Effective educators are culturally competent communicators

Effective formal education or schooling is not simply a matter of teaching and learning curriculum content. It is also about values, assumptions, feelings, perceptions and relationships. No education can take place without interpersonal communication. Effective teaching can thus be qualified in terms of relating effectively in the classroom. Effective education thus also presupposes effective communication skills. Communication as the means and indeed the medium of education is therefore crucial to school success in culturally diverse education. Teachers should therefore be sensitive to the potentially problematic outcomes of intercultural communication in the culturally diverse class. Communication may be a useful source of intercultural knowledge and mutual enrichment between culturally diverse students if managed proactively by the teacher. Otherwise, it could be a source of frustration, misapprehensions, intercultural conflict and ultimately school failure. Effective and successful communication is difficult to realise even in the most favourable circumstances. Intercultural factors, therefore, create the potential for numerous communication problems and intercultural conflict. Communication, both verbal as well as non-verbal, is critically important in cross-cultural competence. As language and culture are inextricably bound, cross-cultural communication is complex and potentially problematic. In this paper, it is argued that effective educators are effective communicators and thus culturally competent in cross-cultural encounters.     

Social dynamics of the multicultural classroom

Instruction and learning are socially determined activities, where social forces such as classroom atmosphere, social feelings, cultural sentiments, prejudice and stereotyping, interpersonal relations and expectations, as well as the reflection of social reality in subject matter all have a significant influence on the effectiveness of teaching and learning. The effective "multicultural" teacher has to be concerned about each individual student, and also be sensitive to the group and cultural affiliations of each of his or her students. Intercultural relations in the classroom may be a source of knowledge and mutual enrichment between culturally diverse learners if managed proactively by teachers. Frustration, misapprehensions and intercultural conflict are a more likely outcome if teachers do not deal with diversity in a sensitive manner.     

Exploring rigour in autoethnographic research

Abstract

The changing face of qualitative research has opened up discourses on the validity and rigour of research processes and products. A current debate is whether the criteria traditionally used to judge the rigour of quantitative research are appropriate to assess the academic integrity of qualitative research including autoethnography. The purpose of this article is to appraise views on the academic rigour, validity and scientific accountability of research in general and autoethnographic research in particular. The researcher reports on issues of rigour in conducting autoethnographic research from her own experience and that of published autoethnographic researchers. The issue of relevant appraisal criteria against which the research integrity and rigour of autoethnographic studies can be assessed is investigated. It is concluded that the academic rigour of autoethnographic studies should be established to enhance its credibility and value and that the criteria used need to be judiciously determined and applied.     

A generalization of the compound rayleigh distribution: using a bayesian method on cancer survival times

In this paper the generalized compound Rayleigh model, exhibiting flexible hazard rate, is high¬lighted. This makes it attractive for modelling survival times of patients showing characteristics of a random hazard rate. The Bayes estimators are derived for the parameters of this model and some survival time parameters from a right censored sample. This is done with respect to conjugate and discrete priors on the parameters of this model, under the squared error loss function, Varian's asymmetric linear-exponential (linex) loss function and a weighted linex loss function. The future survival time of a patient is estimated under these loss functions. A Monte Carlo simu¬lation procedure is used where closed form expressions of the estimators cannot be obtained. An example illustrates the proposed estimators for this model.     

A Bivariate Generalization of Gamma Distribution

In this article, a bivariate generalisation of the gamma distribution is proposed by using an unsymmetrical bivariate characteristic function; an extension to the non central case also receives attention. The probability density functions of the product and ratio of the correlated components of this distribution are also derived. The benefits of introducing this generalized bivariate gamma distribution and the distributions of the product and the ratio of its components will be demonstrated by graphical representations of their density functions. An example of this generalized bivariate gamma distribution to rainfall data for two specific districts in the North West province is also given to illustrate the greater versatility of the new distribution.     

The type I distribution of the ratio of independent “Weibullized” generalized beta-prime variables

In this paper we introduce the distribution of , with c >  0, where X _i , i =  1, 2, are independent generalized beta-prime-distributed random variables, and establish a closed form expression of its density. This distribution has as its limiting case the generalized beta type I distribution recently introduced by Nadarajah and Kotz (2004). Due to the presence of several parameters the density can take a wide variety of shapes.      

The description of South African corporate communication practitioners that contribute to organisational performance

Public relations are a function that contributes to the greater good of society and the performance of an organisation (0115 and 0125). However, many times the practitioner fails to accomplish this undertaking (0125, 0325 and 0335).     

On the real representation of quaternion random variables

For the first time, the matrix-variate quaternion normal and quaternion Wishart distributions are derived from first principles, that is, from their real counterparts, exposing the relations between their respective densities and characteristic functions. Applications of this theory in hypothesis testing are presented, and the density function of Wilks’ statistic is derived for quaternion Wishart matrices.