Abstract:
The evaluation of student success within a tertiary environment is a
challenging endeavour. Success is a multifaceted concept and the
achievement of success can be either promoted or prevented by numerous
factors. The main challenges include the need to determine how success
should be defined and how the contribution of intervention programmes
towards success can be established. In this paper we discuss the challenge of
interpreting quantitative and qualitative data in order to understand the
contributions of two tutoring programmes to student success within the
University of Pretoria's Faculty of Humanities. The main aim of the article is to
show that, when results are discussed within a programme theory framework
(PTF), important strengths and challenges of support programmes could be
highlighted. This offers an alternative perspective on the understanding and
evaluation of 'success' that differs from the 'one size fits all' model often used.
