The Perception of Teachers and Principals on Leaders Behavior Informed by 13 Core Competencies and Its Relationship to Teacher Motivation

There is an emerging body of literature that places importance on the behavior of leaders of 21st-century schools. Research shows that the behavior of school leaders has a major impact on the effectiveness of a school. The effectiveness of a school is impacted by teacher motivation, and teacher motivation impacts student achievment. Successful school leaders have been found to possess a number of specific skills and attributes necessary to lead effective schools; thus, it is vital that school leaders strive to understand, value, and implement competencies necessary for achieveing success. This study approces excellence in leadership by examining 13 core competencies that school leaders must possess to remain successful in 21st-century schools. The 13 core competencies that inform the behavior of leaders are visionary leadership, curriculum and instruction, assessment, reflection, unity of purpose, diversity, inquiry, collaboration, professional development, professionalism, instructional leadership, organizational management, and learning community.The purpose of this study was to investigate: (a) the extent to which principals percieved that they valued and exhibited behaviors informed by the aforementioned core competencies, (b) the extent to which teachers percieved that principals valued and exhibited behaviors informed by the core competencies, and (c) the relationship, if any, between teacher perceptions and teacher motivation. The Leadership Behavior Inventory and the Attitude Toward Teaching Survey provided data for the research.It was hypothesized that the higher the teachers\u27 perceptions were regarding principal leadership behavior the stronger the teachers\u27 motivation would be. Data found that teachers were more likely to have higher self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and intrinsic motivation when they perceived that principals valued and implemented behaviors informed by the 13 core competencies. This confirms past research, showing that that the 13 core competencies are critical in creating transformational leaders within 21st-century schools

Developing Entrepreneurship Programs to Assist New Destination Latino Immigrants

Presentation made at Latinos in the Heartland (12th : 2014 : St. Louis, Mo.) and published in the annual conference proceedingAs part of an integrated research and outreach program designed to better understand and to ultimately assist Latino entrepreneurs to establish businesses in Arkansas, educational materials and a pilot training program were developed. The results showed a renewed interest in business start-ups and expansions. Additionally, the pilot training created linkages between Latino entrepreneurs, community members, and business leaders, and also created a greater awareness of Latino concerns. Over the past two decades, many areas of the U.S. have experienced substantial in-migration of Latinos from Mexico and Meso-America. As the Latino populations have expanded, these migrants' participation in business creation has also expanded. However, a study of Latino business owners identified language and cultural barriers to establishing businesses, which are in addition to more typical barriers confronting entrepreneurs. These barriers were often found to be unique to the community in which the entrepreneurs resided. The educational materials combined existing entrepreneurship training resources with locally focused information to address the unique concerns of Latino entrepreneurs in Arkansas. The pilot training program was conducted in two rural communities with substantial Latino populations. The topics covered in the workshops were those identified as most important by Latino entrepreneurs. This paper and presentation will explain the process for developing the educational materials and pilot training, describe the educational materials created for the target audience, and present the findings and key components of a successful outreach effort to Latino entrepreneurs

Understanding and Using Sire Summaries.

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Training Materials Developed for Latino Entrepreneurs

This article describes the materials and training program that Extension created to assist current and potential Latino immigrant entrepreneurs in starting businesses in Arkansas. The content-based educational materials describe the process for starting a new business, government regulatory requirements, start-up costs and considerations, and how to organize important documents. All items were designed with the ultimate goal of providing business owners with worksheets and an organizational system that can be used to write a business plan

A Demographic Approach to Race and Ethnicity in Metropolitan and Non-Metropolitan Regions of Arkansas, 1990 and 1999

This manuscript provides an empirical portrait of emergent trends in the growth, distribution, and racial and ethnic composition of Arkansas’ resident population. Particular attention is given to variation in the racial and ethnic composition of the estimated population among different regions of the state. During the 1990’s, racial and ethnic diversity increased statewide due in large part to Hispanic population growth in all regions. Black population growth was greatest in central Arkansas while Asian and Native American population growth increased most rapidly in the northwest metropolitan regions of the state. Overall, both metropolitan and non-metropolitan Arkansas communities have a more diverse mix of ethnic populations than has been known in the past

Shadowing high-dimensional Hamiltonian systems: the gravitational n-body problem

A {\it shadow} is an exact solution to a chaotic system of equations that remains close to a numerically computed solution for a long time, ending in a {\it glitch}. We study the distribution of shadow durations at low dimension and how shadow durations scale as dimension increases up to 300 in a slightly simplified gravitational n-body system. We find that ``softened'' systems are shadowable for many tens of crossing times even for large n, while in an ``unsoftened'' system each particle encounters glitches independently as a Poisson process, giving shadow durations that scale as 1/n.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR

Complementary genetic and genomic approaches help characterize the linkage group I seed protein QTL in soybean

Background: The nutritional and economic value of many crops is effectively a function of seed protein and oil content. Insight into the genetic and molecular control mechanisms involved in the deposition of these constituents in the developing seed is needed to guide crop improvement. A quantitative trait locus (QTL) on Linkage Group I (LG I) of soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill) has a striking effect on seed protein content. Results: A soybean near-isogenic line (NIL) pair contrasting in seed protein and differing in an introgressed genomic segment containing the LG I protein QTL was used as a resource to demarcate the QTL region and to study variation in transcript abundance in developing seed. The LG I QTL region was delineated to less than 8.4 Mbp of genomic sequence on chromosome 20. Using Affymetrix® Soy GeneChip and high-throughput Illumina® whole transcriptome sequencing platforms, 13 genes displaying significant seed transcript accumulation differences between NILs were identified that mapped to the 8.4 Mbp LG I protein QTL region. Conclusions: This study identifies gene candidates at the LG I protein QTL for potential involvement in the regulation of protein content in the soybean seed. The results demonstrate the power of complementary approaches to characterize contrasting NILs and provide genome-wide transcriptome insight towards understanding seed biology and the soybean genome