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Education is generally considered to be the core source of individuals’ better life and countries' economic and social development. Consequently, attending university and getting high qualifications are perceived as tools that generate and enhance economic growth. The current study aimed to analyse the effect of various educational levels on South African economic growth. The study employed quarterly data from 1995Q1 to 2021Q4. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model was employed to assess both long-run and short-run relationships among variables. The long-run results revealed that people who completed their grade 12 (with matric certificate) and bachelor's degrees contribute positively to South African economic growth. However, honours and higher degrees (master's and PhD) were found to have an inverse relationship with economic growth in South Africa. On the other hand, the short-run relationship indicated that all education levels contribute to economic growth in the short term. Based on these findings, the author suggests that the South African higher education curriculum should be revised as the negative effect of high education towards economic growth should be resulting in growing unemployment and graduates waiting to be employed rather than creating jobs themselves. Additionally, increasing job creation for graduates with higher qualifications would reduce the number of graduates that leave the country looking for employment abroad.

The number of loyalty programmes has increased rapidly, becoming one of the most used marketing practices in the global retail market today. The primary objective of this study was to determine whether special treatment benefits influence Generation Y students’ attitudes towards retail point-based loyalty programmes and usage behaviour in South Africa by extending the theory of planned behaviour and adding unique treatment benefits and consumer satisfaction factors to propose a model for this study. The study employed a quantitative method, where a self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from a non-probability convenience sample of 388 students (aged 18 to 24 years), across two public higher education institutions’ campuses in the Gauteng province. The collected data was examined using descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, reliability, correlation analysis multicollinearity and structural equation modelling (SEM). The study results indicate that subjective norms, unique treatment benefits and perceived behavioural control positively influence consumer satisfaction. The results also indicate that consumer satisfaction has a positive influence in shaping consumer attitudes towards retail point-based loyalty programmes which in turn influence usage behaviour of Generation Y students.

This is a qualitative interpretative case study. Its aim is to explore how instructional strategies shape the teaching practices of Natural Sciences teachers in the classroom. The following question guided the study: How do instructional strategies shape the teaching practices of Natural Sciences teachers in the classroom? Semi-structured interviews and observations were used to collect data from two purposefully sampled participants. The findings reveal that instructional strategies have a more significant effect on the teaching practices of natural science teachers. Further, Natural Sciences teachers still use the old way of teaching, which is the rote-learning which promotes meditation instead of understating scientific concepts. This consequently led to the learner’s lack of interest and poor performance in the subject. It is thus sensible to recommend that the Department of Basic Education (DBE) provides adequate support in terms of workshops to teachers on instructional strategies.

This study was premised on the Community of Inquiry model and a qualitative method approach was used with an online individual semi-structured interview protocol as the data collection instrument to collect and analyse data gathered from the respondents’ individual interviews. A case study design was used with six participants (3 lecturers and 3 students) being sampled. The participants comprising three (3) Mathematics education lecturers, and three (3) Mathematics education students (preservice teachers) either in the first, second or third year of study in Mathematics education. Interviews were conducted online with the participants through Skype and Zoom. A thematic analysis was used to identify themes and patterns. The findings of the study revealed that the participants, understanding the use of social media, have transformed their teaching and learning in higher education institutions. Apart from making the shift from face-to-face teaching to teaching online using a technology-based independent mode to continue teaching in the Covid-era, lecturers have experienced academic well-being through a change in their pedagogy and teaching approaches as Mathematics lecturers. This change has ensured that students are exposed to a more student-centred approach through the use of social media platforms which has enhanced students’ learning of Mathematics. Recommendations are made.

The National Development Plan (NDP) of South Africa identifies the main ills that must be dealt with by 2030. These are poverty and inequality. The NDP also clearly points out the need to deal with unemployment. These build into the sustainable development goals with 2030 as the target year for achievement. Both the NDP for South Africa and the SDGs at the global level had these targets set way before the 2019 coronavirus hit. Now given the disruption that this pandemic caused, the trends and possibility of achieving these goes must be investigated. This paper looks at employment focusing on the characteristics of the people that had a job to return to after the hard lockdown in South Africa.  The main objective is to identify the significant predictors of employment status at the household level. The paper uses data from Statistics in South Africa that were collected in 2021 during the midst of the pandemic. Variables such as age, province, race or population group and gender were included in the analysis. The results of the logistic regression show that age, race, age of the province, and household size are all significant predictors of whether the head of the household was in salaried employment during the Covid-19 pandemic. The fact that females were more likely to be in employment is painting a unique picture of the labour force than what is normally observed in the surveys.

Globalization and rapid technological change have made knowledge a critical determinant of competitiveness in the world’s economy. Online education has been auspicious and adjustable even to students with tight schedules. However several critical success factors need to be improved in order to enhance the effective learner experience. This paper is aimed at uncovering the impact of three critical success factors namely; instructional design, learner interaction and learner technology adaptation on learner experience. Hence, the discretions of 300 students were diagnosed using the Likert scale questionnaire ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The Holm Bonferroni method from R- package version 0.88 (2021 edition), was engaged to reduce the family-wise error (FWER) associated with multiple hypothesis comparison. It was observed that at a 5% level of significance, the alternative hypothesis was acceptable in favor of the null hypothesis and the conclusion was that instructional design, learner interaction, and technology adaptation, have a direct impact on the learning experience of the learner. The adopted models for the three critical success factors were validated by the Fornell and Larcker's (1981) convergent reliability test and tolerable with high composite reliability of 0.71. In accordance with the adopted model, a well instructional design is suggested for compliance.

The influence of macroeconomic variables on aspects of business and the country's economy has been a subject of robust discussion. This study was conducted to identify the effect of macroeconomic variables, namely inflation rate, economic growth, exchange rate and share price, on listed companies in South Africa. The goal was to study the long run and short run effects of macroeconomic volatility on company performance because of the world’s recent pandemic experience. To achieve this objective, the study applied the panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model on annual panel data from 2010 to 2020 to analyse the short run and long run effects of macroeconomic variables on a company’s performance. The study results suggested a positive impact of economic growth, exchange rate and share price on asset returns, whilst a company's equity return is supported by economic growth and share price in the long run. The short run revealed that none of the independent variables has a sufficiently significant effect to influence a company's performance changes in the short run. Based on the findings, it was recommended that policymakers and economic authorities should introduce and implement strategies that favour and enhance the country's economic growth and stable exchange rate in order to improve company performance. Additionally, given that the company's short-run performance may highly depend on internal factors such as corporate governance, internal policies and business strategies, these decisions should be taken with precaution and a high level of professionalism.

The father’s involvement in their children’s life is often defined by economical and psychological support, those without adequate financial muscle are often denied 1) parental contact and 2) responsibilities. The noted unjustified perceptions fail to contemplate historic socio-economic and psychosocial factors affecting fathers’ roles and related expectations. Therefore, the objective of this study was aimed at accentuating psychosocial and economic challenges faced by young fathers in assuming parental responsibilities, focusing on South African case studies. The applied methodology was based on ‘non-empirical research design: Systematic Review,’ documentary sources were qualitatively [Purposively] sampled from the search engines such as ‘Google scholar, South African Electronic Thesis or Dissertation (ETD) portal, Jstor, Sabinet, and EbcoHost,’ using keywords/phrases related to the subject under research to filter relevant data, restricted to 2003-2022. The inductive Thematic Content Analysis (TCA) analyzed the collected data. The primary finding of this study revealed that [Some] young fathers are faced with parental exclusions owing to the financial instability of compensating and supporting them. Moreover, they also experience psychological distress and resort to criminal activities to find means of supporting their children. The underlined conclusion suggests that society should allow fatherly responsibilities to be catered on children without placing more pressure on them (Fathers’), their financial standards should be respected at all costs. Programs strictly advocating for children’s contact with their non-residential fathers to encourage their [Fathers] positive involvement and focus on children’s needs across South African communities should be urgently staged.

The upsurge of private label brands has allowed retailers to expand their product offerings. However, these brands have been met with varying perceptions among consumers across the world. Therefore, this study investigated the role that marketing might have on the purchase intentions of customers opting to/not to purchase private label brands. The marketing instruments in question for this study were advertising, pricing, and price promotion, and their effect on customers’ purchase intention for private label brands. An integrative systematic review methodology in searching, screening, selecting, including, and excluding research articles; search strings were also formulated in searching for articles was followed. In this paper, a synthesis of the literature was undertaken, and future research direction was provided, giving future research and retailers three propositions to understand the effect of pricing, price promotions, and advertising in the purchase of private label brands.