Transformational Leadership: An Evolving Concept Examined through the Works of Burns, Bass, Avolio, and Leithwood

Over the past four decades, the concept of leadership has become increasingly more complex and elaborate. Considerable debate has emerged over the most suitable model for educational leadership. Dominating the literature are two conceptual models: instructional leadership and transformational leadership. This paper will review the conceptual and empirical development of transformational leadership as it evolved through the work of James MacGregor Burns, Bernard M. Bass, Bruce J. Avolio, and Kenneth Leithwood. Moreover, the paper will discuss some of the conflicting opinions and diverging perspectives from many of the critics of transformational leadership. The author argues that transformational leadership will continue to evolve in order to adequately respond to the changing needs of schools in the context of educational accountability and school reform.

Motivations and Barriers to Adopting Sustainable Travel Behaviour

This paper investigates different travel behaviour related projects and identifies barriers and motivations for behavioural change towards more sustainable mobility. Since methodologies from other disciplines such as sociology and psychology are becoming more important for travel behaviour research, a main focus is on inter-disciplinary approaches. These concepts seem to constitute fruitful attempts to enrich a useful knowledge base for policy and planning measures. Additionally, results from the authors’ previous research are used to compare drivers and constraints for environmentally friendly behaviour. In general, determinants for behavioural decisions differ between types of travel – in terms of daily and tourist travel – and between transport user groups. Socio-psychological factors like attitudes towards the environment and towards certain modes of transport or the importance of moral obligation and environmental beliefs are main influencing variables for daily travel. Tourist travel decisions are more dependent on individual socioeconomic situations. The resulting conflict between individual knowledge about negative sustainability related effects from air travel and conflicting individual unsustainable actions leads to a strategy of collective denial and a psychological gap, where people wait for others to act without changing their own behaviour.Economic and Social Research Counci

Best practices for deploying digital games for personal empowerment and social inclusion

Digital games are being increasingly used in initiatives to promote personal empowerment and social inclusion (PESI) of disadvantaged groups through learning and participation. There is a lack of knowledge regarding best practices, however. The literature on game-based learning insufficiently addresses the process and context of game-based practice and the diversity of contexts and intermediaries involved in PESI work. This paper takes an important step in addressing this knowledge gap using literature review, case studies, and expert consultation. Based on our findings, we formulate a set of best practices for different stakeholders who wish to set up a project using digital games for PESI. The seven cases in point are projects that represent various application domains of empowerment and inclusion. Case studies were conducted using documentation and interviews, covering background and business case, game format/technology, user groups, usage context, and impact assessment. They provide insight into each case’s strengths and weaknesses, allowing a meta-analysis of the important features and challenges of using digital games for PESI. This analysis was extended and validated through discussion at two expert workshops. Our study shows that a substantial challenge lies in selecting or designing a digital game that strikes a balance between enjoyment, learning and usability for the given use context. The particular needs of the target group and those that help implement the digital game require a highly specific approach. Projects benefit from letting both intermediaries and target groups contribute to the game design and use context. Furthermore, there is a need for multi-dimensional support to facilitate the use and development of game-based practice. Integrating game use in the operation of formal and informal intermediary support organiszations increases the chances at reaching, teaching and empowering those at risk of exclusion. The teachers, caregivers and counsellors involved in the implementation of a game-based approach, in turn can be helped through documentation and training, in combination with structural support

The Bousso entropy bound in selfgravitating gas of massless particles

The Bousso entropy bound is investigated in a static spherically symmetric spacetime filled with an ideal gas of massless bosons or fermions. Especially lightsheets generated by spheres are considered. Statistical description of the gas is given. Conditions under which the Bousso bound can be violated are discussed and it is shown that a possible violating region cannot be arbitrarily large and it is contained inside a sphere of unit Planck radius if number of independent polarization states $g_s$ is small enough. It is also shown that central temperature must exceed the Planck temperature to get a violation of the Bousso bound for $g_s$ not too large.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, a paragraph added, version published in Gen. Rel. Gra

Mahler's work on Diophantine equations and subsequent developments

We discuss Mahler's work on Diophantine approximation and its applications to Diophantine equations, in particular Thue-Mahler equations, S-unit equations and S-integral points on elliptic curves, and go into later developments concerning the number of solutions to Thue-Mahler equations and effective finiteness results for Thue-Mahler equations. For the latter we need estimates for p-adic logarithmic forms, which may be viewed as an outgrowth of Mahler's work on the p-adic Gel'fond-Schneider theorem. We also go briefly into decomposable form equations, these are certain higher dimensional generalizations of Thue-Mahler equations.Comment: 26 pages. This paper will appear in "Mahler Selecta", a volume dedicated to the work of Kurt Mahler and its impac

King y su juguete favorito

Victoria Rodrigo, PhD- Serie Leamos’ EditorProfessor of Spanish World Languages and Cultures DepartmentGeorgia State Universityhttps://scholarworks.gsu.edu/wcl_leamos/1007/thumbnail.jp