Mini-dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF EDUCATION in the Department of Educational Management at the University of Zululand, 2010. / The purpose of this study was to determine the nature of development appraisal system and views of educators on the new model. Relevant literature was reviewed in order to determine the nature of development appraisal and to determine educator’s views on appraisals in developing countries. The subject of this study was 100 primary educators from primary and secondary schools in Bhekuzulu circuit in Vryheid district. The empirical investigation that was conducted revealed that a variety of appraisal models emphasized, amongst others that have been identified, teacher development as the main purpose of an appraisal. A positive attitude towards the implementation of appraisals and effectiveness in doing so realized the essence of goals of appraisal. The study revealed that appraisal can bring about renewal of classroom teaching, improve relationships with learners, and induce openness and sharing of ideas and problems. The empirical investigation revealed that most respondents have been appraised and that they realized the importance of this model. The following major findings emerged from the empirical investigation: Most educators had been appraised and that they realized the importance of developmental appraisal. In South Africa, development appraisal represented the paradigm shift away from traditional appraisal system. Development appraisals emphasise quality of education and assist in monitoring school objectives.

This study's purpose was to investigate the differences in scores and written comments given by two appraisal groups in their evaluation of a music teacher using the Texas Teacher Appraisal System (TTAS). One appraiser group had musical training while the other group specialized in other subjects. Analyses of both group's appraisal scores showed no significant differences. An examination of the written comments revealed that both appraisal groups focused on the same aspects of the lesson and used similar vocabulary. The TTAS instrument was a consistent measure of generic teacher behaviors in the music lesson, but it did not measure specific music teaching behaviors or encourage suggestions for improving musical instruction.

The purpose of this study was to determine if appraisers using the TTAS in Texas perceived themselves as being objective in the evaluation process. The population for this study was 213 appraisers, both elementary and secondary, chosen randomly from four educational service areas in four regions of Texas. Data were obtained from a 25-item questionnaire mailed to the appraisers. The organization of this study includes a statement of the problem, the research questions, a review of the literature, the methods and procedures used to collect the data, the analysis of the data, and a summary of the findings, conclusions, implications, and recommendations for additional research. Data from the 213 returned questionnaires were treated with the chi-square test of independence. The analysis of data revealed the following: 1. Regardless of the level, elementary or secondary, of the administrator, the majority of respondents held the same views. 2. Regardless of the region of Texas from which the respondents came, the majority of respondents held the same views. 3. Regardless of the number of years of experience of the appraisers, the majority of respondents held the same views. 4. The majority of respondents felt they are objective in their use of the TTAS. The implications are that the TTAS instrument is being used as was its intention, and that the appraisers feel comfortable in the use of the TTAS. Since the TTAS is effective as seen through a majority of respondents, it may be used in future revisions of the current instrument or by other districts as a model by which to begin construction of their own appraisal instruments.

The purpose of this study was to determine the interrater reliability of the Texas Teacher Appraisal System instrument. The performance indicators, criteria, domains, and total instrument were analyzed for inter rater reliability. Five videotaped teaching episodes were viewed and scored by 557 to 881 school administrators trained to utilize the Texas Teacher Appraisal System. The fifty-five performance indicators were analyzed for simple percentage of agreement. The ten criteria, four performance domains, and) the whole instrument were analyzed utilizing Ruder-Richardson Formula 20. Indicators were judged reliable if there was 75 percent or greater agreement on four of the five videotaped exercises. Criteria, domains, and the whole instrument were judged reliable if they yielded a -Ruder-Richardson Formula 20 score of .75 or greater on four of the Based on the findings of this study, the following conclusions v/ere drawn: 1. Forty-eight of the fifty-five performance indicators were reliable in evaluation teacher performance. 2. Seven of the performance indicators were unreliable in evaluating teacher performance. 3. None of the ten performance criteria appeared to be reliable in evaluating teacher performance. 4. None of the four performance domains appeared to be reliable in evaluating teacher performance. 5. The whole instrument was reliable in evaluating teacher performance. 6. Reliability problems with the criteria and domains appeared to be an underestimate of reliability of the Kuder-Richardson Formula 20.

The purpose of this study was to determine if there are personal and demographic characteristics which can predict the most accurate teacher appraisers. The demographics were limited to the following: campus-level job assignment, employing district size, sex, race, number of years of experience as an administrator, previous level of teaching experience, and curriculum area taught by the appraiser. The 622 subjects were school administrators trained to utilize the Texas Teacher Appraisal System. The data were analyzed using multiple linear regression. Where an independent variable was significant (.05), a follow-up ANOVA and Tukey's multiple comparison were employed. Based on the findings of this study the following conclusions were drawn: 1. A summary data set indicated there was little evidence that any of the demographic variables was a significant predictor of accuracy in the evaluation process. 2. Six different data sets indicated that varying instructional settings and methodologies can influence evaluator accuracy. The campus assignment, years of experience, content area taught, race, and sex of the appraisers were all identified in at least one of the exercise sets as having significance. Except for sex and race, none of the variables was found to be significant when the overall prediction equation with all demographic variables was evaluated. 3. In the prediction equations of this study the percent of variance was so minute that social significance could not be established. 4. The Texas Teacher Appraisal System can be used by appraisers with various backgrounds and experiences without a reduction of accuracy. 5. School boards can appoint appraisers with various backgrounds and experiences without a reduction of accuracy in the process.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Abstract This thesis explores the use of the interpersonal resources of English in argumentative/persuasive essays (APEs) constructed by undergraduate international students from East-Asian regions (EAS), in particular, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and also by Australian-born English speakers (ABS). High-graded essays (HGEs) were compared with the low-graded essays (LGEs) in order to identify the relationship between their deployment of interpersonal features and the academic grades given by markers. In addition, the essays constructed by the EAS writers were compared with those written by ABS writers. A major complaint of academic staff about ESL Asian students concerns their lack of analytical, critical voice and formality in their arguments. The linguistic evidence for this explored in this thesis is based mainly on interpersonal systems of interaction and evaluation recently developed within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Iedema et al., 1994; Iedema, 1995, 2003, 2004; Martin, 2000a, 2003c; White, 1998, 2004; Martin and Rose, 2003; Macken-Horarik and Martin, 2003; Martin and White, 2005). Within interaction, the thesis draws on work dealing with the metaphorical realisations of commands in a bureaucratic administration context. Evaluation is based on appraisal theory, which is concerned with the linguistic inflection of the subjective attitudes of writers, and also their evaluative expressions and intersubjective positioning. In order to explore the use of interpersonal resources from a perspective of writer and reader interaction, this study incorporates a social interactive model derived from ‘Interaction in writing’ alongside Bakhtin’s (1981, 1986) dialogic literacy. Under this broad interdisciplinary approach, the interpersonal aspects in APEs are examined from three main perspectives: Interactive (schematic structures), Interactional (the metaphorical realisation of commands), and InterPERSONAL meanings (the three main appraisal systems: ATTITUDE, ENGAGEMENT, and GRADUATION). The sample comprised six overseas students and six Australian-born native English speakers. They were all participants in the English for Academic Purposes class in the Modern Language Program offered by a regional university in southern New South Wales. These students were required to write APEs as a part of their course. Discourse analysis was applied to the essays at the genre, discourse semantic and the lexico-grammatical levels. Interviews were undertaken with markers to identify the relationship between text analysis results and markers’ comments on the essays and the grades. The results indicated that students’ use of interpersonal resources is a good indicator for judging quality of APEs. The analysis reveals significant differences in the extent to which HGEs are interactive by showing awareness of audience in argument structure, and making interactional choices focusing on command and interPERSONAL choices of appraisal systems. These differences are reflected in the use both of strategies of involvement by being interactional, and strategies displaying distance by being formal. The differences are also reflected in the presentation of personal opinions by being evaluative and of intersubjective claims supported by evidence. While there were no significant differences between the EAS and ABS writers in terms of the argument structure, ABS texts are more interactional, having a high degree of authority and conviction characterised by a formal tone. ABS writers also display a stronger voice through frequent exploitation of GRADUATION resources of appraisal. Overall, it can be said that while EAS students display problems with raising their own voices in argument, ABS students display problems in supporting persuasion. Educational implications for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing curriculum design include the desirability of enhancing a context-sensitive approach in writing, raising audience awareness of language teachers in relation to the interpersonal use of English, and promoting the dialogic nature of argument by reconciling individual creativity with social voices and community conventions.

The civil servant are those who work for government by laws and get official salary. To improve the efficiency and honesty of the civil servant, the government should evaluate their performances and results, and conduct the following personnel affairs according to that. In order to improve the effect of the performance appraisal system, the Examination Yuan tried to revise the Law of Performance Appraisal of Civil Servant based on the modern management system. However, this caused dissenting view and objection from most of the civil servant. As a matter of fact, we already had the system of performance appraisal on officials since Tang-Yu dynasty and it kept changing and revising through dynasties. In spite the republic government closed the agelong emperor reigning system, the management of the huge bureaucrat body still inherit the way used before, not breaking down from this changing. Therefore, when the Examination Yuan, just considering the effect of performance appraisal, changed the performance appraisal system directly without thinking about the historical and cultural nature of existing way, it can¡¦t avoid the questioning and opposing from the civil servant. Therefore, this study, from the viewpoint of the historical and cultural nature, researches the sameness and differences of performance appraisal system between current and ancient times, with which it further compares the outlook and method of performance management. In the final part, it discusses the meaning of the existence of performance appraisal system of the civil servant.

There is a single thing that is universal to every human being, connection, unit, organisation, population, financial system and civilisation throughout the globe. If disconnected it might devastate the most authoritative government, the most flourishing business, most prosperous economy and the most powerful leadership. On the other hand if developed and influenced, that one thing has the potential to generate incomparable accomplishment and prosperity in every measurement of life. Yet, it is the least understood, largely ignored and most underestimated opportunity of our time. That one factor is trust. The intent of this study is to explore the nature of interpersonal trust relationships by investigating the factors of disposition trust, the domains of trust behaviour, cognition based trust and affect based trust as well as the accuracy of the performance appraisal. Factors that influence trust levels are pre-requisite to further investigate trustworthiness by means of other three factors: the employees’ ability, integrity and benevolence. If trust exists within an organisation, it influences the following factors positively: communication, organisational citizen behaviour, learning inside the organisation, turnover team performance as well as the organisation’s performance. An empirical study was done through a survey consisting of recognized questionnaires to establish the trust levels, as well as the accuracy of the performance appraisal system. This summarised the importance of the trust levels, as well as the accuracy of the performance appraisal system. The survey results were analysed in detail in order to conclude which construct and areas necessitate consideration from management. The trust foundations were understood differently by the employees as indicated by the results of the survey. Another indication from the survey was that there are important dissimilarities on how certain groups understand the leadership’s actions with respect to trust within the organisation. The possibilities for these differences were mentioned. Recommendations were also made to improve the three trustworthy factors along with the other constructs measured in this survey to identify the dissimilarities between the different language groups, different genders, the permanent and the part-time group. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013

There is a single thing that is universal to every human being, connection, unit, organisation, population, financial system and civilisation throughout the globe. If disconnected it might devastate the most authoritative government, the most flourishing business, most prosperous economy and the most powerful leadership. On the other hand if developed and influenced, that one thing has the potential to generate incomparable accomplishment and prosperity in every measurement of life. Yet, it is the least understood, largely ignored and most underestimated opportunity of our time. That one factor is trust. The intent of this study is to explore the nature of interpersonal trust relationships by investigating the factors of disposition trust, the domains of trust behaviour, cognition based trust and affect based trust as well as the accuracy of the performance appraisal. Factors that influence trust levels are pre-requisite to further investigate trustworthiness by means of other three factors: the employees’ ability, integrity and benevolence. If trust exists within an organisation, it influences the following factors positively: communication, organisational citizen behaviour, learning inside the organisation, turnover team performance as well as the organisation’s performance. An empirical study was done through a survey consisting of recognized questionnaires to establish the trust levels, as well as the accuracy of the performance appraisal system. This summarised the importance of the trust levels, as well as the accuracy of the performance appraisal system. The survey results were analysed in detail in order to conclude which construct and areas necessitate consideration from management. The trust foundations were understood differently by the employees as indicated by the results of the survey. Another indication from the survey was that there are important dissimilarities on how certain groups understand the leadership’s actions with respect to trust within the organisation. The possibilities for these differences were mentioned. Recommendations were also made to improve the three trustworthy factors along with the other constructs measured in this survey to identify the dissimilarities between the different language groups, different genders, the permanent and the part-time group. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Abstract This thesis explores the use of the interpersonal resources of English in argumentative/persuasive essays (APEs) constructed by undergraduate international students from East-Asian regions (EAS), in particular, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and also by Australian-born English speakers (ABS). High-graded essays (HGEs) were compared with the low-graded essays (LGEs) in order to identify the relationship between their deployment of interpersonal features and the academic grades given by markers. In addition, the essays constructed by the EAS writers were compared with those written by ABS writers. A major complaint of academic staff about ESL Asian students concerns their lack of analytical, critical voice and formality in their arguments. The linguistic evidence for this explored in this thesis is based mainly on interpersonal systems of interaction and evaluation recently developed within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Iedema et al., 1994; Iedema, 1995, 2003, 2004; Martin, 2000a, 2003c; White, 1998, 2004; Martin and Rose, 2003; Macken-Horarik and Martin, 2003; Martin and White, 2005). Within interaction, the thesis draws on work dealing with the metaphorical realisations of commands in a bureaucratic administration context. Evaluation is based on appraisal theory, which is concerned with the linguistic inflection of the subjective attitudes of writers, and also their evaluative expressions and intersubjective positioning. In order to explore the use of interpersonal resources from a perspective of writer and reader interaction, this study incorporates a social interactive model derived from ‘Interaction in writing’ alongside Bakhtin’s (1981, 1986) dialogic literacy. Under this broad interdisciplinary approach, the interpersonal aspects in APEs are examined from three main perspectives: Interactive (schematic structures), Interactional (the metaphorical realisation of commands), and InterPERSONAL meanings (the three main appraisal systems: ATTITUDE, ENGAGEMENT, and GRADUATION). The sample comprised six overseas students and six Australian-born native English speakers. They were all participants in the English for Academic Purposes class in the Modern Language Program offered by a regional university in southern New South Wales. These students were required to write APEs as a part of their course. Discourse analysis was applied to the essays at the genre, discourse semantic and the lexico-grammatical levels. Interviews were undertaken with markers to identify the relationship between text analysis results and markers’ comments on the essays and the grades. The results indicated that students’ use of interpersonal resources is a good indicator for judging quality of APEs. The analysis reveals significant differences in the extent to which HGEs are interactive by showing awareness of audience in argument structure, and making interactional choices focusing on command and interPERSONAL choices of appraisal systems. These differences are reflected in the use both of strategies of involvement by being interactional, and strategies displaying distance by being formal. The differences are also reflected in the presentation of personal opinions by being evaluative and of intersubjective claims supported by evidence. While there were no significant differences between the EAS and ABS writers in terms of the argument structure, ABS texts are more interactional, having a high degree of authority and conviction characterised by a formal tone. ABS writers also display a stronger voice through frequent exploitation of GRADUATION resources of appraisal. Overall, it can be said that while EAS students display problems with raising their own voices in argument, ABS students display problems in supporting persuasion. Educational implications for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing curriculum design include the desirability of enhancing a context-sensitive approach in writing, raising audience awareness of language teachers in relation to the interpersonal use of English, and promoting the dialogic nature of argument by reconciling individual creativity with social voices and community conventions.