Research Articles

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Browsing by Subject "Academic performance"

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    Predictors of academic performance among second-year nursing students at a university in the Western Cape
    (Stellenbosch University, 2016) Mthimunye, K.D.T.; Daniels, F.M.; Pedro, A.
    Students with low grades in high school science related subjects as well as those that obtained low grades in their first year of study should be given the necessary support to avoid the risk of unsatisfactory academic performance. The performance of nursing students is a diverse topic that needs further investigation at more nursing institutions and at various levels of undergraduate programmes. This study describes the predictors of academic performance among second-year nursing students at a university in the Western Cape. A non-experimental quantitative research approach with a cross-sectional predictive design was carried out to determine the relationship between predictor variables and academic performance of second-year Bachelor of Nursing students (n=226). A multiple-linear regression analysis was done to determine which variables best explains the variations in the students’ academic performance. The study found that the cognitive variables had the strongest predictive power in association with academic performance in comparison to the demographic variable, besides race which rejected the null hypothesis.
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    Towards leadership for school cultures associated with good academic performance in South African township secondary schools: the ‘power’ of organic emergence, diversity and service
    (2008) Ngcobo, Thandi
    The South African government has over the past fourteen years been introducing numerous efforts aimed at improving the academic performance of schools who have been struggling in this regard for some time now. However, these efforts are not having the desired effect. Indications are that this may be due to their power-coercive and rational-empirical underpinnings. Such leanings ignore findings that have been been pointing to normative reeducative underpinnings as being more foundational for bringing about ,and/ or maintaining, change than is the case with the other two frameworks (see, McLaughlin, 1993, for example). Thus, the purpose of this article is to contribute towards a better understanding of school leadership that is related to school cultures that are associated with good academic performance in the stated context. This is informed by findings in an ethnographic study in which I explored the relationship between academic performance, school culture and leadership in two ‘African’ township secondary schools of varying academic performance. One of the major findings in this study was that school cultures that, in this context, have the potential of enabling participation in activities that are associated with good academic performance are those that are communal in nature but embrace ‘societal’ negotiations for their common understandings. In turn, the type of leadership that was concluded as being linked to such school cultures was that which emerges organically from within the African township secondary schools. The power of such emergence was found to be in the related diversity and service.