Staff Thesis (Built Environment)

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    Investigating the processes of socialisation in architectural education through experiences in East Africa
    (2015) Olweny, Mark R. O.
    This thesis investigates socialisation in architectural education in East Africa. Socialisation forms an integral part of professional education, through which students acquire these undocumented, but important aspects of the profession, building a cultural ethos undocumented in the formal curriculum. Socialisation was thus open to different readings, serving to perpetuate myths, and ‘established norms’, taking on added significance in view of the many idiosyncrasies embedded within architectural education. Undertaken as an ethnographic study, this research investigated elements of socialisation within established architecture schools across East Africa. Framed in the context of a learnscape of architectural education, activities that influence, and are influenced by occurrences within the educational programmes are reviewed. The study made use of a mixed method approach, incorporating: focus group discussions; published material and other related documentation from the schools; validation reports; and participant observations. This addressed the contextual diversity presented by the setting of East Africa, with the study revealing socialisation as an important aspect of the educational process, encompassing experiences from the pre-architecture expectations, student and faculty interactions, and more significant, influences on attitudes and behaviour within architectural education affecting teaching and learning. A convergent model of socialisation, provides a visualisation of socialisation closer to its the non-linear process it is: as a convergence of ideas and ideals. This serves as the basis to appreciate the elements of socialisation across the learnscape of architectural education, strongly influenced by its socio-cultural context, with evident ramifications to the educational process, as well as on the society and community served by the profession. The findings in the context of East Africa do present an opportunity to re-look at a contextual model, incorporated in a revised 3P model, presenting a conceptualisation of socialisation, contributed through an appreciation of the informal curriculum in the context of architectural education in East Africa.
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    The relationship between pre-university schooling and university grades
    (University of Twente, The Netherlands, 2014) Nshemereirwe, Connie V.
    Universities are concerned with selecting students with the highest potential for successfully pursuing university education. For universities in Uganda, this potential is, apparently, sufficiently indicated by student performance in the national examinations at the end of the advanced level (A’Level) of secondary school. However, performance trends at A’Level indicate that there is a wide variation in performance between the different subjects offered at A’Level, as well as between different schools. Further, since the national examinations represent such high stakes, there are reports of a heavy emphasis on teaching and learning strategies aimed at maximising pass rates, which is further accompanied by a tendency to choose the A’Level subjects that consistently exhibit high pass rates. Since university selection depends almost solely on scores in the A’Level national examinations, it was of interest to investigate the extent to which these university entry scores predicted university grades after taking account of the various school and student level factors present in the pre-university schooling system. The main student level variables included in the study were student age and socioeconomic status (SES), while school level variables concerned ownership (public vs. private), gender balance (single-sex vs. coeducational), whether or not schools provided boarding facilities, and finally whether or not they run the Universal Secondary Education programme (USE). The USE is a government funded programme that provides tuition free education to students, and can be accessed at selected public and private secondary schools. The majority of university students in Uganda is enrolled at the country’s 5 public universities, with the largest public university accounting for about 30% of university enrolments nationwide. In the last 20 years, more than 30 private universities have also been established but these boast much lower enrolments, only accounting for 15% of total university enrolment (National Council for Higher Education, NCHE, 2013). Selection requirements at public and private universities are similar, but while selection into private universities is carried out at university level, selection into public universities is carried out jointly by a central body at the ministry of education. This is partly to facilitate the award of about 3,000 merit-based state sponsored scholarships which are only available to students enrolled at public universities. The availability of state scholarships at public universities has made entry highly competitive. Further, since the majority of prospective university students would like to be considered for these scholarships, the entry requirements for the academic programmes at public universities heavily influence subject choice at A’Level. The subject requirements and associated weighting for admission into the various academic programmes offered at public universities are published every year before students sit their A’Level examinations. Table 1 shows the entry requirements for some of the more selective and some of the less selective academic programmes offered at public universities. As can be seen, the more selective programmes like Telecom Engineering and Human Medicine have specific subject requirements, while programmes like Development Studies and Law have none at all.