An acute shortage of African American teachers is well recognized. This shortage poses a problem as school systems attempt to employ a representative number of African American teachers commensurate to their diverse student population. The purpose of this study was to examine why 10 African American teachers in Roanoke City selected teaching and remain in the profession and how those reasons were influenced by two motivational variables (academic self-concept of ability and self-efficacy). Factors further affecting this relationship, such as environmental influences (i.e., home, school, and community)and institutional influences (i.e., experiences in the workplace,job satisfaction, and school climate), also were examined. The research design was a single explanatory case study. Yin (1994) contends that "how" and "why" questions (as used in this study) are explanatory in nature and suitable for a case-study design. Two sources of data were used: an initial survey instrument on environmental factors and a second survey on institutional factors. Two separate interviews were conducted with both instruments. Both sources were intended to capture participants' perceptions relevant to their experiences. A purposive sample of 10 local African American teachers was selected. Pattern matching and explanation building were the dominant modes of analysis. A conversational style with narratives written was used to reflect the richness of language used by the participants to describe their experiences. Findings revealed that home environmental experiences and preparation for teaching were positive overall because of practices used by parents and family members to socialize the the participants for success in school. Both direct assistance with school work and verbal encouragement enhanced academic self-concept of ability and self-efficacy for success in school and in teaching. School experiences before and during college were found rewarding and challenging. However, both types of experiences enhanced self-concept of ability and self-efficacy in attaining a teaching career as well as succeeding and remaining in the profession. Overall, rewarding experiences outweighed challenging ones. High expectations, assistance with school work, and teacher role models were typical examples of such experiences. Two major community influences played a significant role in interest and retention in teacher-education programs: (a) involvement in church activities and (b) sponsorship for teacher-education programs through partnerships with business and industry. The former reinforced self-concept in ability, and the latter afforded some participants an opportunity to attend college and enter a teacher-education program. Results on institutional factors and teacher retention were associated with experiences as classroom teachers, interactions with colleagues,relationships with building principals, and perceptions of the school system as a whole. / Ed. D.

L’étude porte sur la notion grecque de κρίσις, alors que les études antiques ont souvent recours à une notion moderne de la crise. L’épopée, la Collection hippocratique et les dialogues de Platon forment le corpus. Les analyses de κρίσις issues de recherches déjà menées sur ces textes étaient très disparates. Il a été possible de résorber une partie de ces différences et de définir une notion générale de la κρίσις, par des enquêtes lexicales exhaustives. La κρίσις apparaît alors comme une action qui achève un conflit et permet, entre deux états ou conditions considérés comme opposés, une disjonction, subite accélération du cours des événements qui résout les affres de l’attente. La séparation et la décision assurent le passage du péril à un élan vital nouveau : la κρίσις permet la γένεσις. Ces traits de la notion, apparus dès l’épopée, où le mot désigne différentes décisions à la puissance génératrice et salvatrice soudaine, se retrouvent dans la « crise » médicale, guérison souvent subite, bien que prévisible en partie par l’art du pronostic, qui assure la reconstitution de l’équilibre de santé. La κρίσις platonicienne, jugement ou discernement, permet différents passages (de l’obscur au lumineux, de l’impur au pur, du malsain au sain), mais aussi, plus généralement, la régénération de l’âme. Elle restaure la fécondité de la pensée, conduit à une réincarnation sous une forme meilleure, et ordonne la recomposition de la vie bonne à partir d’éléments triés (Philèbe). En tant qu’instant qui décide d’une renaissance, point culminant de l’effort philosophique, la κρίσις voit aussi sa puissance libératrice dramatisée dans le dialogue. / My research is devoted to the Greek notion of κρίσις whereas classical studies usually favour the modern notion of crisis. It focuses on the Epic, the Hippocratic Corpus and Plato’s dialogues. The existing research on κρίσις has led to extremely varied results. My work offerts to reunite these differences in order to define a more general notion of κρίσις, thanks to a comprehensive lexical analysis. The κρίσις seems to be an act which puts an end to a conflict, thus enabling a breach between two opposite states. Time suddenly speeds, and the long torment resolves. Thanks to selection and decision making, danger gives way to a new life force: κρίσις enables γένεσις. These characteristics can already be found in the Epic where κρίσις refers to various decisions suddenly bringing generation and salvation. The medical notion of crisis is also a sudden recovery even though it can partially be predicted by prognosis, which brings health and balance back. The platonic κρίσις, which is akin to judging or discerning something, allows various changes (from darkness to light, from impurity to purity, from sickness to health) and ultimately enables the soul to regenerate. Fertility of the thought is restored; the soul can be reincarnated in a better shape or life reassembled with carefully selected elements (Philebus). As a turning point for a possible rebirth, as the climax of philosophical endeavours, the liberating power of the κρίσις has also often been dramatized in dialogues.

Today, most products are produced by several dependent subprocesses. This paper considers the economic-statistical process control for two dependent subprocesses with two assignable causes following Weibull shock distributions. We construct the individual X control chart to monitor the in-coming quality produced by previous process, and use the cause-selecting control chart to monitor the specific quality produced by current process. By using the charts, we can effectively and economically distinguish which subprocess is out of control. The renewal theorem approach is extended to construct the cost model for our proposed control charts, and the successive quadratic programming algorithm and a finite difference gradient method in the Fortran IMSL subroutine (dnconf) is used to determine the optimal design parameters of the proposed control charts. Finally, we give an example to show how to construct and apply the proposed control charts. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis illustrates the effects of cost and process parameters on the optimal design parameters and the minimal expected cost per unit time for the proposed control charts.

在子製程相關下所產生的品質特性資料使Shewhart管制圖無法對各別的製程狀態加以解釋，而選控圖可診斷前後製程的責任歸屬。本文提出有n個子製程時，建立選控圖的方法及在製程上之應用，以追蹤製程變異之發生，明確地劃分出子製程的責任歸屬。文中並以模擬資料和實際例證說明，在相關品質特性的資料中，選控圖的建立及診斷效果。在實務上，若產品是由許多相關的子製程共同製造而成時，對於受到前製程影響的品質特性，即可用選控圖進行管制，以獲得正確的製程狀態訊息，並進一步採取正確的管制行動。

<p>This study investigates the most important reasons behind the rst-year students' decision to select University of the Western Cape (UWC) as higher education institution.<br /> These reasons were organized into a few factors for easy interpretation. The data to be analyzed for this project is a subsection of the data collected during the orientation period of 2008. During the orientation week of 2008, the questionnaires were completed on a voluntary basis by new rst-year students. All questionnaires were anonymously completed and therefore the data does not contain any information that could be linked to any individual. For the purpose of this study, only the black African and coloured students were considered. The other racial groups were not analyzed due to too small sample sizes. Questionnaires with missing information on the reasons for selecting UWC were not&nbsp / nalyzed. We ended up with a sample of size 600. The data were statistically analyzed, using descriptive statistics, bivariate analyses, factor analysis, coefficient of congruence and bootstrap factor analysis. The results indicated that the most important reasons aecting students to choose UWC were identied as good academic reputation, family member's advice, UWC graduates are successful and UWC graduates get good jobs. The least important reasons were found to be not accepted anywhere, parents / family members graduated from UWC, recruited by UWC and wanted to study near to home. The results also indicated that there were significant differences among students according to population groups, parent's monthly income and grade 12 average. Factor analysis of 12 variables yielded three extracted factors upon which student decisions were based. Similarities of these three factors were tested, and a high similarity among demographic characteristics and grade 12 average were found. Additional analyses were conducted to measure the accuracy of factor analyses models constructed using Spearman and Polychoric correlation matrices. The results indicated that both correlation matrices were&nbsp / nbiased, with higher variance and higher loadings when the Polychoric correlation matrix was used to construct a factor analysis model for categorical data.</p>

Since last year 2008, the economy has started going down and the unemployment rate has risen uncontrollably. Our government promised to take the citizens out of this bad condition. To improve the citizen satisfaction, the government should lead the whole government team to progress. And before doing so, understanding the attitude of civil servants is very important, because the higher satisfaction the civil servants have, the harder they will work. However, the issue about employment satisfaction is widely researched by many scholars. As a result, this research will focus on the six HRM practice practices , which are selecting , training and development, performance appraisal, organization structure and process , communication and rewards. In this study, the main research intends to understand the difference between the perception of the civil servants on the current stage and their perception of the ideal condition. And the personal characteristics impact on the employment satisfaction. This study concluded the main results as follows: 1. There appears significant difference in HRM practices between civil servant¡¦s actual and ideal perception. 2. Person characteristics will affect the satisfaction of civil servants in different HRM practice dimensions.

This paper presents the work in progress regarding an international research project based on an empirical survey. It focuses on the early stages of making the adoption decision, thereafter evaluating and selecting an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system prior to implementation in Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs). The project seeks to close some of the identified gaps in ERP research. In addition, it attempts to link the results of the early stages of decision making to implementation, usage and evolution success in order to allow important conclusions to be made, for example, on the best practices in decision making or decision quality and success. This project will be restricted to the case of ERP software but will also give insights into the potential of integrating ERP and other important applications such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Supply Chain Management (SCM). The proposed research seeks to identify any differences and similarities contributing to the analysed research areas between British and Austrian companies. The choice of companies originating from two different regions in Europe is an important precondition in order to formulate results that will be applicable to the European Union in general. Due to the pervasive nature of ERP systems, our research results should be of interest to a wide range of professional and scholarly communities (from software engineering to accounting), in addition to the Information Systems (IS) field. The results presented should especially help practitioners in SMEs facing the important task of introducing an ERP system into their company. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers on Information Systems, Information Business and Operations

<p>This study investigates the most important reasons behind the rst-year students' decision to select University of the Western Cape (UWC) as higher education institution.<br /> These reasons were organized into a few factors for easy interpretation. The data to be analyzed for this project is a subsection of the data collected during the orientation period of 2008. During the orientation week of 2008, the questionnaires were completed on a voluntary basis by new rst-year students. All questionnaires were anonymously completed and therefore the data does not contain any information that could be linked to any individual. For the purpose of this study, only the black African and coloured students were considered. The other racial groups were not analyzed due to too small sample sizes. Questionnaires with missing information on the reasons for selecting UWC were not&nbsp / nalyzed. We ended up with a sample of size 600. The data were statistically analyzed, using descriptive statistics, bivariate analyses, factor analysis, coefficient of congruence and bootstrap factor analysis. The results indicated that the most important reasons aecting students to choose UWC were identied as good academic reputation, family member's advice, UWC graduates are successful and UWC graduates get good jobs. The least important reasons were found to be not accepted anywhere, parents / family members graduated from UWC, recruited by UWC and wanted to study near to home. The results also indicated that there were significant differences among students according to population groups, parent's monthly income and grade 12 average. Factor analysis of 12 variables yielded three extracted factors upon which student decisions were based. Similarities of these three factors were tested, and a high similarity among demographic characteristics and grade 12 average were found. Additional analyses were conducted to measure the accuracy of factor analyses models constructed using Spearman and Polychoric correlation matrices. The results indicated that both correlation matrices were&nbsp / nbiased, with higher variance and higher loadings when the Polychoric correlation matrix was used to construct a factor analysis model for categorical data.</p>

[pt] O uso de compensação de potência reativa, embora permita um carregamento mais elevado do sistema elétrico, leva-o a operar próximo de situações de colapso de tensão. Portanto, tornou-se necessário analisar o comportamento do sistema quanto a esse fenômeno na ocorrência de contingências. Neste trabalho alguns métodos existentes são estudados para verificar a capacidade de classificação das contingências que possam afetar o sistema, e como esses métodos procedem para ordená-las por severidade e selecionar aquelas mais prejudiciais. Os métodos são estudados tendo como foco principal a operação em tempo real. Este trabalho propõe um método capaz de ordenar e selecionar uma lista de contingências prováveis, com base em índices nodais de avaliação das condições de segurança de tensão. Esses índices são baseados na margem em MVA para o máximo carregamento, indicam a região de operação na curva V x P, Q e a importância relativa entre barras. O Índice de Sensitividade, que indica a redução da margem de potência diante de uma contingência, é estudado minuciosamente. Além da análise nodal, também é proposta uma forma de análise sistêmica, capaz de ordenar e selecionar as contingências de acordo com as influências sobre todo o sistema elétrico. São apresentados resultados numéricos correspondentes ao sistema Brasileiro Interligado Norte-Nordeste, com carga máxima de junho de 1992. A análise da eficiência computacional do método proposto demonstrou ser possível sua utilização na operação em tempo real integrado à ferramenta de avaliação da segurança de tensão, através de uma estrutura de dados comum aos dois processos. / [en] Although the use of compensation of reactive power allows a higher loading in the electric system, it leads it to work closer to voltage collapse situations. Therefore it`s necessary to assess the behavior of the system regarding to this phenomena in the occurrence of the contingencies. In this work some existing methods are studied to check the capacity of ranking the contingencies that might affect the system, and how these methods rank them by severity and select those which are more damaging. The methods are studied having as the main focus the real-time operation. This work proposes a method which is able to rank and select a list of probable contingencies, having as a basis, nodal indexes of voltage security conditions assessment. These indexes are based on MVA margin to the maximum loading, indicate the region of operation on V x P,Q curve, and the relative importance among buses. The sensitivity index which indicates the reduction of the power margin before a contingency, is studied in detail. Besides the nodal analysis, it is proposed a form of a systemic analysis which is able to rank and select the contingencies according to their influence upon all electrical system. Numerical results corresponding to the North-Northeast Brazilian Interconected power system, with maximum load of June 1992 are presented. The analysis of computational efficiency of the proposed method showed that it`s possible to be used in real-time operation connected to the voltage assessment security tool, through a common structure of data to both procedures.

Magister Scientiae - MSc / This study investigates the most important reasons behind the rst-year students' decision to select University of the Western Cape (UWC) as higher education institution. These reasons were organized into a few factors for easy interpretation. The data to be analyzed for this project is a subsection of the data collected during the orientation period of 2008. During the orientation week of 2008, the questionnaires were completed on a voluntary basis by new rst-year students. All questionnaires were anonymously completed and therefore the data does not contain any information that could be linked to any individual. For the purpose of this study, only the black African and coloured students were considered. The other racial groups were not analyzed due to too small sample sizes. Questionnaires with missing information on the reasons for selecting UWC were not nalyzed. We ended up with a sample of size 600. The data were statistically analyzed, using descriptive statistics, bivariate analyses, factor analysis, coefficient of congruence and bootstrap factor analysis. The results indicated that the most important reasons a ecting students to choose UWC were identi ed as good academic reputation, family member's advice, UWC graduates are successful and UWC graduates get good jobs. The least important reasons were found to be not accepted anywhere, parents / family members graduated from UWC, recruited by UWC and wanted to study near to home. The results also indicated that there were significant differences among students according to population groups, parent's monthly income and grade 12 average. Factor analysis of 12 variables yielded three extracted factors upon which student decisions were based. Similarities of these three factors were tested, and a high similarity among demographic characteristics and grade 12 average were found. Additional analyses were conducted to measure the accuracy of factor analyses models constructed using Spearman and Polychoric correlation matrices. The results indicated that both correlation matrices were&nbsp; nbiased, with higher variance and higher loadings when the Polychoric correlation matrix was used to construct a factor analysis model for categorical data. / South Africa