Spiritual character traits and leadership in the school workplace: An exploration of the relationship between spirituality and school leadership in some private and religiously affiliated schools in South Africa

The South African educational system is in a crisis. This situation places huge demands on school principals and school management teams, and raises many theoretical and empirical questions. Transformational leadership is needed to deal with these challenges and complexities. Not all school leaders show the same level of transformational leadership. Some leaders conform more to other leadership styles. The aim of this article is to explore the relation between spiritual character traits and leadership styles from a theoretical and empirical perspective. The theoretical part focuses on the conceptualisation of leadership (styles) and spirituality. The empirical research consists of a web-based survey conducted in some private and religiously affiliated schools in South Africa in 2011–2012. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and Cloninger’s shortened Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI-140) were used to measure leadership styles and spiritual traits respectively. Statistical procedures included confirmatory factor analysis, correlation (Pearson rho) and regression analysis. Key findings are that leaders of private schools in South Africa mostly conform to a transformative leadership style, disagree with corrective leadership and strongly disagree with passive-avoidant leadership. Regarding the spiritual character traits they agree with self-transcendence and strongly agree with self-directedness. Spiritual character traits are strong predictors for transformational and passive-avoidant leadership. Higher levels of self-transcendence and self-directedness are strong predictors for transformational leadership. Our research suggests that traditional religious variables are less important as predictors of leadership style than spiritual character traits

Bridging the disciplinary gap in conservation agriculture research, in Malawi. A review

Conservation Agriculture has emerged as a popular form of climate smart agriculture aimed at enhancing climate change resilience for smallholder farmers across Africa. Despite positive biophysical results, adoption rates remain low. It has been acknowledged that improved understanding of farmer decision-making is needed due to the variation in socio-economic and agro-ecological contexts which drives the research agenda to answer the question ‘what forms of Conservation Agriculture work, where, and why?’. To fully understand this question, we need to approach the study of Conservation Agriculture within complex farming systems by collating and integrating different forms of knowledge. In this paper, we discuss (1) a comparison of disciplinary approaches to evaluating Conservation Agriculture in Malawi, (2) the identification of the knowledge gaps that persist at the intersection of these disciplines and (3) recommendations for alternative and interdisciplinary approaches in addressing these knowledge gaps. With a focus on published studies from Malawi, we show that the Conservation Agriculture literature represents two distinct approaches to addressing the question ‘what forms of Conservation Agriculture work, where, and why?’, namely agro-ecological and socio-economic and that neither of these approaches can address the full scope of this question, in particular its ‘why’ component. To overcome these challenges, there is a need for access to compatible, comprehensive data sets, methodological approaches including farmer participation and ethnography, through on-farm trial research as a middle ground between disciplinary approaches

Grasping the dialogical nature of acculturation

In this interesting article, Andreouli (2013). Identity and acculturation: The case of naturalised citizens in Britain. Culture & Psychology, 19, 1–47) presents a dialogical perspective on acculturation. To support this perspective, the author integrates the Dialogical Self Theory and the Social Representations Theory. Drawing on her theoretical explanation, we develop a conceptual review focused on two pairs of constructs – social representations/I-positions and polyphasia/polyphonia. Andreouli’s empirical study allowed her to operationalize some critiques about the two-dimensional perspective and its strategies on acculturation. Nevertheless, it seems that the author ends up replicating a more conventional and dual way of thinking. Their results give us privileged access to the negotiation of meanings and activation of promoter signs or, in other words, to the dialogical dynamics between I-positions. In this respect, we suggest that the assumption of a more dialogic and semiotic lens could be an interesting further development to this study

Enhancement of bulk second-harmonic generation from silicon nitride films by material composition

We present a comprehensive tensorial characterization of second-harmonic generation from silicon nitride films with varying composition. The samples were fabricated using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, and the material composition was varied by the reactive gas mixture in the process. We found a six-fold enhancement between the lowest and highest second-order susceptibility, with the highest value of approximately 5 pm/V from the most silicon-rich sample. Moreover, the optical losses were found to be sufficiently small (below 6 dB/cm) for applications. The tensorial results show that all samples retain in-plane isotropy independent of silicon content, highlighting the controllability of the fabrication process.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables; Re-submitted to Optics Letter

Triple minima in free energy of semiflexible polymers

We study the free energy of the worm-like-chain model, in the constant-extension ensemble, as a function of the stiffness for finite chains of length L. We find that the polymer properties obtained in this ensemble are "qualitatively" different from those obtained using constant-force ensembles. In particular we find that as we change the stiffness parameter, the polymer makes a transition from the flexible to the rigid phase and there is an intermediate regime of parameter values where the free energy has three minima and both phases are stable. This leads to interesting features in the force-extension curves.Comment: Published version, 4 pages, 5 figures, revte

Study-based registers of randomized controlled trials: starting a systematic review with data extraction or meta-analysis

Introduction: Despite years of use of study-based registers for storing reports of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the methodology used in developing such registers/databases has not been documented. Such registers are integral to the process of scientific reviewing. We document and discuss methodological aspects of the development and use of study-based registers. Although the content is focused on the study-based register of randomized/controlled clinical trials, this work applies to developers of databases of all sorts of studies related to the human, animals, cells, genes, and molecules. Methods: We describe necessity, rationale, and steps for the development, utilization and maintenance of study-based registers as well as the challenges and gains for the organizations supporting systematic reviews of the published and unpublished literature. Conclusion: The ultimate goal of having a study-based register is to facilitate efficient production of systematic reviews providing rapid, yet accurate, evidence for the decision-makers. We argue that moving towards study-based registers is an inevitable welcome direction and that infrastructures are ready for such movement

Exploring Teachers PCK for Computational Thinking in Context

NWOAlgorithms and the Foundations of Software technolog