Master of Arts in History

Purpose

The purpose of the qualification is to

• Enable learners to demonstrate their competence in applying their advanced postgraduate skills in the history they have acquired;
• Contribute to the social and economic development of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa and the world by advancing the quality of citizenship through applied competence and management capacities in a range of career and vocational activities in the civic, public and private sector.
• Equip learners with an appropriate range of academic competencies and skills which will enable them to demonstrate leadership capabilities in the vocational and social sphere.

Rationale

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)

The institution conducts RPL in terms of the policy and guidelines of the institution to recognise other forms of formal, informal and non-formal learning and experience.

In cases where learners do not comply with the formal admission requirements, the institution applies its RPL policy.

Entry Requirements

The minimum entry requirement for this qualification is

• Bachelor of Arts Honours in Historical Studies, Level 8.

1. Demonstrate the capacity to design, conduct and write dissertations that respectably stand alongside refereed and published research in the same field and have practical application in societal context.
2. Learners demonstrate an understanding of visual discipline procedures and an ability to cope with research techniques.
3. Learners demonstrate an understanding of literature and visual images related to the research problem.

• Enable learners to engage in innovative and original areas of research by engaging in detailed primary source study.
• Demonstrate an advanced grasp of the conceptual, theoretical and research skills applicable to the discipline of History.
• Engage in independent research activity and utilise said skills in problem solving contexts in the vocational sphere.
• Work effectively in community, organisational and appropriate vocational and career contexts by demonstrating supervisory and management capabilities;

1. Learners demonstrate the ability to write a dissertation that is linguistically acceptable.

• Write research proposals that indicate that learners are able to identify problems and gaps in history and formulate research problems and subsets of problems.
• Formulate hypotheses.
• Select and use appropriate data analysis methods to interpret the findings of an investigation.
• Conduct fieldwork during the actual investigation.
• Report the findings of the investigation, and formulate recommendations that emanate from the findings.
• Identify and analyse different scientific/creative procedures in terms of the problem being researched.
• Critically read, interpret and analyse literature from different sources.
• Search for information on the identified research problem or gap.
• Compare the writings of different authors on the same topic.
• Synthesise reading material on the topic being researched.
• Draw conclusions from different visual images, readings and indicate anomalies.
• Create a theoretical framework provided by the visual images and literature review.
• Compile a complete bibliography.
• Write a dissertation that shows that the learner can express him/herself clearly.
• Write a dissertation that is technically well presented and has an acceptable layout.

Integrated Assessment

Formative: Research proposal discussions: testing the learner's historiographical grasp; relating to the objectives; sustainability and feasibility of the topic or subject of research; pertaining to periodising the subject of research for structured organisation.

Summative: Submission of dissertation.