A Culture Shift and Renewed Focus on Outreach and Evangelism for Eastminster Presbyterian Church

Eastminster Presbyterian Church is a congregation of people with deep faith and caring hearts. Yet, although Eastminster has a long history of mission work, it is in many ways an inwardly oriented congregation. Over the years Eastminster has lost touch with its local community and abandoned efforts at local outreach and evangelism. Eastminster needs to begin to shift its culture from inward to outward and renew its focus on outreach and evangelism. This paper has three parts. Part One will explore both the context and identity of Eastminster Presbyterian Church. Attention will be paid to the character of East Ventura as a beach community and agricultural area and the socioeconomic issues that grow from these factors. Focus will also be placed on the growth of the area and the potential for outreach and evangelism, as well as the challenges presented by the religious landscape. Part Two will develop a theological rationale for Eastminster to shift its culture from inward to outward and renew its focus on outreach and evangelism. First, an outward oriented ecclesiology will be outlined. Second, it will demonstrate how an outward oriented ecclesiology finds its roots in key hallmarks of Reformed theology and conversely how these hallmarks have often led to an inward focused ecclesiology. Finally, the life and teaching of Jesus will be examined as a model for an outward oriented ecclesiology with a focus on outreach and evangelism. Part Three presents a blueprint for developing leadership, an implementation plan and curriculum for this project. This section will identify the goals, content, timeline, and target population as well as the specifics of the project—a small group experience and a retreat. Finally, this section will include an assessment of the project including evaluation by the church board, questionnaires, and interviews. Theological Mentor: Kurt Fredrickson, PhD

The Induction Process of Newly Hired Teachers into the Existing School Culture of Niles Community Schools

Problem Schools, like other organizations, provide capital resources and experiences that promote the professional development of their employees. Professional learning and skill development are essential for educators as they work to improve student achievement. However, conventional professional development often fails to provide a collaborative social construction of knowledge that supports educators in transforming their schools into a strong culture of shared learning. This is especially evident when induction programs do not provide collaborative environments for new teachers to work with each other and other experienced teachers. This study explored the induction of newly hired personnel within a district located in the southwest corner of Michigan. The purpose was to describe the existing school culture that newly hired teachers experienced and to understand the processes, structures and strategies used through the induction experience to create and nurture a collaboratively engaged learning community. Conceptual Frame Concepts from scholarship on social interdependence, cooperative learning, and collaborative professional development guide this study. Kurt Koffka argued in his theory of social interdependence that a dynamic quality in groups was the development of an interdependence that influenced roles, learning and action and created positive interaction, individual accountability, appropriate use of social skills, and group processing for learning. Practice and research on cooperative learning grew out of this work. Cooperative learning occurs when individuals work collectively to achieve group goals. While formal cooperative learning requires an instructor to make pre-instructional decisions, explain tasks and cooperative structure, monitor learning, and intervene to provide assistance, informal processes can also involve these characteristics of learning in a group. Critical Friend Groups (CFGs) were developed as a professional learning modality that builds on cooperative learning literature. These groups are developed around norms, routines, and shared vision with a foundation of learning through social means. CFGs are focused on regular and intentional use of protocols developing the behaviors of collaboration and reflection as well as a focus on teaching and learning managed by skilled facilitation. Methods This study explored Niles Community Schools’ (NCS) culture and the induction of newly hired teachers using a mixed-method approach. I surveyed all teachers within NCS and interviewed 19 induction participants. The School Culture Triage Survey (SCTS) is a three-factor, 17-item survey about a school’s culture. The factors focus on professional collaboration, affiliative collegiality, and self-determination/efficacy. The survey is designed to assess the general health of a school and/or district. Analysis of this survey allowed me to describe the existing school and district culture by descriptive statistics with further analysis of significant differences. Qualitative data were collected from teachers through focus-group interviews, written reflections, observations, and meeting agendas in order to describe, analyze, and interpret patterns of behavior, beliefs, and culture. The data was used to describe the learning culture, identify structures, and recognize individuals who contributed to the success of the newly hired teachers within Niles Community Schools. Results Seventy-six teachers’ responses to the survey were analyzed, and 19 participated in focus groups. The highest mean on the survey came from the item asking how often they met to discuss instructional strategies and curriculum issues. The lowest mean came from the item asking if they visit/talk with each other outside of the school. This and other data suggest that social interaction between respondents was primarily work related. Mentors in an induction CFG gave an overall rating that indicated the culture in buildings and the district needs modifications and improvements. Newly hired teacher participants in the CFG induction program had an overall rating that indicated the culture in the buildings and the district should be monitored and maintained, making positive adjustments. New teacher participants scored significantly higher than did mentors and teachers not participating in the induction program on two indicators: Staff is empowered to make instructional decisions rather than wait for supervisors to tell them what to do, and People work here because they enjoy and choose to be here. Data and focus group responses indicate participants recognized a need and had a desire to learn from each other. Both participants and mentors reported developing confidence in their ability and skills to lead while in the program. They found the work beneficial and could identify specific skills associated with collaboration and felt more attuned with their colleagues. There was value in reflection, connecting learning as well as providing feedback for future learning. Induction participants recognized that no matter how many years of experience they brought to the district, teachers still could learn or provide insight for others to learn. Structures that made learning and cultural development effective included meetings designed with clear norms, goals, protocols, team building, and a review of prior learning, and reflection. Support and training to equip district coaches (principals) on aligning district goals and objectives to help individuals and groups meet their goals was also seen as important. Conclusion and Recommendations Induction programs can create an environment for collaborative engagement that promotes adult and organizational learning. As they provide opportunities to share and learn, they fuel a passion for growth that can nurture a culture of learning and achievement throughout the school. As leaders work to cultivate a mind-set that adults must be the primary learners within the school, they can create processes and experiences that are supportive of new teacher development. The development of specific induction goals that align with the organization’s goals and individual growth seems central in the success of such a collaborative. Intentional meeting design should be developed from district and program goals while simultaneously integrating participants’ needs and wants, since choice is vital in ownership of learning. Traditional models of mentoring generally have a 1:1 ratio between mentor and mentee. Creating a constellation of mentoring relationships with multiple educators growing their knowledge base together, provides newly hired teachers a richer environment for learning and opportunity to maximize their potential. Learning communities should integrate skill development, provide protocols (learning plans), and decentralize leadership to provide for organizational development. Mentors should have clear expectations (job descriptions) yet maintain flexibility in their work. They should work directly with a coach to develop their own skills while developing those they mentor. This connection is the backbone to the nurturing and creation of an organizational culture grounded in learning and growth. Successful induction should be determined by the sustainability created through organic development. Non-participants should become participants, participants should become mentors, and mentors should become coaches. Once this reciprocity is integrated throughout the organization, there is a high potential for the creation of an organizational culture conducive to creativity, innovation, and continuous adult learning through a vibrant environment of engagement

A case study of rural north missouri teacher perceptions of the missouri model evaluation system and the network for educator effectiveness: impact on practice

In 1983 the National Commission for Excellence in Education investigated claimed that U.S. schools were failing to adequately educate children. The Commission identified many inconsistencies nationwide in areas of access, teacher standards, learning standards, and accountability. This investigation led to an evolution of legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, which have had their own unique impacts on the educational system in the United States. Common to each legislation is the need for teacher evaluation and accountability. The process of evaluating teachers has evolved to a norm in the profession, pairing educational leaders and educators in a collaborative environment, collaborating to discuss strategies for growth. Missouri requires teachers to be evaluated to monitor effectiveness using a set of principles created by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and approved by the legislature. Little knowledge in Missouri concerns the implementation of these principles and its growth model, especially among rural school districts. This qualitative study will use interviews and focus groups to gather perceptions from rural practitioners regarding two commonly used evaluation tools in the State of Missouri. Qualitative data will be coded and disseminated to reveal teacher perceptions about the effectiveness of each tool when considering its impact on work in the classroom

How accurate is an MRI at diagnosing injured knee ligaments?

MRI is highly accurate in diagnosing injury to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) (strength of recommendation [SOR]: A, prospective blinded cohort studies) and posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) (SOR: B, limited number of prospective blinded cohort studies). Insufficient data are available to evaluate the effectiveness of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for diagnosing injuries to the medial collateral ligament (MCL) and lateral collateral ligament (LCL)

A Framework for Software Component Interface Specification and Analysis

Although markets are emerging for commercial off-the-shelf components (such as Sun JavaBeans), there are many barriers to widespread component adoption. This is due to the inherent `black-box' nature of software components: developers have no knowledge or control of the component's internal characteristics. Without source or design details, developers only have the component's interface, documentation and test results to answer important questions about reliability, proper use, behavior andperformance. The current best practice of specifying a component's capabilities by providing only the syntax and informal documentation is insufficient to assemble mission or safety-critical systems successfully. To address these problems we have developed a framework forcreating and analyzing the concise specifications of components and their related interfaces. The framework extends a formal model for software architecture descriptions to support the specification of a range of terms. With formal component specifications developers can use the framework to analyze the properties of individual components or of entire systems. Unlike other approaches, the formal basis and implementation of our framework enhance understanding and automates much of thecomponent analysis process

Automatic Tagging of Communication Data

Globally distributed software teams are widespread throughout industry. But finding reliable methods that can properly assess a team's activities is a real challenge. Methods such as surveys and manual coding of activities are too time consuming and are often unreliable. Recent advances in information retrieval and linguistics, however, suggest that automated and/or semi-automated text classification algorithms could be an effective way of finding differences in the communication patterns among individuals and groups. Communication among group members is frequent and generates a significant amount of data. Thus having a web-based tool that can automatically analyze the communication patterns among global software teams could lead to a better understanding of group performance. The goal of this thesis, therefore, is to compare automatic and semi-automatic measures of communication and evaluate their effectiveness in classifying different types of group activities that occur within a global software development project. In order to achieve this goal, we developed a web-based component that can be used to help clean and classify communication activities. The component was then used to compare different automated text classification techniques on various group activities to determine their effectiveness in correctly classifying data from a global software development team project

Deworming and Development: Asking the Right Questions, Asking the Questions Right

Two billion people are infected with intestinal worms. In many areas, the majority of schoolchildren are infected, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for school-based mass deworming. The key area for debate is not whether deworming medicine works—in fact, the medical literature finds that treatment is highly effective, and thus the standard of care calls for treating any patient known to harbor an infection. As the authors of the Cochrane systematic review point out, a critical issue in evaluating current soil-transmitted helminth policies is whether the benefits of deworming exceed the costs or whether it would be more prudent to use the money for other purposes. While in general we think the Cochrane approach is very valuable, we argue below that many of the underlying studies of deworming suffer from three critical methodological problems: treatment externalities in dynamic infection systems, inadequate measurement of cognitive outcomes and school attendance, and sample attrition. We then argue that the currently available evidence from studies that address these issues is consistent with the consensus view expressed by other reviews and by policymakers that deworming is a very cost-effective way to increase school participation and has a high benefit to cost ratio.Economic