Collection of UNISA electronic theses and dissertations. https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/506 2026-06-16T18:45:19Z 2026-06-16T18:45:19Z Moagi, Donald https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/32635 2026-06-16T13:31:14Z 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Exploring inclusive pedagogical practices within school curriculum: a case study of Motupa circuit, Limpopo province Moagi, Donald The core fundamentals of teaching and learning are attributed to the practice of various teaching strategies and skills. These skills are a pre-requisite for the strategies for the successful implementation of inclusive pedagogical practices to accommodate all learners in teaching and learning. This study employed Archer’s social realist theory as a theoretical framework to underpin the exploration of inclusive pedagogies within the school curriculum. A qualitative approach was used for this study with an interpretive research paradigm and a case study design. Data for this study was collected through semi-structured individual interviews, structured observations and document analysis. The study population consisted of teachers from secondary schools in the Motupa Circuit. Purposive sampling was used to select seven schools and fourteen teachers representing the Motupa circuits. Data from the study was analysed through a thematic approach. The study’s findings reveal that teachers have various misconceptions about the concept of inclusive pedagogy. In addition, the study revealed that teachers have the will to use various teaching strategies to accommodate learners, despite the challenges they face due to a lack of in-service training and insufficient resources aligned with inclusive pedagogies, among others. The study recommends a collaborative framework for the practice of inclusive pedagogy where teachers, parents, learners, School-Based Support Teams, the Department of Basic Education and curriculum planners should reconfigure and incorporate to work together to enhance the practice of inclusive pedagogy.

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z Letsoalo, Victor Mogale https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/32634 2026-06-16T12:52:06Z 2025-02-25T00:00:00Z

Discrepancies between recruitment, selection process and personality assessment as contributors to corruption in policing in South Africa Letsoalo, Victor Mogale This study aimed to uncover psychological factors that contribute to corruption in the South African Police Service (SAPS). Corruption has been one of the challenges faced by the democratic government of the Republic of South Africa and it continues to be a threat to the development and security of the country. To investigate causes of corruption in policing, the study focused on discrepancies between the recruitment selection process and ethical behaviour among three groups of police officials. Employing a qualitative research design, the study addressed emerging questions, procedures, and data collected from research participants in their work environments. Participants were identified through purposive sampling, and they were classified into three groups, namely: newly recruited trainees of the SAPS with a six-month service record, permanent members with exemplary ethical behaviour and former members or serving members who were previously charged for contravening the regulations or charged for corruption. The study found that personality factors that are assessed during recruitment and selection fail to identify a personality type or character disposition that is “corruption-prone” or “corruptible”. Interviews with officials with a history of corruption revealed self-reports of behaviour consistent with what psychopathology literature terms the “antisocial personality” type, which recruitment and selection processes failed to identify. These participants, like all the members of the SAPS, went through psychological assessments and were recommended for enlistment in the SAPS. The findings further revealed organisational cultural factors that contribute to discontent among police officers, which could be linked to corrupt behaviour. Several organisational factors namely, lack of a cohesive Promotion Policy, inconsistent application of disciplinary procedures, lack of oversight over members in senior leadership creating a perception of “untouchability” of senior leadership by the rank-and-file officers, lack of ethical and principled leadership and lack of consequence management were found to cause discontent among members of the SAPS which could influence decisions to engage in corrupt behaviour. The golden thread in the reports from the participants over the six months during which data was gathered is that the SAPS is a "Personality Cult" centred around top officers. Senior officers possess such unchecked authority that they can act wantonly within the organisation, thus undermining official governance policies. Senior officers have arrogated themselves absolute and unbridled authority to hire, promote, and terminate at whim without any consequences. Consequently, the corruption exhibited by members in the public sphere may represent a form of "rebellion" against an organisation that, through the caprice of senior leadership, has failed to gain the respect of rank-and-file members.

2025-02-25T00:00:00Z Du Plooy, Johan Diederick https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/32633 2026-06-16T12:41:03Z 2026-01-31T00:00:00Z

Assessing the application of intelligence-led investigations into the illicit tobacco industry in South Africa Du Plooy, Johan Diederick This study assesses the application of intelligence-led investigations (ILIs) into the Illicit Tobacco Trade (ITT) in South Africa. This study adopted a qualitative, constructivist multiple case study design, employing purposive sampling and in‑depth semi‑structured interviews with multi-sectoral experts, with data analysed thematically to generate contextually grounded insights into intelligence‑led investigations in South Africa’s illicit tobacco trade. Data was gathered through in-depth interviews with participants from diverse national and international sectors, including law enforcement, private security, corporate intelligence, and financial intelligence, focusing on their engagement with ILIs in the context of South Africa’s ITT. The findings reveal notable disparities in ILI maturity between private-sector entities and public-sector bodies, inconsistent policy awareness, fragmented agency roles, poor coordination, uneven analytical standards, and implementation inefficiencies that impede ILI's potential to counter ITT in South Africa. In response, this study proposes an Intelligence-Led Investigation Maturity Assessment and Implementation Model (ILI-MAIM) for combating ITT in South Africa. This contemporary model addresses the absence of integrative, context-sensitive enforcement models for ITT by synthesising institutional coordination, intelligence-led approaches and capacity constraints into a novel, adaptable framework that enhances coherence and operational alignment in fragmented enforcement environments on combating ITT in South Africa. Abstract in English, IsiZulu and Sepedi

2026-01-31T00:00:00Z Olivier, Christiaan https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/32632 2026-06-16T12:27:20Z 2026-02-01T00:00:00Z

A study of synchronisation in the classical phase-oscillator model of an electrical power grid Olivier, Christiaan In this work, we study synchronisation in power grids using a classical phase oscillator model that can be thought of as a variant of the famous Kuramoto model for coupled phase oscillators. In the recent literature, the connection between a Kuramoto-like model and power grids has been made by Filatrella, Nielsen and Pedersen. Here, we will show that this connection goes much further back, to the so-called Classical Model of power grids that was introduced in 1951 by the work of Boast and Rector. We also observe that in 2018, Arinushkin and Anishchenko developed a Kuramotolike model for power grids in which, for the first time, there appear non-negligible phase-lag parameters as a result of the Kron reduced approximation. Although a single phase-lag (or frustration) parameter had been introduced much earlier in the so-called Kuramoto-Sakaguchi model (from 1986), Arinushkin and Anishchenko were the first to introduce multiple phase-lag parameters into a Kuromoto-like model for power grids. Unfortunately, our attempts to replicate their results soon revealed that they used a too-large, fixed time step for the numerical time integration of their equations, and that this led them to make several erroneous conclusions about the grid which they modelled. Therefore, in Chapter 3, we give a detailed critique of the 2018 paper by Arinushkin and Anishchenko. Then, in a follow-up work by Arinushkin and Vadivasova, from 2021, we observe that use was made of nonlinear damping to control the synchronicity of the Kron reduced grid. In this case, we were able to reproduce all the results of Arinushkin and Vadivasova. We were able to develop a more efficient proportional control scheme, based on the global order parameter. Our proposed control scheme and its results were presented at the 2023 International Conference on Electrical, Computer, and Energy Technologies (ICECET). The resulting conference proceeding is included here, in slightly revised form, as Chapter 4. Finally, in Chapter 5, we provide a brief summary of our main findings and some suggestions for future work.

2026-02-01T00:00:00Z