The Power of Resilience: A Theoretical Model to Empower, Encourage and Retain Teachers

Due to the many challenges that teachers face in today’s classrooms to facilitate the academic success of all children and to meet federal and state accountability standards, having both the competence and the ability to adjust to meet these challenges are required. Teacher retention is an ongoing issue in the United States; teachers who lack these traits may have a negative impact on teacher retention. Resiliency is a critical element that teachers need to meet these challenges and remain in the education profession. In this study, the stories of four female African American teachers who taught in the same school district in a rural community in the South before, during, and after desegregation, were examined. Using qualitative methodology and a narrative inquiry technique, the data analyzed from the stories of the four women confirmed eight themes of resilience as identified in Polidore’s Theory of Adult Resilience in Education (2004). An additional resilience theme, efficacy, also emerged. The additional theme provided an enhanced conceptualization and construct of Polidore’s Theory of Adult Resilience in Education model. With the massive challenges facing educators today, the stories of the four teachers can be used to empower, encourage and retain teachers in the education profession

The Impact of Authentic Leadership and Ethical Organizational Culture on Auditor Behavior

Recently, unprofessional behavior resulted in several high-profile financial scandals and business failures. Many blamed external auditors of these companies\u27 financial statements for failing to detect and/or report errors and fraud that led to the failures. Leaders within major audit firms have been urged to foster more ethical firm environments as a means of inhibiting dysfunctional auditor behavior (DAB) such as premature sign-off, gathering insufficient audit evidence, and the underreporting of time spent conducting an audit. This advice is based on two assumptions: (1) auditor behavior is one element of audit quality and (2) the behavior of employees is influenced by corporate culture. Little empirical evidence exists, however, about audit firm cultures, and there has been even less research on how leadership and the culture of these firms impact audit quality. This study was designed to begin to fill this gap in the literature by examining subordinates\u27 perceptions of leaders within the audit profession and the leaders\u27 likely impact on firm culture and auditor behavior. Based on an analysis of surveys completed by 120 in-charge auditors (i.e., auditors with two-to-five years experience), the study suggests that most firm leaders exhibit high levels of the four constructs (transparency, ethical perspective, self-awareness, balanced processing) that comprise authentic leadership. Further, firm cultures were perceived by most participants to be highly ethical. These measures of authentic leadership and ethical organizational culture were found to be negatively correlated, at a statistically significant level, with in-charge auditors\u27 perceptions of the frequency of DAB. Demographic data and measures of the participants\u27 ethical orientation were also gathered. These variables were found to have little moderating effect on auditor behavior when regressed either as independent variables or as co-variants to measures of ethical firm culture. This study is important because it helps to explain factors impacting variance in dysfunctional auditor behavior. The findings from this research suggest that when subordinates perceive their leadership as authentic and view themselves as part of an ethical firm culture, there likely will be a decline in the frequency of dysfunctional auditor behavior

B778: A Comparison of Maine Open Water and Ice Fishing Activities and Participants

This publication focuses on the characteristics, attitudes, and preferences of Maine anglers and examines the differences that exist between open water and ice fishing activities and participants. The results provide valuable information for management purposes in that the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife can assess future policies on the basis of more complete information about fishermen in general and the attitudes and preferences of open water and ice anglers in particular.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_bulletin/1065/thumbnail.jp

Helium Mass Spectrometer Leak Detection: A Method to Quantify Total Measurement Uncertainty

In applications where leak rates of components or systems are evaluated against a leak rate requirement, the uncertainty of the measured leak rate must be included in the reported result. However, in the helium mass spectrometer leak detection method, the sensitivity, or resolution, of the instrument is often the only component of the total measurement uncertainty noted when reporting results. To address this shortfall, a measurement uncertainty analysis method was developed that includes the leak detector unit's resolution, repeatability, hysteresis, and drift, along with the uncertainty associated with the calibration standard. In a step-wise process, the method identifies the bias and precision components of the calibration standard, the measurement correction factor (K-factor), and the leak detector unit. Together these individual contributions to error are combined and the total measurement uncertainty is determined using the root-sum-square method. It was found that the precision component contributes more to the total uncertainty than the bias component, but the bias component is not insignificant. For helium mass spectrometer leak rate tests where unit sensitivity alone is not enough, a thorough evaluation of the measurement uncertainty such as the one presented herein should be performed and reported along with the leak rate value

Ovarian Cysts, Vaginal Bleeding and Hypothyroidism in a 4-Year-Old Female with Down Syndrome: A Case of Van Wyk-Grumbach Syndrome

Van Wyk-Grumbach Syndrome (VWGS) is a constellation of symptoms including precocious puberty without adrenarche, delayed bone age, ovarian cysts, and hypothyroidism. We report here a four-year-old Down Syndrome patient who presented for evaluation of abdominal distension, vaginal bleeding, and bilateral ovarian cysts. Her work-up and management demonstrates the importance of screening for hypothyroidism in Down Syndrome, as well as considering the diagnosis of VWGS when evaluating a patient with precocious puberty and an apparent intra-abdominal surgical process. Given the presence of ovarian masses, a surgical emergency such as ovarian torsion or rupture must be ruled out. Even when the diagnosis of VWGS is confirmed, practitioners must be vigilant to consider surgical intervention in the presence of uncontrolled vaginal bleeding, hemodynamic instability, or failure of regression of ovarian cysts with exogenous thyroid hormone replacement

Systematically identifying relevant research: Case study on child protection social workers’ resilience

Context: The development of a consolidated knowledge base for social work requires rigorous approaches to identifying relevant research. Method: The quality of 10 databases and a web search engine were appraised by systematically searching for research articles on resilience and burnout in child protection social workers. Results: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) had greatest sensitivity, each retrieving more than double than any other database. PsycINFO and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) had highest precision. Google Scholar had modest sensitivity and good precision in relation to the first 100 items. SSCI, Google Scholar, Medline, and CINAHL retrieved the highest number of hits not retrieved by any other database. Conclusion: A range of databases is required for even modestly comprehensive searching. Advanced database searching methods are being developed but the profession requires greater standardization of terminology to assist in information retrieval. </jats:p

How Residents’ Quality of Life are Represented in Long-Term Care Policy: A Novel Method to Support Policy Analysis

Context: In one’s final years, quality of life (QoL) is a fundamental desire. In Canada, a publicly-funded long-term care (LTC) system is governed provincially through multiple policies about housing and care provision. A pan-Canadian research team investigated federal and provincial policies’ influence on the QoL of older people living in residential LTC in four provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. Objective(s): This paper describes a novel method of policy analysis developed by the authors to analyse the inclusion of QoL domains within these LTC policies, and assess implications for residents, their families, and staff. Method(s): Within the novel method mentioned there were four stages in the method that consisted of an iterative and collaborative approach to understanding the relationships between LTC regulations and resident QoL domains through four perspectives (resident, staff, family, volunteer). At first, inclusion/exclusion criteria were applied to select appropriate policies, and secondly, policy texts were to coded according to Kane’s (2001) QoL domains. The third stage involved assigning a level of regulatory power, with the final stage interrogating the policy categorisation data from four perspectives: residents, families, volunteers and workers. Findings: The outcome revealed a dominant discourse of safety, security, and order over other domains such as dignity, privacy, and spirituality. Limitations: Policies dictate regulatory and guiding principles, and are only one part of the story. How these policies are implemented is beyond the scope of our research, but we recognize that understanding these implementation practices are essential to fully capture the experiences of residents, their families, and staff. Implications: This novel method is useful in exploring how QoL is supported across a high number of complex cross-jurisdictional policies. We conclude that our approach to policy analysis enables a re-examination of policies affecting LTC and assesses whether these policies reflect the values of the residents and society at large