Performance management at all levels of employees within the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM) is a key challenge, currently only applicable to senior managers. The employer was proactive in introducing the Ekurhuleni Excellence Awards to the gap that is created by the legislation, but the effort seems not to be working as employees do not understand the criteria that are used for nominations. The empirical study entailed 54 respondents who completed the questionnaire, in five different departments which are Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Legal and Administration. In this study, the Performance Management System (PMS) of the EMM was analysed, and the biggest challenge being faced by the EMM is the inability of the EMM to address staff retention (at 57%) and succession when employees leave the EMM (at 62%). The two challenges identified by the study are most crucial for the success of the PMS. The PMS of municipalities is legislated by different Acts, and in order to address service delivery challenges, the Acts need to be reviewed to include all levels of employees. National and Provincial Government have implemented the PMS so that municipalities, as another sphere of Government, will improve service delivery as well as employee motivation. The EMM senior managers, together with the Human Resources department, should craft a strategy or action for the future in order to successfully cascade the PMS to other levels of employees. The EMM Performance Management Policy that is currently operational is in line with the Municipal Regulation no. R805, so the Policy complies fully with the legislation. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010.

Performance management at all levels of employees within the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM) is a key challenge, currently only applicable to senior managers. The employer was proactive in introducing the Ekurhuleni Excellence Awards to the gap that is created by the legislation, but the effort seems not to be working as employees do not understand the criteria that are used for nominations. The empirical study entailed 54 respondents who completed the questionnaire, in five different departments which are Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Legal and Administration. In this study, the Performance Management System (PMS) of the EMM was analysed, and the biggest challenge being faced by the EMM is the inability of the EMM to address staff retention (at 57%) and succession when employees leave the EMM (at 62%). The two challenges identified by the study are most crucial for the success of the PMS. The PMS of municipalities is legislated by different Acts, and in order to address service delivery challenges, the Acts need to be reviewed to include all levels of employees. National and Provincial Government have implemented the PMS so that municipalities, as another sphere of Government, will improve service delivery as well as employee motivation. The EMM senior managers, together with the Human Resources department, should craft a strategy or action for the future in order to successfully cascade the PMS to other levels of employees. The EMM Performance Management Policy that is currently operational is in line with the Municipal Regulation no. R805, so the Policy complies fully with the legislation. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010.

Curling is an important part of the Canadian cultural landscape, and nowhere is this more evident than in Manitoba. However, the documentation of curling records within archival repositories in the province has occurred without a strategic plan. This thesis first explores the modern archival appraisal theories and then proposes an appraisal model that utilizes a combination of the documentation strategy and macroappraisal in order to develop a strategy for the documentation of curling in Manitoba. Using this model, this thesis first examines the historical and contemporary context of Canadian sport in order to determine curling’s place within it, and then identifies five key functions of curling in order to evaluate, using function-based appraisal methodologies, the quality of the records that have been collected in archival repositories. The functions, structures, and records of two urban curling clubs and one rural curling club in Manitoba are then examined as case studies, and an appraisal strategy is suggested in order to better ensure that the records documenting curling in Manitoba are preserved. This strategy can be used as a template not only for appraising the records of curling, but for all sports.

No description available.

Im Prüfjahr 2009 erhielten 842 Tiere (davon 492 Eber der Deutschen Landrasse) einen Prüfabschluss. 39 Eber mit hervorragender Eigenleistung wurden durch den Mitteldeutschen Schweinezuchtverband e.V als Besamungseber angekauft. Der Jahresbericht dokumentiert den Prüfablauf und die Prüfergebnisse. Bei den geprüften Rassen wurden u.a. die Mast- und Schlachtleistung sowie die Fleischqualität untersucht. Die Durchführung der Leistungsprüfung erfolgt praxisnah in Gruppen mit elektronischer Einzeltiererkennung und tierindividueller Erfassung des Futterverzehrs. Es erfolgt eine kombinierte Eigenleistungs-, Geschwister- und Nachkommenprüfung mit hohem Anteil Ebereigenleistungsprüfung zur züchterisch effizienten Nutzung der Prüfkapazitäten. Grundlage der Prüfung, die seit 1995 im Lehr- und Versuchsgut Köllitsch durchgeführt wird, sind die bundeseinheitlichen »Richtlinien für die Stationsprüfung auf Mastleistung, Schlachtkörperwert und Fleischbeschaffenheit beim Schwein (Geschwister- und Nachkommenprüfung)«, die vom Zentralverband der Deutschen Schweineproduktion e.V. herausgegeben werden.

Few health studies of psychological stress have examined individual socio-environmental stressors in the field at a daily path scale. An individual's conception of a stressful experience is inextricably linked to the process of cognitive appraisals, which are the meanings assigned to social situations and environments. Directly assessing individual stress exposures in the field as they are experienced requires mobile measures that are people-based, rather than using place- or activity-based proxies. The integration of time geography and psychology's theory of daily hassles/uplifts allow for the measurement of stressors from a geographic perspective. This study advances research on socio-environmental health exposures by (1) focusing on measuring a cognitive health exposure; (2) using mobile methods to acquire quantitative and qualitative field data; and (3) geo-referencing physiological responses to examine daily path patterns and commonalities in stress exposure. In this study, spatiotemporal paths linked with physiological measurement are combined with individual narratives on stress, place, and social situations to examine socio-environmental factors that influence stress exposures. Mobile measurement tools include wristwatch Global Positioning System (GPS) units with synched heart rate monitors and digital audio recorders. Stress as operationalized in this study is a negative cognitive appraisal and related physiological reaction to internal dialogues and the surrounding socio-environment assessed through heart rate reactivity (HRR) and individual accounts. Measuring geographically referenced physiological responses and personal accounts is a novel field approach that captures the acute stressful episodes that are a part of daily life. Results show that there is a difference between measuring stress through a static metric like the Student-Life Stress Inventory (SSI) and assessing stress with mobile self-report and monitored measures. The negative correlation between HRR and SSI total score appears to highlight the divide between fundamentally different measurement methods for stress exposures; active versus passive. Regardless of the relation with previous psychometrics the mobile measures used in this research produced a 75 percent concordance between the participants self-reported stress episodes and monitored heart rate (HR) logs. HRR episodes that build in intensity and then ebb toward the end are more common than those that have an abrupt beginning and ending point. The incorporation of ethnographic audio diaries and the participant survey provided insight about the influence of academic pressures on socio-environmental contexts relating to stress experiences.

This thesis explores the process of an annual appraisal strategy, ‘clinical conversation’, from the perspective of seven nurses who were assessed using this technique. The findings demonstrate that clinical conversation is a strategy which facilitates reflection, both as a solitary exercise and with others, to ensure that learning from experience is optimized. The research used a qualitative interpretive approach informed by the model of Grounded Theory espoused by Strauss and Corbin. All eight nurses who were assessed using the clinical conversation strategy were advanced practitioners working within the scope of sexual and reproductive health. Two of the actual appraisals were observed and seven of the nurses were interviewed within eight weeks of being assessed. The outcome of the clinical conversation was primarily one of learning; the acquisition of new insights into self as practitioner. The learning was facilitated through the process of narration; telling the story of clinical practice. Three distinct narrative cycles were identified, each an experiential learning episode. The experience of undertaking a variety of assessment activities created a narrative with self and triggered an internal reflective thinking process; the experience of working with a peer created an additional narrative, a mutual dialogue reflecting back on practice; the experience of sharing practice with an assessor created a further and final narrative, a learning conversation. Each narrative can be seen as a catalyst for change. Primarily, the nurses felt differently about themselves in practice, the way they saw themselves had shifted. Such a change can be described as an alteration in perspective. These alterations in perspective led all nurses to identify ways in which they would change their actual clinical practice. In this way the nurses attempted to align their espoused beliefs about practice with their actual practice. My study shows that each nurse responded differently to each narrative learning cycle: for some the conversation with the assessor was more of a catalyst for change than for others. In this way clinical conversation may be flexible enough to respond to a variety of differing learning styles. Learning was person specific which is an imperative for the continued professional development of already highly skilled clinicians. The implication of the research is that whilst clinical conversation was designed as a tool for appraising clinical competence, its intrinsic value lies in supporting the professional development of nurses.

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.

abstract: A model of the effects of early adolescents' temperament (negative emotionality and inhibitory control) and threat appraisals on resulting status in the bullying dynamic was examined. Specifically, I examined the hypothesis that negative emotionality and passive victim versus bully-victim status would be mediated by threat appraisals, and that mediated effect would be moderated by levels of inhibitory control. The study used a sample of 56 early adolescents ages 7–16. Temperament characteristics were measured using the EATQ–R (Capaldi & Rothbart, 1992). Threat appraisals were assessed using items from Hunter, Boyle, and Warden (2004). Bullying and victimization were measured using items created for this study and additional cyber bullying items (Smith, Mahdavi, Carvalho, & Tippett, 2006). A multinomial logistic regression and test of moderated mediation were analyzed to examine the model (Hayes, 2012). Higher levels of negative emotionality were correlated with being a victim of bullying. The moderated mediation model was not statistically significant, however the direction of the patterns fit the hypotheses. Future directions and limitations are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Psychology 2012

SILVA, Gerlylson Rubens dos Santos. Manifestações avaliativas de engajamento no gênero relatório de pesquisa produzido por alunos do ensino médio. 2016. 152f. – Dissertação (Mestrado) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Departamento de Letras Vernáculas, Programa de Pós-graduação em Linguística, Fortaleza (CE), 2016. / Submitted by Márcia Araújo (marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-06-15T11:09:41Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_dis_grssilva.pdf: 1387331 bytes, checksum: 23a31b5f082b2a37ee430ebed8c2b08e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Márcia Araújo (marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-06-15T11:43:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_dis_grssilva.pdf: 1387331 bytes, checksum: 23a31b5f082b2a37ee430ebed8c2b08e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-15T11:43:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_dis_grssilva.pdf: 1387331 bytes, checksum: 23a31b5f082b2a37ee430ebed8c2b08e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016 / Inserted into a context of interventions that aims to restructure the high school curriculum, Ceará public schools pride themselves with the arrival of an approach that brings new practices of literacy. This new approach, named Core Labor, Research and Social Policies (Núcleo de Trabalho, Pesquisa e Práticas Sociais – NTPPS), intends to develop socio-emotional skills of students in order to use scientific research as an educational principle in high school learning process. Within this context, this research seeks to verify the state of scientific literacy (MILLER, 1983; OSBONER, 2002; SANTOS 2007) of NTPPS students through the evaluative expressions of Engagement (MARTIN; WHITE, 2005) mobilized in Theoretical Framework section of their research reports. The study explains the association we conjecture that exists between certain dialogic choices assumed by the producer of the report and the state of scientific literacy evidenced by these linguistic marks. The corpus of this work, collected in July 2015, consists of thirty-six Theoretical Frameworks of scientific research reports produced by first-year students of high school. We analyze the data identifying the dialogic choices adopted by the producers and the inter-subjective level of engagement assumed in the construction of argumentative positions. The material revealed the presence of 810 evaluative expressions of Engagement, 222 classified as monoglossics and 588 classified as heteroglossics that pass by all the subcategories found in this subsystem classification network. More than a half of evaluations (60,5%) concerns of Dialogic Contractions while 39,5% enter in the expansive scope of dialogue. We observed that 61,5% of the Theoretical Frameworks present a range of linguistic marks of evaluation that reveal a minimum criteria of suitability in levels of engagement with the text, presenting appropriate evidences of authorial role. The analysis of the material allowed us to infer that the NTTPS intervention has shown positive results in the development of scientific literacy skills of high school students. The discursive practices ruled by scientific methodology, that had sporadically been worked in schools are, nowadays, parts of the school community as a belonging exercise of a large portion of students. We observe the consequences of this in their research reports, which we can view as representative products of the process of scientific literacy acquisition. / Inserida em um contexto de intervenções que visam à reestruturação do currículo do Ensino Médio, a educação pública cearense brinda a entrada de uma abordagem que pretende trazer à rotina escolar novas práticas de letramento. Essa nova abordagem carrega o título de Núcleo de Trabalho, Pesquisa e Práticas Sociais (NTPPS), objetiva desenvolver as competências socioemocionais do corpo discente e utilizar a pesquisa científica como princípio educacional no processo de aprendizagem do Ensino Médio. Dentro desse contexto, o presente trabalho busca verificar o estado das habilidades de letramento científico (MILLER,1983; OSBORNE, 2002; SANTOS, 2007) do aluno de NTPPS por meio das manifestações avaliativas de Engajamento (MARTIN e WHITE, 2005) acionadas na seção Referencial Teórico de seus relatórios de pesquisa. O estudo explica a associação que conjecturamos existir entre determinadas escolhas dialógicas assumidas pelo produtor textual e o estado de letramento científico evidenciado por essas marcas linguísticas. O corpus desse estudo, que teve sua coleta encerrada em julho de 2015, é formado por trinta e seis Referenciais Teóricos de relatórios de investigação científica produzidos por alunos matriculados na primeira série do Ensino Médio. Os dados foram analisados através da identificação das escolhas dialógicas adotadas pelos produtores textuais e do nível de engajamento intersubjetivo assumido na construção argumentativa dos posicionamentos. Em todo material de análise, foram pontuados 809 casos de avaliações por Engajamento, sendo 222 classificadas como avaliações monoglóssicas e 587 como avaliações heteroglóssicas que perpassam por todas as subcategorias encontradas na rede de classificação desse subsistema. Mais da metade das avaliações (60,5%) é calcada no solo das Contrações Dialógicas, enquanto 39,5% entram no âmbito expansivo do diálogo. Observamos que 61,5% dos Referenciais Teóricos apresentam uma gama de avaliações linguísticas que revelam o alcance de critérios mínimos de adequação em níveis de engajamento com o texto, apresentando adequadas evidências de protagonismo autoral. A análise desse material nos permitiu inferir que a intervenção NTPPS tem apresentado positivos resultados quanto ao desenvolvimento das competências de letramento científico dos alunos do Ensino Médio. As práticas discursivas regidas pela metodologia científica que, antes, eram trabalhadas na escola de forma esporádica, hoje, fazem parte da comunidade escolar como exercício de pertença de grande parcela dos alunos. Os reflexos disso são observados em seus relatórios de pesquisa, objetos vistos como produtos de representatividade do processo aquisitivo das competências do letramento científico.