Vocational Formation, Belonging and Christian Higher Education

Vocational formation and belonging are complimentary concepts. Vocational formation seeks human flourishing by attending to the healing of our social environments. Vocational formation is responding to God’s invitation to participate in the healing of creation from a particular social context, with others, for the sake of the world. Belonging, then, is the natural consequence of such an endeavor. This paper assumes the notion of institutional belonging in Christian higher education to be a kingdom characteristic that is best realized through the various postures of vocational formation. Radical hospitality, missional eschatology and communion with God are among the distinctive qualities of vocational formation. It is my belief that environments will naturally exhibit genuine belonging as they embrace these postures

If and to What Extent Spirituality Impacts the Leadership Practices of Four African American Superintendents

Public school superintendents have one of the most challenging, demanding, and visible positions in American society. They provide educational leadership in approximately 15,499 school districts across the United States. Their visibility is marked by the fact that the majority of leadership positions are held by non-minority individuals (American Association of School Administrators, 1992). The underrepresentation of minorities in public school leadership positions on a national level has been thoroughly documented over the years, and the limited representation of African Americans in top positions of public school administration is glaring (AASA, 1992, 1983; Jones & Montenegro, 1988, 1985; Montenegro, 1993). The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand if and to what extent spirituality impacts the leadership practices of four African American superintendents. The focus of the study was to explore how these administrators living in the South constructed and/or defined leadership; what obstacles or barriers, if any affected their path to leadership; and if to what extent their spirituality is embedded into their leadership practices. Critical Race Theory (CRT), with its focus on defining, addressing, and exposing educational problems, was the theoretical framework used to guide this study. The sample consisted of four participants, each serving in the capacity of assistant superintendent or superintendent. Each participant was interviewed in the setting of his or her choice and then allowed the researcher to conduct field notes through participant observations. This experience allowed the researcher to observe the superintendents’ leadership practices, and how each participant was received by their staff. Interviews provided rich descriptions of how the research participants perceived these leadership practices with an emphasis being on spirituality. Through case study analysis, nine main themes and 20 subthemes were identified. The main themes included: leadership paradigm, influences on leadership, barriers and obstacles, spiritual expression, spirituality versus religiosity, spiritual influences, spirituality and the workplace, spiritual journey, and spiritual influences on leadership practices. Cross-case analysis revealed a small number of subthemes shared across cases. Differences between cases were considerable and were presented via the identification of new subthemes and unique cases. Recommendations are offered for future research and tentatively, for future African Americans who aspire to become superintendents. Most notably, participants in this study saw themselves as “visionary leaders” who are truly invested in the lives and welfare of the children and adults they serve in their prospective school districts. They did, however, give advice on essential tools needed by future African American leaders who aspire to become superintendents

Lessons Learned From Community-Based Participatory Research in Indian Country

The purpose of this article is to share lessons learned from implementing community-based participatory research (CBPR) in Indian Country that may be generalizable to other medically underserved communities. CBPR is currently included in multiple grant announcements by the National Institute of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but information about this methodology vs traditional research methodology is often misleading. This article addresses some common mistakes made by academic research institutes by sharing what we have learned about how CBPR can be implemented in a respectful manner. The majority of tribal Nations prefer, if not mandate, that CBPR be used in most proposed studies involving their communities today

Collaboration Experiences and Perceptions in Digital Activities Among Secondary Education Teachers

Teachers use digital activities for student collaboration; however, it is not known what digital collaboration strategies teachers implement, nor how they perceive students’ ability to apply collaboration skills in a digital environment. It is necessary to understand strategies needed by students to be able to collaborate in a digital environment. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore secondary teachers’ experiences involving implementing digital collaboration strategies and their perceptions of students’ development of digital collaboration skills. Vygotsky’s social learning theory and Siemens’ connectivism theory were used to guide research questions for this study. Taken together, these theories hold that learning is social in nature and can be technologically enhanced. The criteria for participant selection, via purposeful and snowball sampling, included teaching in a rural mid-Atlantic Title I secondary school that had digital learning initiatives where each student had their own device. Data from 13 semistructured interviews were analyzed using open coding to generate themes. Findings indicated that teachers could use communication, leadership, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills in their secondary classrooms to help students develop digital collaborative skills. This study contributes to social change by providing deeper understanding into the phenomenon. This, in turn, promotes needed skills, including digital collaboration and critical thinking, that can help students become more successful in the classroom

Securing circulation pharmaceutically: antiviral stockpiling and pandemic preparedness in the European Union

Governments in Europe and around the world amassed vast pharmaceutical stockpiles in anticipation of a potentially catastrophic influenza pandemic. Yet the comparatively ‘mild’ course of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic provoked considerable public controversy around those stockpiles, leading to questions about their cost–benefit profile and the commercial interests allegedly shaping their creation, as well as around their scientific evidence base. So, how did governments come to view pharmaceutical stockpiling as such an indispensable element of pandemic preparedness planning? What are the underlying security rationalities that rapidly rendered antivirals such a desirable option for government planners? Drawing upon an in-depth reading of Foucault’s notion of a ‘crisis of circulation’, this article argues that the rise of pharmaceutical stockpiling across Europe is integral to a governmental rationality of political rule that continuously seeks to anticipate myriad circulatory threats to the welfare of populations – including to their overall levels of health. Novel antiviral medications such as Tamiflu are such an attractive policy option because they could enable governments to rapidly modulate dangerous levels of (viral) circulation during a pandemic, albeit without disrupting all the other circulatory systems crucial for maintaining population welfare. Antiviral stockpiles, in other words, promise nothing less than a pharmaceutical securing of circulation itself

Non-locality in quantum field theory due to general relativity

We show that general relativity coupled to a quantum field theory generically leads to non-local effects in the matter sector. These non-local effects can be described by non-local higher dimensional operators which remarkably have an approximate shift symmetry. When applied to inflationary models, our results imply that small non-Gaussianities are a generic feature of models based on general relativity coupled to matter fields. However, these effects are too small to be observable in the cosmic microwave background