Browsing by Author "Mouton, J."

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    Co-authorship networks in South African chemistry and mathematics
    (Academy of Science for South Africa, 2008) Durbach, I. N.; Naidoo, D.; Mouton, J.
    Co-authorship networks are graphs in which the nodes of the graph represent authors and two authors are connected by an edge if they have written one or more papers together. When applied to the authorship of scholarly papers, analysing the structure of a co-authorship network can provide useful insights into the way in which research is carried out in a particular field. We examine two co-authorship networks in our article, constructed from papers written on the subjects of chemistry and mathematics during the period 1990 to 2005, in which at least one of the authors was South African. Local results are compared with other studies conducted in much larger discipline-wide networks. We find that many of the same patterns exist locally, with the main difference being a far more fragmented South African mathematics network. We discuss some tentative implications of these results.
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    Post-graduate studies in South Africa : myths, misconceptions and challenges
    (HESA, 2007) Mouton, J.
    The article interrogates some of the current views and myths around the so-called 'inefficiency' of the management of postgraduate studies in South Africa. In this regard data are presented on recent trends in postgraduate completion rates at the doctoral level; as well as on comparative data on throughput rates. I argue that the current discourse in South African higher education is obsessed with concerns of efficiency rather than effectiveness and quality. In this process, we focus too much on managerial and administrative solutions rather than on the challenges posed by academically underprepared postgraduate students.