This study set out to investigate reading ability and language proficiency as factors that affect the performance of grade 12 English Second Language (ESL) learners. It was prompted by a deep concern about the poor reading ability and language proficiency of grade 12 ESL learners. While studies have been carried out on factors affecting the performance of grade 12 ESL learners, few studies have looked at the impact of reading and language proficiency in South African schools especially in the Qumbu district. This study has gathered data on factors affecting the performance of grade 12 ESL learners. The study seeked to: (a) investigate the extent to which reading ability affects the performance of grade 12 ESL learners, (b) establish the extent to which language proficiency affects the performance of grade 12 ESL learners, (c) ascertain differences in the reading ability of learners in the selected schools, (d) ascertain differences in the language proficiency of learners in the selected schools and (e) ascertain differences in the June and September performance scores of learners in the selected schools. The study employed the quantitative method in order to manage the data collection. The researcher used a survey design. The stratified random sampling procedure was used to select participants from the four senior secondary schools i.e. two in the rural areas and two situated in the urban areas, with 30 learners in each school. Data was mainly collected through standardized tests administered on sampled ESL learners. The researcher analyzed the data collected by means of Statistical Package for Social Sciences. Findings were that both Rural Schools performed better than both Urban Schools in Language Proficiency. In Reading Ability when Urban Schools are combined, they performed better than rural schools. The researcher made a few recommendations.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors contributing to senior secondary school learners’ poor performance in science subjects in the Mount Frere Education District of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The literature analyses critically the existing knowledge based on factors contributing to poor performance of learners in science subjects and those factors that impact on learners’ positive attitudes towards science subjects. The study also identified literature on the following: motivational levels of science learners, teaching and learning strategies used in teaching science subjects, medium of instruction in the teaching and learning of science subjects, parental involvement in children’s learning, effects of lack of instructional materials on learner performance and learners’ attitudes towards science subjects. The study also examined the views of learners, teachers, Head of Department of sciences, parents and principals on factors contributing to poor performance of senior secondary school learners inscience subjects. The population for the study comprised of all principals, science teachers, science Head of Department, parents and science learners of the twenty six (26) senior secondary schools in the Mount Frere Education District. The principals, science teachers, science Head of Departments, parents of science learners and science learners in seven (7) senior secondary schools that offered science subjects were used as a sample in this study. The study employed the mixed method of quantitative and qualitative approaches. The research designs used were the survey and the case study. The instruments used were the questionnaires in which closed-ended questions were used to secure information and the interviews where open ended questions were used to collect data. The questionnaire as an instrument got tested in the pilot study to investigate the validity and reliability and also to identify possible deficiencies so as to rectify them. The responses were analyzed and presented in percentages using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) in the quantitative approach method of data analysis and in the qualitative data analysis process the researcher read through the data and became familiar with it and then identified the main themes and the next step was to examine the data in-depth and to provide detail descriptions of the participants’ words. The researcher also categorised and coded the data and then grouped them into themes and finally, interpreted the organised data into conclusion. The findings revealed that there was a lack of parental involvement, shortage of instructional materials, shortage of school laboratories, shortage of qualified science teachers and the learners’ negative attitudes towards science subjects. Recommendations were made concerning the above findings.

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Despite the ability for past studies to link various psychological factors to optimal athletic performances, the roles of specific factors have yet to be fully discerned. Using a phenomenological-constructionist approach, the present study aims to gather a sharpened understanding of the roles that confidence and focus have on elite sport performances. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 Canadian and Norwegian high-level athletes originating from various sporting backgrounds. The athletes were interrogated about their general perspectives towards confidence and focus, inquired about the nature of their focus with regards to different game situations and asked to revisit their best and worst performances with the emphasis put on their confidence level and focus. The analysis of the interviews was inductive and followed Giorgi’s (1985) phenomenological methodology. Results suggested that an optimal focus is very often, if not always, present in best performances and largely absent during worst performances, thus suggesting that focus indeed plays a direct role on sporting exploits. Furthermore, confidence appears to serve as a powerful facilitator for the occurrence of optimal focus, leading to suggest that its relationship with performance might be more indirect. The increased understanding of the roles that both confidence and focus have on athletic performance that is enlightened by this study can serve as basis for practitioners in the development of performance enhancement programs in addition to stimulate future research on the possible relationship between confidence, focus and performance.

Two problems were examined with respect to the influence of various preliminary warm-up procedures upon accuracy as measured by the basketball free throw; first, the hypothesis that scores following a related warm-up will be higher than scores without a warm-up or scores following an unrelated warm-up; second, that there will be no significant difference between performance following an unrelated warm-up and performance without preliminary warm-up exercise. Ten highly skilled basketball players were selected to serve as subjects in the experiment. Each player was tested nine times, three times after each of the conditions of (a) no warm-up, (b) related warm-up, and (c) unrelated warm-up. The order of the experimental conditions was rotated to balance out possible learning effects and to minimize the error that might be caused by systematic sequence of testing. Results indicated that the related warm-up was significantly more effective in producing better shooting scores than either the unrelated warm-up or shooting without a preliminary warming-up. Secondly, there was no significant difference between scores obtained without a warm-up and scores made following an unrelated warm-up. It was concluded that where a related warm-up is at all possible this method is recommended over the unrelated warm-up and no warm-up to facilitate an increase in basketball free throw accuracy. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the implementation of an internally created performance appraisal system as well as the subjects' overall satisfaction with the implementation. The system was implemented at a major technology consulting firm in the US. The subjects of this study were three levels of employees of the firm. An employee survey conducted annually at the firm included questions relating to the implementation of the performance appraisal system. Eight years of employees' responses to three key questions were analyzed. Employees' perceptions of the appraisal feedback aiding increased performance, their belief about the implementation assisting with their career management, satisfaction with the initiative, and their understanding of the requirements for promotion were captured by this survey. Trend analysis indicates that employees at the firm perceived their career path knowledge unimproved, their understanding of promotion criteria unimproved as a result of the implementation. Employees did not indicate overall satisfaction with the implementation and the employee's belief about their skills and abilities utilization did not improve post implementation.

The work reviews a article published by N. T. Feather about five approaches which relate to the analysis of behavior in a choice situation where a decision is made between alternatives having different subjective probabilities of attainment. The relationship between choice potential and success probability is affect by the type of situation in which the choice is made.

Orientador: Orlando Fontes Lima Junior / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Civil, Arquitetura e Urbanismo / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-07T18:08:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Villela_ThaisMariadeAndrade_M.pdf: 3685803 bytes, checksum: 8a9fd4cf269d37961e00fbc40b04875c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: : A aplicação do conceito de Supply Chain Management (SCM) no setor de serviços ainda não foi muito explorada na literatura. Por se tratar de um setor que vem aumentando cada vez mais sua participação na economia, identificou-se a importância de um estudo sobre o comportamento das redes logísticas neste setor. As redes analisadas nesta pesquisa foram: hospital de grande porte, rede bancária, assistência técnica e rede distribuidora de energia elétrica. O objetivo deste trabalho é identificar alguns atributos que influenciam no desempenho dessas redes. Os atributos identificados foram: complexidade, centralização, padronização, flexibilidade, velocidade, incerteza, acessibilidade, mobilidade e disponibilidade. Eles foram agrupados de acordo com seu comportamento dentro da rede (estrutura, processos ou relações) e analisados nos quatro diferentes serviços em questão. A metodologia adotada foi a de estudo de caso. Foi feito um levantamento de dados sobre essas redes, que englobou a obtenção de informações sobre o comportamento de cada atributo considerado. Após este levantamento, foi realizada uma análise qualitativa dos dados, e foram realizadas comparações entre os casos. Também foi feita uma comparação do comportamento de cada uma das redes com o comportamento médio padrão previsto no levantamento teórico realizado. Foram observadas diferenças no comportamento e no tratamento dado aos atributos entre as redes estruturalmente mais simples (hospital e assistência técnica) e as redes estruturalmente mais complexas (rede bancária e rede distribuidora de energia elétrica). ...Observação: O resumo, na íntegra, poderá ser visualizado no texto completo da tese digital / Abstract: The use of the Supply Chain Management (SCM) concept in the service sector has not been widely exploited yet. Due to this sector increasing participation in the economy, the need for an analysis of logistic networks in this sector was identified. In this work, it is presented a comparative analysis of the performance of logistics networks of the service sector, namely, hospital, technical assistance, retail bank network, and electric energy distribution network, in order to identify some' attributes that influence in the overall performance of each of these services. The attributes considered in this work are: complexity, centralization, standardization, flexibility, speed, uncertainty, accessibility, mobility and availability. They were organized according to their behavior into the network (structure-related, process-related, relation-related) and analyzed for each of the four services. The methodology adopted in this work was case study. A data survey was done in order to gather information about each of the considered attribute. Qualitative comparisons among the cases were performed, as well as a comparison between each network and the expected average standard behavior identified in the literature. Some differences were observed in the attributes' behavior and treatment among structurally simple networks (hospital and technical assistance) and structurally complex networks (retail bank network and electric energy distribution network). ...Note: The complete abstract is available with the full electronic digital thesis or dissertations / Mestrado / Transportes / Mestre em Engenharia Civil

Transit agencies have the opportunity to improve the delivery of services by using data from Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). On-time performance is an important measure. The objective of this paper is to adjust the timetables so that the probability of on-time performance is maximized. For this purpose we analyze data distributions of travel time and also consider the general case that data distribution is unknown. Statistical procedures are presented to find scheduled time for some selected distributions. Monte Carlo simulation is introduced for the purpose of finding scheduled time when data distribution is not known. Simulation studies indicate that the on-time performance would increase using the proposed methodology. The contribution of this paper is to provide transit system a procedure to set up or update their timetables based on current ITS data and its distribution, and hence increase level of service.

FRAGMENTS OF ENCOUNTERS is an experimental interactive performance project operating within a 'practice as research' (PaR) paradigm-defined as a continually emergent and open-ended process. The participation and interaction of the audience and the feedback received from lecturers and fellow students were central to the development of this research and are integrated in my work. Description of this feedback and its impact will be visible throughout this paper. I will be engaging with my research through the lens of two performances, fragments of encounters 1 & 2, which act as embodiments to my research. The work(s) is a narrative about lives relieved through memory and whose re-narration gives rise to a new present time-that of the narrative, which is the performance. The subject of my research is fragment(ation) seen through the prism of memory, however, not as a main subject but close to Henri Bergson's shining points, round which other subjects 'form a vague nebulosity' (2002:171). The making of this project began in the street; from my interaction with people of different ages and from different socio-political and cultural realities. These encounters make up a personal audio archive of oral interviews recorded, which serves as the source material for my project. The recorded material are life-fragments-memories of the people interviewed and fragments of my own. Overlapping with Herman Parret's (1988) vision, for whom 'life' is a narrative and the narration time is an 'invented' time, the archive I present in my practice is a 'construct', and the re-fragmentation of the fragments of memories in the work opens a field of possibilities of interpretation. Some of these possible reinterpretations are actualised at each re-narration. This in turn opens new interpretations, possibilities or actualisations. By fragmentation and re-narration a mosaic of fragments-memories originate, which are in effect re-narratives... ad infinitum. In the same time, the possibilities that remained unactualised, not narrated, but which are virtual real, amplify the state of tension and uncertainty provoked by fragmentation, which in the end can lead to chaos.