Teaching Presence: Co-Creating a Multi-National Online Learning Community in an Asynchronous Classroom

Effective teaching presence in a multi-national online class involves building student confidence, affirming student voice, and the strategic use of groups. Effective instructor techniques include setting up the class, having ongoing public and private interaction with students, giving effective feedback, and valuing cultural differences

Making the Invisible Visible: A Cross‐Sector Analysis of Gender‐Based Leadership Barriers

Despite an abundance of educated, qualified women in the workforce, they continue to be underrepresented at the top of institutional leadership hierarchies. Theories of gendered organizations explain that work processes reproduce gendered structures of society in the workplace. These processes advantage men while forming barriers to women\u27s success. This paper extends critical human resource development (HRD) theory by applying the concept of sexism hidden in the workplace to leadership and by outlining both social and organizational practices that create gender inequities in leadership. Our cross‐sector analysis of women leaders in religion and higher education revealed twenty‐seven gender‐based leadership barriers which operate at the macro, meso, and micro levels of society. We argue that most current efforts to promote women into leadership focus one by one on only a few barriers, primarily those within organizations, while failing to take into account the wide variety of barriers and their prevalence across all societal levels. We offer strategies to address barriers across all three levels to help organizations create gender‐equitable leadership environments

Foregrounding Women in the Doctoral Classroom: Mainstreaming and Single-Sex Approaches to Graduate Education

An increasing number of published studies have drawn attention to gender disparities in various dimensions of Christian higher education. Although the majority of students on the campuses of member institutions of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) are women, and the percentage of women holding faculty and administrative roles has increased, the male-normed environment of the academy continues to be evident in various ways, particularly in these Christian institutions. At the same time, higher education--and doctoral education in particular--is an important pathway to prepare future leaders and professors for Christian organizations. One potential way to begin to shift toward a more welcoming climate that benefits both men and women on CCCU campuses is to foreground, or make central, women\u27s issues and concerns as part of regular classroom teaching. Such foregrounding can help counter the historic tendency to treat men\u27s experience and concerns as normative for the human race. In the discipline of missiology, women make up the bulk of the practitioners yet are underrepresented as scholars, making it a pertinent field to challenge the neglect of women\u27s voices and concerns in the academy. This article describes how a missiology classroom has been used to create a climate where women have opportunities to be central and where women\u27s perspectives are treated as equally important as men\u27s perspectives. To do this, I used three key practices: intentionally addressing gendered topics in mixed classes, offering selected singlesex education opportunities for women, and focusing on gender-related topics for research and publication. Using the discipline of missiology as a case study in relation to the importance of giving women\u27s contributions to the field both recognition and voice may also offer transferable insights for doctoral faculty in other disciplines

Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry: An Opportunity for Transformative Learning to Occur?

Life in the 21st century is increasingly complex, paradoxical, and ambiguous, bringing into question the ways that graduate adult education programs function. In this article, we describe an action research study involving the method of collaborative developmental action inquiry conducted with key stakeholders of a program in adult education at a research one university. Collaborative developmental action inquiry created opportunities for transformative learning to take place. The study process and outcomes suggest that the method and practices of collaborative developmental action inquiry could themselves create favorable conditions for transformative learning to occur

Women’s ways of leading: the environmental effect

This paper aims to present a model describing how women enact executive leadership, taking into account gendered organizational patterns that may constrain women to perform leadership in context-specific ways. Design/methodology/approach This paper discusses gendered organizations, role congruity theory and organizational culture and work context. These strands of theory are interwoven to construct a model describing ways in which executive-level women are constrained to self-monitor based on context. Findings The pressure on women to conform to an organization’s executive leadership culture is enormous. Executive women in strongly male-normed executive leadership contexts must exercise strong gendered self-constraint to break through the glass ceiling. Women in strongly male-normed contexts using lessened gendered self-constraint may encounter a glass cliff. Women in gender-diverse-normed contexts may still operate using strong gendered self-constraint due to internalized gender scripts. Only in gender-diverse-normed contexts with lessened gendered-self-restraint can executive women operate from their authentic selves. Practical implications Organizational leaders should examine their leadership culture to determine levels of pressure on women to act with gendered self-constraint and to work toward creating change. Women may use the model to make strategic choices regarding whether or how much to self-monitor based on their career aspirations and life goals. Originality/value Little has been written on male-normed and gender-diverse-normed contexts as a marker for how executive-level women perform leadership. This paper offers a model describing how different contexts constrain women to behave in specific, gendered ways

Women in the mission of the church their opportunities and obstacles throughout Christian history

Women have been central to the work of Christian ministry from the time of Jesus to the twenty-first century. Yet the story of Christianity is too often told as a story of men. This accessibly written book tells the story of women throughout church history, demonstrating their integral participation in the church\u27s mission. It highlights the legacies of a wide variety of women, showing how they have overcome obstacles to their ministries and have transformed cultural constraints to spread the gospel and build the church.https://digitalcommons.biola.edu/faculty-books/1547/thumbnail.jp

Playing by the Rules: How Women Lead in Evangelical Mission Organizations

The purpose of this study was to understand how women lead and make meaning of their leadership in evangelical mission organizations. Twelve executive-level women were interviewed. They described how they came to lead and told stories of their successes and challenges. They also described their thoughts on why they were chosen to lead, and what it was like to be a woman leader in their organizations. Analysis of their stories revealed their challenges as well as organizations’ ongoing ambivalence regarding women leaders. Conclusions from the study and suggestions for improved organizational practice are offered.https://digitalcommons.biola.edu/faculty-books/1645/thumbnail.jp

Research: How Bias Against Women Persists in Female-Dominated Workplaces

New research examines gender bias within four industries with more female than male workers — law, higher education, faith-based nonprofits, and health care. Having balanced or even greater numbers of women in an organization is not, by itself, changing women’s experiences of bias. Bias is built into the system and continues to operate even when more women than men are present. Leaders can use these findings to create gender-equitable practices and environments which reduce bias. First, replace competition with cooperation. Second, measure success by goals, not by time spent in the office or online. Third, implement equitable reward structures, and provide remote and flexible work with autonomy. Finally, increase transparency in decision making

An overview of gender-based leadership barriers

Chapter 1

When People Assume You’re Not In Charge Because You’re a Woman

Role incredulity is a form of gender bias where women are mistakenly assumed to be in a support or stereotypically female role — an administrative assistant, nurse, wife, or girlfriend, for instance — rather than a leadership or stereotypically male role, such as CEO, professor, lawyer, doctor, or engineer. While this slight or mistake might seem innocuous, it can have real ramifications for women. Women must expend extra energy and time to assert and prove their role. Their words may lack the credibility and authority inherent in their position. And when women are not seen as a leader, they may be less likely to be hired into male-dominated roles or to be considered for promotions. While the real issue of role incredulity is systemic, there are steps organizational leaders, workplace allies, and women themselves can take to prevent and correct it., including setting organizational norms, being an ally, owning your mistakes, and, if you’re a woman, proactively identifying your role