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Coaching Practices for Facilitating Reflection Toward Transformative Insight: A Constructive-Developmental Perspective
Responding to gaps in the executive coaching literature, this study’s purpose was to identify coaching practices for facilitating growth in leaders’ developmental capacity to help them more successfully navigate the demands of their increasingly complex contexts.
Through the lenses of transformative learning (Mezirow, 1978, 1991, 2000) and constructive-developmental theory (Kegan, 1982, 1994), this study aimed to identify and understand coaching practices for facilitating reflection (at content, process, and premise levels) toward transformative insight, conceptualized as an insight occurring at the heart of Mezirow’s perspective transformation and Kegan’s subject-object move. Also, using constructive-developmental theory, this study explored how a select sample of executive coaches with various developmental capacities or forms of mind differ in their understanding of these practices.
This exploratory multiple-person case study investigated the experiences of 21 executive coaches via semi-structured interviews. Thematic data analysis revealed 16 coaching practice themes across all three levels of reflection. Given the importance of premise reflection in the literature, an unexpected finding was that these practices were used less than 10% of the time. An overarching process and coaching practices model for facilitating transformative insight emerged, describing the movement from a client’s current way of knowing (experienced as limiting) to a new way of knowing (seen as more desirable and effective).
Using constructive-developmental theory’s methodology, the Subject-Object Interview (Lahey, et al., 1988), participants’ forms of mind were identified. A comparative developmental analysis revealed that coaches with different forms of mind used reflective practices (from all themes and levels of reflection) to a similar extent and with similar intent. However, the qualitative differences that emerged followed the “transcend and include” principle, meaning that coaches, with each subsequent (and more complex) form of mind, expanded upon the ways in which these practices were used by coaches with a less complex form of mind.
Findings confirmed and expanded upon the coaching processes and practices related to transformative learning and the constructive-developmental literature, uniting them in similarities and differences and integrating them into an overall system for facilitating transformative insight. Implications for scholars, practitioners, and coach educators interested in transformative coaching with developmental impact are discussed
Strong covalent bonding between two graphene layers
We show that two graphene layers stacked directly on top of each other (AA
stacking) form strong chemical bonds when the distance between planes is 0.156
nm. Simultaneously, C-C in-plane bonds are considerably weakened from partial
double-bond (0.141 nm) to single bond (0.154 nm). This polymorphic form of
graphene bilayer is meta-stable w.r.t. the one bound by van der Waals forces at
a larger separation (0.335 nm) with an activation energy of 0.16 eV/cell.
Similarly to the structure found in hexaprismane, C forms four single bonds in
a geometry mixing 90^{0} and 120^{0} angles. Intermediate separations between
layers can be stabilized under external anisotropic stresses showing a rich
electronic structure changing from semimetal at van der Waals distance, to
metal when compressed, to wide gap semiconductor at the meta-stable minimum.Comment: tar gzip latex 4 pages 4 figure
Resting-state fMRI activity predicts unsupervised learning and memory in an immersive virtual reality environment
In the real world, learning often proceeds in an unsupervised manner without explicit instructions or feedback. In this study, we employed an experimental paradigm in which subjects explored an immersive virtual reality environment on each of two days. On day 1, subjects implicitly learned the location of 39 objects in an unsupervised fashion. On day 2, the locations of some of the objects were changed, and object location recall performance was assessed and found to vary across subjects. As prior work had shown that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures of resting-state brain activity can predict various measures of brain performance across individuals, we examined whether resting-state fMRI measures could be used to predict object location recall performance. We found a significant correlation between performance and the variability of the resting-state fMRI signal in the basal ganglia, hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus, insula, and regions in the frontal and temporal lobes, regions important for spatial exploration, learning, memory, and decision making. In addition, performance was significantly correlated with resting-state fMRI connectivity between the left caudate and the right fusiform gyrus, lateral occipital complex, and superior temporal gyrus. Given the basal ganglia's role in exploration, these findings suggest that tighter integration of the brain systems responsible for exploration and visuospatial processing may be critical for learning in a complex environment
Prediction failure blocks the use of local semantic context
Before accumulation of recent experimental evidence, prediction was thought to
be too prone to failure and thus too costly for language comprehension. Although
prediction is now widely assumed, questions about the costs of prediction failure
and recovery still remain. An event-related potentials study using highly
constraining Italian sentence contexts addressed these questions. It manipulated
how predictive local contexts were for target nouns after cueing comprehenders
to the status of global sentential predictions with article gender congruence.
Predictive local contexts reduced target noun N400 amplitude when the
preceding article’s gender was congruent with global predictions, but not when
gender was incongruent. This suggests that prediction failure impeded the
facilitative use of local context for target nouns. Predictive local contexts
following gender incongruence also elicited a broader late frontal positivity on
target nouns, suggesting further recovery difficulties. Prediction failures,
therefore, are not cost-free, and recovery from these failures requires further
consideratio
Angular Forces Around Transition Metals in Biomolecules
Quantum-mechanical analysis based on an exact sum rule is used to extract an
semiclassical angle-dependent energy function for transition metal ions in
biomolecules. The angular dependence is simple but different from existing
classical potentials. Comparison of predicted energies with a
computer-generated database shows that the semiclassical energy function is
remarkably accurate, and that its angular dependence is optimal.Comment: Tex file plus 4 postscript figure
Therapeutic target-site variability in α1-antitrypsin characterized at high resolution
The intrinsic propensity of [alpha]1-antitrypsin to undergo conformational transitions from its metastable native state to hyperstable forms provides a motive force for its antiprotease function. However, aberrant conformational change can also occur via an intermolecular linkage that results in polymerization. This has both loss-of-function and gain-of-function effects that lead to deficiency of the protein in human circulation, emphysema and hepatic cirrhosis. One of the most promising therapeutic strategies being developed to treat this disease targets small molecules to an allosteric site in the [alpha]1-antitrypsin molecule. Partial filling of this site impedes polymerization without abolishing function. Drug development can be improved by optimizing data on the structure and dynamics of this site. A new 1.8 Ă… resolution structure of [alpha]1-antitrypsin demonstrates structural variability within this site, with associated fluctuations in its upper and lower entrance grooves and ligand-binding characteristics around the innermost stable enclosed hydrophobic recess. These data will allow a broader selection of chemotypes and derivatives to be tested in silico and in vitro when screening and developing compounds to modulate conformational change to block the pathological mechanism while preserving function
Introduction to protein folding for physicists
The prediction of the three-dimensional native structure of proteins from the
knowledge of their amino acid sequence, known as the protein folding problem,
is one of the most important yet unsolved issues of modern science. Since the
conformational behaviour of flexible molecules is nothing more than a complex
physical problem, increasingly more physicists are moving into the study of
protein systems, bringing with them powerful mathematical and computational
tools, as well as the sharp intuition and deep images inherent to the physics
discipline. This work attempts to facilitate the first steps of such a
transition. In order to achieve this goal, we provide an exhaustive account of
the reasons underlying the protein folding problem enormous relevance and
summarize the present-day status of the methods aimed to solving it. We also
provide an introduction to the particular structure of these biological
heteropolymers, and we physically define the problem stating the assumptions
behind this (commonly implicit) definition. Finally, we review the 'special
flavor' of statistical mechanics that is typically used to study the
astronomically large phase spaces of macromolecules. Throughout the whole work,
much material that is found scattered in the literature has been put together
here to improve comprehension and to serve as a handy reference.Comment: 53 pages, 18 figures, the figures are at a low resolution due to
arXiv restrictions, for high-res figures, go to http://www.pabloechenique.co
A Bayesian test for the appropriateness of a model in the biomagnetic inverse problem
This paper extends the work of Clarke [1] on the Bayesian foundations of the
biomagnetic inverse problem. It derives expressions for the expectation and
variance of the a posteriori source current probability distribution given a
prior source current probability distribution, a source space weight function
and a data set. The calculation of the variance enables the construction of a
Bayesian test for the appropriateness of any source model that is chosen as the
a priori infomation. The test is illustrated using both simulated
(multi-dipole) data and the results of a study of early latency processing of
images of human faces.
[1] C.J.S. Clarke. Error estimates in the biomagnetic inverse problem.
Inverse Problems, 10:77--86, 1994.Comment: 13 pages, 16 figures. Submitted to Inverse Problem
Right hemisphere has the last laugh: neural dynamics of joke appreciation
Understanding a joke relies on semantic, mnemonic, inferential, and emotional contributions from multiple brain areas. Anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography (aMEG) combining high-density whole-head MEG with anatomical magnetic resonance imaging allowed us to estimate where the humor-specific brain activations occur and to understand their temporal sequence. Punch lines provided either funny, not funny (semantically congruent), or nonsensical (incongruent) replies to joke questions. Healthy subjects rated them as being funny or not funny. As expected, incongruous endings evoke the largest N400m in left-dominant temporo-prefrontal areas, due to integration difficulty. In contrast, funny punch lines evoke the smallest N400m during this initial lexical–semantic stage, consistent with their primed “surface congruity” with the setup question. In line with its sensitivity to ambiguity, the anteromedial prefrontal cortex may contribute to the subsequent “second take” processing, which, for jokes, presumably reflects detection of a clever “twist” contained in the funny punch lines. Joke-selective activity simultaneously emerges in the right prefrontal cortex, which may lead an extended bilateral temporo-frontal network in establishing the distant unexpected creative coherence between the punch line and the setup. This progression from an initially promising but misleading integration from left frontotemporal associations, to medial prefrontal ambiguity evaluation and right prefrontal reprocessing, may reflect the essential tension and resolution underlying humor
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