Postgraduate students in South Africa and other parts of the world, particularly in developing nations struggle to complete the research component of their studies. According to the National Development Plan ( 2013) it has become a requirement for South African institutions to play a pivotal role in knowledge production so as to transform South Africa from a resource-based economy towards a knowledge-based economy. In pursuit of meeting this requirement and further to increase subsidy from the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), South African institutions of higher learning have been on the drive for recruiting postgraduate students en masse. One of the main problems facing South African institutions is that the number of students enrolled does not correspond to those who graduate at the end of the postgraduate programme study period. This study is a systematic review of literature on challenges in postgraduate supervision and further proposes a possible solution. Five South African institutions of higher learning’s postgraduate throughput data is carefully studied and substantiated by previous research on postgraduate supervision challenges on these particular institutions. Study findings present challenges related to research capacity development and burden of supervision at these institutions. Collaborative methods of supervision such as the C.O.S.T.A model are hereby proposed as possible solutions to the current throughput problem in South Africa.
Lack of proper messaging at an outbreak of a novel disease causes panic with more serious damaging impacts on livelihoods, social-fabric of communities, economic landscapes, and political stability. There have been notable high levels of panic in South Africa and the globe with regard to the outbreak of COVID-19. The current lack of knowledge and poor communication has been attributed as a precursor to the skyrocketing global panic (Freimuth, Linnan, Potter, 2000). Fuelling this panic is the rate at which the incidence of new infections is increasing in countries outside of China, with Italy and Iran leading on a number of new infections and death cases.A Content Analysis method was used to analyze articles, media clips and social network reactions to the outbreak of COVID-19 in South Africa on the 6th of March 2020. The key to the investigation was to understand how authorities are communicating with the public on matters of national concern – regarding how they are prepared to deal and handle the outbreak. This study further compares the South African response to China at the outbreak of SARS in 2003. Codes were generated in targeted media and scientific sources and themes were generated and presented.Findings indicate that the general public does not have faith in government authorities, due to a lack of communication. It is perceived that lack of communication is indicative of a lack of preparedness. Contrary to evident panic in South Africa, scientific data indicates that there is no need to panic as a result of the outbreak of COVID-19. Further, a study from the French Institute for Health and Medical Research in 2020 on the preparedness of African countries to handle COVID-19 indicates that South Africa is one of the better-equipped countries in Africa to detect and handle any incidence of COVID-19. The study recommends that authorities and policy-makers use communications to educate the public far earlier at the onset of epidemic outbreaks, regardless of where it happens as the air-traffic connects global countries, resulting in the potential for disease importation.
The C.O.S.T.A. Research Framework is a tool that was developed to assist students and novice researchers to navigate postgraduate studies with clarity and understanding. The emphasis of the method is on a five step approach comprising of (1) Concepts in research that are foundational to research language; (2) Objective of research which is being undertaken – likened to development of protocol or proposal; (3) Situation, emphasizing pre-comprehension of the current debate, likened to literature review; (4) Tact, which deals with methodological approaches to formulation of conclusions; (5) Assessment of output – ability to make judgments on trajectory followed and study results. This current study focused on the use of thematic analysis by students and novice researchers in completion of their research reports and scientific writings, which essentially forms part of Stage 4 of the C.O.S.T.A Framework. The author used a systematic mapping review to select units of analysis for the sole purpose of demonstrating gaps and inconsistencies on the application of the concept of thematic analysis. In most research reports, students demonstrate clear articulation of methods in coding and themes generation, however, evidence of these codes and how themes were generated was not reflected on most of reports reviewed. This situation seems to be a prevalent in most research reports, which detailed explication of interpretation of participant’s comments during interviews taking the prominent feature of presentation of results/findings section. It is for this reason that the C.O.S.T.A. Research Framework (Costak, 2019) is proposed as one of the methods for teaching students about different methods of qualitative data analysis in general and thematic analysis in particular.
The outbreak of COVID-19 in South Africa has brought about many socio-economic challenges, affecting everyone in all sectors of society. As the government proactively introduced steps to deal with the progression of the COVID-19 in South Africa, some of these measures included a total country lock-down, introduced on the 26th of March 2020. One of the most severely impacted sectors of society was employees from different organizations. Such impacts included confusion, fear of contracting the virus, and mixed emotions in relation to their income including survival of their organizations during the lockdown. This study used a mixed-methods approach to understand employees’ experiences during the period of lockdown in South Africa. The study design used a pragmatic approach, employing an explorative inductive sequential logical approach whereby phenomenology was used as a method of inquiry, followed by survey research which was constructed out of data from the qualitative dimension of the study. Findings from the qualitative study were triangulated with findings from the quantitative dimension. Results from both dimensions seemed very plausibly similar, indicating the need for attention of employee’s mental health emanating from COVID-19 phenomena and subsequent lockdown in South Africa. Provision of safe working environments, the establishment of peer educators, strengthening of Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) services, and corporate health initiatives by employers were recommended as proactive initiatives to assist and enhance the wellbeing of employees during and post COVID-19.
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