Latest News Archive
Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
22 September 2021
|
Story Michelle Nöthling
|
Photo Supplied
Annemarie Le Roux.
“I love working with children.” This is one of the first things Annemarie le Roux mentions when asked to describe herself. This love for children propelled Annemarie into the field of education and she graduated in 2006 with a BEd in Foundation Phase at the UFS. Annemarie immediately immersed herself in the Deaf community, enriching the lives of children at the Thiboloha School for the Deaf in Qwaqwa and the De la Bat School for the Deaf in Worcester.
The academic world enticed Annemarie back to the University of the Free State (UFS) and she was appointed as a junior lecturer in the Department of South African Sign Language (SASL) and Deaf Studies in 2013. Going from strength to strength, Annemarie completed her master’s degree in SASL in 2019, and published an
article earlier this year that she co-wrote with Marga Stander. In this article, they found that SASL “has become an increasingly popular language that hearing university students want to learn as a second language” and subsequently explored different teaching methods used for this emerging group of interested students.
Although now firmly established in academia, Annemarie is still committed to the practical application of SASL. “I am closely involved in student and community engagement through the
SIGNALS Sign Language student association that helps empower the Deaf community and South African Sign Language.” She also interprets for the Deaf community whenever she gets an opportunity, as well as for Deaf students in class and meetings.
On the importance of Sign Language and the recognition of the Deaf community in South Africa, Annemarie believes it will open greater opportunities for development. “More people will be able to learn SASL, and it might even become a subject in school for hearing children.”
Academic addresses financial planning leaders at world summit
2010-05-04
 |
| Adv. Wessel Oosthuizen, Director of the Centre for Financial Planning Law at the University of the Free State (UFS), addressing financial leaders at the World Financial Planning Summit. |
Adv. Wessel Oosthuizen, Director of the Centre for Financial Planning Law at the University of the Free State (UFS), is chair to four Financial Planning Standards Board (FPSB) expert panels that guide the global Certified Financial Planning (CFP) certification programme. At the recent World Financial Planning Summit, held in Taipei in China, he challenged a group of global financial planning leaders to support the formation of a global financial planning body of knowledge with sustainable career-path development opportunities.
He said: “For financial planning to be recognised as a distinct professional practice and a global profession, the financial planning community must establish a universal body of knowledge that is supported by applicable in-depth research.
“We need to establish how professional bodies should collaborate with academia to integrate a more competency-based education and training environment that combines theory with practice. Fostering and promoting comprehensive research in financial planning topics is another key challenge that must be addressed in order to develop a tertiary knowledge framework for the financial planning profession.”
Adv. Oosthuizen, who is playing a big role in providing consistent and rigorous education and assessment tools for financial planning in 2010, said that a bachelor’s degree should be a compulsory minimum requirement for practising financial planners.
About the learning curve between the academic and work environments in the financial planning profession, Adv. Oosthuizen said: “Implementing a career-path model that supports a more structured approach to apprenticeships and supervised practice would complement a specialised financial planning body of knowledge and provide entrants to the profession with the necessary theoretical knowledge and practical experience to offer competent and ethical financial planning.”
The World Financial Planning Summit engaged global leaders of more than 17 financial planning standards-setting bodies, as well as regulators, financial planning educators and other invited guests in a dialogue about the steps needed to gain recognition for financial planning as a distinct, global profession.