Dr Linda Zuze fights off a strong pool to win top PhD prize

Dr Linda Zuze

The Council of the Economic Society of South Africa has awarded Dr Tia Linda Zuze, a research affiliate of the South African Labour and Development Research Unit at UCT, the 2009 Founders’ Medal for a PhD dissertation in recognition of her excellent research thesis, Equity and Effectiveness in East African Primary Schools.

Her PhD work, undertaken as a Graduate Associate in SALDRU was enabled by a Spencer Foundation Scholarship awarded through the School of Education at UCT. She is currently working in the University of Witwatersrand.

Dr Zuze said she was honoured that her thesis was judged not only the top PhD thesis in the School of Economics at UCT in 2008, but also emerged victorious from a strong pool of candidates from economics departments across the country.

She said: “I am honoured to receive this award. It is a real tribute to the excellent academic support that I received while at UCT. Writing a thesis is always a challenge but I feel that through this process, I’ve grown as a researcher. I’m still passionate about finding ways to make education and training fairer and more relevant for young people in Africa. So perhaps this is a first step in a longer journey."

Her supervisor, Professor Murray Leibbrandt, said: “It is a model of the kind of rigorous, evidence-based policy research through which SALDRU and many in the School of Economics make their contribution to South Africa and our continent." He noted that her thesis had drawn praise from three prominent international examiners.

One of her examiners with extensive experience of educational research in South Africa and the rest of Africa observed: “I have to say that this is indeed a remarkable piece of work. I have read a good bit of educational research produced by South African scholars, and this work shows a degree of methodological sophistication and engagement with the literature that is unusual and I would say surpasses that of even full professors carrying out research on education in South Africa."

Another examiner, who is one of the central figures in research on African education over the last thirty years, wrote: “I was delighted to have the opportunity to read this thesis. It is extremely well written and organized, is addressing central questions that are currently hot in public debates, growing out of the heightened recognition about the importance of learning outcomes and the tensions between EFA and school quality. The thesis makes an important contribution to the literature by using the SACMEQ data from three African countries to explore in depth some of the determinants of gender differences in Math scores and socio-economic differences in reading in Uganda."

Finally, an expert on the quantitative assessment of educational performance concurred when he said: “The data set description and the issues raised … set the basis for an argument that the data was hierarchical in nature and there were differences between schools and hence the use of a multi level analysis was not only possible but necessary. This is especially well argued and it is hoped that the candidate publishes a paper outlining this thesis and development of the basis for multi level analyses. It will be helpful to other novice users of complex data sets…. The candidate has a very good grasp of the procedure and has applied it intelligently to the data set."

Posted 30/10/2009 by Carolyn McGibbon