and the final phase involved analytical writing. The results of this study indicated that participants had mixed perceptions about the training they had received. Many felt that the training had been an eye opener, that it had created acceptance amongst staff and that it had enlightened them about diversity issues. A good number of the participants felt that the training had its own weaknessesand that there were no visible results from the training. More specifically, the findings indicated that a major constraint of the training was, amongst others, the lack of follow up and feedback.From the responses of the participants, the researcher concluded while largely ambivalent, that the training had made a positive impact on the organisation to some extent and the majority of staff interviewed did seem to support the training and were hopeful that it would continue to bring about positive changes in the organisation. However, these findings were only applicable to the department and section of the organisation where the study was done; further research would need to be done on the other departments and sections to determine their responses. In general, the findings of this study showed no specific pattern / similarities with previous studies, althoughthere were some similarities, notably of gender playing a role in influencing the training. The main issues in the recommendations relate to the need for further research on the impact of diversity training in Comm Service.
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    Like a doll made of old cloth : a critical analysis of the influence of the radio programme Khalamdumbadumbane on Swazi discourses of femininity
    (2001) Hleta-Nkambule, Nonhlanhla; Steyn, Melissa
    This project concerns the way the radio programme "Khalamdumbadumbane" functions as non-formal education and influences discourses of femininity in Swaziland. I have engaged in critical research in an attempt to show how the media (more specifically radio in this context) influence women's perceptions of themselves in a way which sustains the inequality between sexes. I also show how the programme "Khalamdumbadumbane" as a popular and topical programme has become a social institution, exerting its hidden power to ensure· the dominance of males within the Swazi society. Women's experiences have been recorded in transcribed interviews and these have been discussed and analysed for common themes. The following themes are discussed: Power relations, Cultural identity and the Discourse of rights. The first two themes have been further divided into subthemes: Imbalance I inequality between the sexes, patriarchal family system, disregard for women, abusive relationships, Swazi values versus Western values and the religious discourse. From interviews with the host of the radio programme in question and with Swazi women, I show how this programme has influenced women's self perceptions through their acceptance of the problem solving as 'help' and not as ideological propaganda for patriarchy. Bibliography: pages 99-108.
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    "Like that statue at Jammie stairs" : some student perceptions and experiences of institutional culture at the University of Cape Town in 1999
    (2011-12) Steyn, Melissa; Van Zyl, Mikki
    This report is of value to those studying institutional culture in post-apartheid South Africa, and dynamics of transformation at South African institutions of higher learning. In this project, students spoke out about their experiences at UCT. In particular they describe how they perceived the university and the other students, and how their experiences impacted upon their academic performance and general well-being while attending UCT. In the study, the authors consulted a variety of policy documents and publicity materials from UCT. The authors then held 19 workshops with focus groups of students. Five were mixed while fourteen were purposive in that certain designated students, such as black student,s foreign students, women, etc. were targeted. The initiator of the study conducted ten of the focus groups, but for the others peer facilitators were used. From the findings it is clear that in students' experiences 'whiteness' still largely characterises the institutional culture. Many black students and some white students described incidents of overt racism against black academic staff and students. This report documents suggestions made by students, and also puts forward some recommendations. It is hoped that these will be received in the spirit in which the research was undertaken, namely to be helpful to UCT as it continues along the road of transformation. This report provides a forum in which diverse students voices are collated and reflected, on behalf of the students and committed educators, and for the continuance of outstanding education at UCT.
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    Lives in the informal art trade : an ethnographic case study of Maputo, Mozambique
    (2007) Southgate, Colin Scott; Steyn, Melissa
    This minor dissertation investigates the lives and businesses of informal artists and vendors in Maputo, Mozambique. The research points to a swell in numbers of artisans in Maputo over the past dozen years. Tourism has developed in Mozambique; expanding the clientele for Maputo's informal artisans. The increase of artisans has had a few negative effects including a drop in prices due to competition and a compromise in artistic quality. The seven interviewees explain the reality of the informal art business as one of subsistence.