Macroappraisal, the Next Frontier: An Approach for Appraising Large and Complex Government Institutions

“Macroappraisal, the next frontier” describes a records disposition pilot project which was based on a refinement of the current macroappraisal methodology in use at Library and Archives Canada. Still very much a work in progress, the refined approach builds upon macroappraisal theory and methodology, and this paper presents its application to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, a major federal government department in the Government of Canada. The project focused on providing the institution with total records disposition coverage based on a single archival appraisal and two Records Disposition Authorities. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of appraising records at the mandate level instead of at the function or program level. It also outlines and points to the benefits and advantages of appraising large government institutions intheir totality rather than in smaller, discrete sectors, branches, or divisions. We wish to thank the journal’s readers for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. We also wish to thank Candace Loewen for her insights, comments, and encouragement. Thanks are also extended to our colleagues who commented on various aspects of the project during Library and Archives Canada (LAC) appraisal seminars. Kerry Badgley also wishes to thank Sarah, Paul, and Shannon Badgley for providing a daily reminder of why it is important to document the past.     

A developmental study of school performance explanations of 6 to 11-year-olds: Causal differentiation and internality norm

Children's explanations of their performances are characterized by an increase of internal explanations over external ones. Originally considered a manifestation of cognitive development, this change has more recently been considered as an appropriation of a social norm. Two investigations are presented analyzing development of causal explanations of success and failure in mathematics and drawing. In the first study, two measures of causal attribution are compared in order to show that the use of unipolar scales is more suitable for illustrating differences in causal factors progressively operated by children. The hypothesis of the appropriation of a norm of internality is investigated in the second study. Results do not confirm this hypothesis and further, they cannot be interpreted solely in terms of cognitive development. They are discussed in the frame of a theory of socio-cognitive development.     

The persistence of social attraction in socially deprived and satiated rats

Pairs of socially deprived or satiated rats were observed for 71÷2 continuous hours in an open field. Social contact increased monotonically throughout this time, with socially deprived animals showing more attraction, and a greater increase in attraction, than satiated animals. The quality of social contact changed, however, from a predominantly active interaction, in which the most sociable animals were most mobile, to a predominantly passive huddling, in which the most sociable animals were least mobile. The results suggest that social attraction in rats is not transitory, and may serve several different functions.     

On the compression of search trees

Let X=_x1,_x2,…,_xn$X=x_1\text{,}{x}_2\text{,}\dots \text{,}{x}_n$ be a sequence of non-decreasing integer values. Storing a compressed representation of X that supports access and search is a problem that occurs in many domains. The most common solution to this problem uses a linear list and encodes the differences between consecutive values with encodings that favor small numbers. This solution includes additional information (i.e. samples) to support efficient searching on the encoded values. We introduce a completely different alternative that achieves compression by encoding the differences in a search tree. Our proposal has many applications, such as the representation of posting lists, geographic data, sparse bitmaps, and compressed suffix arrays, to name just a few. The structure is practical and we provide an experimental evaluation to show that it is competitive with the existing techniques.     

Predicting intraindividual changes in teacher burnout: The role of perceived school environment and motivational factors

Based on self-determination theory, this study proposes and tests a motivational model of intraindividual changes in teacher burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment). Participants were 806 French-Canadian teachers in public elementary and high schools. Results show that changes in teachers’ perceptions of classroom overload and students’ disruptive behavior are negatively related to changes in autonomous motivation, which in turn negatively predict changes in emotional exhaustion. Results also indicate that changes in teachers’ perceptions of students’ disruptive behaviors and school principal’s leadership behaviors are related to changes in self-efficacy, which in turn negatively predict changes in three burnout components.     

Practices and opinions reported by coordinators of graduate programs

Information is presented about the organization of graduate studies, based on questionnaire responses of 582 coordinators of Canadian graduate programs. These coordinators, who were representative of disciplines and geographic regions, provided information about a wide range of matters, including enrolments, staff, admissions, supervision, research, publications, financial support, teaching experience, and completion rates and times. Many substantial differences were noted among the percentage frequencies of responses for departments classified by discipline and size. For example, students were perceived to choose their doctoral theses topics themselves much more frequently in education, social sciences, and humanities than in engineering, medical sciences, physical sciences, and biological sciences. Also, departments with smaller numbers of full-time graduate students tended to provide all doctoral students, with some teaching experience to a greater extent than did larger departments.