Wilma l. West: A Visionary Leader, Change Agent, and Versatile Communicator

The purpose of this study is to determine the contribution of visionary leadership roles which include determining the direction, spokesperson, agents of change and trainers directly on the quality of Private Universities in the city of Medan. Besides determining the factors that have a very dominant influence among the role of visionary leadership on the quality of Private Universities in the city of Medan. This research illustrates the role of a visionary leader in influencing others through his role as a determinant of direction, agents of change, spokespersons and trainers in each situation to achieve the goals of an institution that is a quality university. Through the design of the proposed model, the contribution, and the most dominant factor in influencing the quality of Private Higher Education (Perguruan Tinggi Swasta: PTS) in the city of Medan is illustrated. The research approach used is quantitative, with an explanatory survey methodology through a questionnaire to collect information about the variables studied. The research sample numbered 258, the analysis technique used was Structural Equation Modeling with the analysis phase: (1). Descriptive Analysis, (2). Test data analysis prerequisites, (3). Research Hypothesis Test, (4). Regression Weight and (5). Model Conformity Test and (6). Discussion of Results. From the results of the study note that there is a positive contribution of 0.39 between the role of visionary leadership directly on the quality of private universities in the city of Medan. While the leadership role determining factor contributes 0.57; spokesperson 0.43; the change agent is 0.41 and the trainer is 0.04, so it can be concluded that the most dominant factor influencing the quality of PTS in Medan is the direction determining dimension. Keywords: Leadership, Visionary, Lecturer Performance.

The Evolution of the Evidence-Based Review: Evaluating the Science Enhances the Art of Medicine—Statement of the Steering Committee for Evidence-Based Reviews of the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation

A qualitative, descriptive and exploratory study, which aimed to know the meanings attributed to the leader in the nurses’ view. It was carried out in a large hospital in the southern region of Rio Grande do Sul, during the months of February and March 2008, with the participation of eleven nurses. As a tool of research, a semi-structured interviews conducted in the place of study was used. The collected data were submitted to analysis of the content from which four categories emerged: Leader as agent of changes; Visionary leader; Motivational leader and Leader as a builder of friendship ties. It was possible to obtain a multiplicity of meanings, which can be considered as characteristics that facilitate the exercise of leadership, including: motivation, vision, friendship, and adaptability to situations that provide changes. Thus, we highlight the importance of nurses using the leadership as a tool to assist in the management, decision making, in interpersonal relations and in solving disputes that may arise at work.

Over the last decade, theoretical research in translation studies has focused on human translators and contributed to the emergence of “human turn” as an extension of “humanization” in translation history. In this article, we postulate that Ülkü Tamer, a renowned Turkish poet and translator, was an “agent of change” who crucially impacted the expansion of culture repertoire during the 1960s and 1980s. To identify Tamer as an agent of change, we first analyzed the core elements of his personal history and synthesized them into his sociological biography. We also analyzed the socio-cultural context, political events, literary movements, and historical developments between the 1960s and 1980s. to reveal the effects of external forces on his internal dispositions. We conducted qualitative content analysis of primary and secondary sources about his professional work to investigate his translator identity. In conclusion, Tamer distinguished his poet-translator identity by constructing his internal dispositions upon the external dispositions of his time. As an agent of change, he contributed to the definition of the established canon, prevalence of popular narrative forms, enlargement of the poetic genres in the Turkish language and wider access to global cultural heritage, which results in the expansion of Turkish literary repertoire.

Success in the organizational change is determined by leadeship, because leadership with leader is who implementing and planning change. This paper is aimed at obtaining information to related the effect of leadeship with many aspeks on organizational change. Based on those teories reveals that some aspecs of leadersip with (1) visionary leader, (2) comunicator leader, (3) leader as change agent, (4) (leader as coach) and leader as Technology information analysis,could be enhanced and improved organizational change. Therefore this aspecs can be used for achieved organizational change special at University libraries.

This article explores the experiences of micro change agents for gender equality in seven European Research Performing Organizations in seven different countries. The micro change agents were all participants of an international collaborative project consortium, implementing gender equality plans (GEPs), and funded by the European Commission during 4 years. The analysis draws on empirical data consisting of information submitted by the micro change agents during these 4 years and collected using three different monitoring tools, developed within the project to follow the progress of the implementation efforts, but also to provide an arena for individual and collaborative reflection and knowledge exchange between the partners. The aim of the article is to present a systematic analysis of the change practices that these micro change agents experienced as useful and important for promoting gender equality in their different organizational contexts. A total of six such micro change practices are identified, emerging from the empirical data: 1. communicating, 2. community building, 3. building trust and legitimacy, 4. accumulating and using resources, 5. using and transferring knowledge, and 6. drawing on personal motivation. The findings illustrate the multifaceted character of micro change agency for gender equality, particularly in a time-limited project context with a designated funding period. The results from this study can be useful when developing gender equality strategies, policies and practices and can also be used to empower gender equality micro change agents that face challenges while trying to implement GEPs and promote structural change in any kind of institution.

Effect of a Disability Course on Prospective Educators' Attitudes Toward Individuals with Mental Retardation

Populism—Bringing Culture Back In

The brain constantly makes predictions about upcoming input, and prediction errors (PEs) have been shown to promote encoding of the unexpected information. So far, previous experimental designs have left it unclear if PEs that may be evoked by the first exposure to a coherent novel stimulus, based on individual knowledge, experiences, and beliefs, can affect subsequent memory processes. In the current study, we aimed to test the neural and mnemonic consequences of these initial PEs and how they influence such outcomes together with later induced, experimental PEs. To this end, participants (N = 42) listened to naturalistic dialogues, which induced an initial PE, while undergoing fMRI scanning. Later, the dialogues were modified to induce a second, experimental PE, and memory for the original and modified versions was assessed using a recognition test. The results showed that initial PEs, like experimentally induced PEs, shifted the balance from top-down predictions to bottom-up processing, as reflected in reduced predictive reinstatement and stronger activation in the auditory cortex upon re-exposure. Moreover, semantic components of both initial and experimental PEs enhanced learning, while IFG activation biased memory towards the currently activated representation rather than the novel input. Taken together, these findings provide first evidence for the existence and relevance of initial PEs that are evoked during the encoding of coherent episodes not obviously violating world knowledge based on individual experiences and beliefs, indicating that they should be taken into consideration in paradigms investigating episodic PEs.

Landscapes are composed of physical places, affording meaning-making and value creation from everyday heritage based on personal experiences, life histories, memories, traditions and heritage practices. Individually held values form the basis for attachment and connection between people and places. Place attachment develops into a sense of place, belonging and identity. Despite the Burra Charter and Faro Convention’s aspiration to include people in the assessment process, individual, subjective or emotional connections to place are often overlooked within heritage decision-making. When places are altered, neglected or damaged, such connections can be lost, and the quality of place diminished. Most changes to landscapes happen as part of the planning process, which is not currently able to account for individual connections but based on views expressed in the language of the Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD). This paper presents a method to meaningfully integrate insider or individual knowledge into the framework of local planning and decision-making while at the same time addressing subtleties and fluidity of such personal views. The people and place-centred method of Social Landscape Characterisation collects, analyses and visualises invisible or hidden value communities based on the same meaning (category value) or location (place value) as shared values across wider landscapes.

This chapter presents an interdisciplinary arts-based research with seven young people from asylum-seeking backgrounds as part of a wider research project: SEEYouth. This research is based on the dialogical process leading to the transformation experienced by the participants and authors. The chapter's main research question is: How can interdisciplinary arts-based exchange with youth create pluralistic dialogue and strengthen youth's roles as agents of change in their life contexts? The dialogue for plurality is discussed in the chapter through verbal, visual and embodied languages, which were the main analysis categories from the process. The chapter suggests that creative dialogue for plurality, including multiple forms of languages beyond conventional research knowledge production, can create a space for youth to express their concerns related to the obstacles they face regarding their inclusion and belonging. It also encourages shared reflections, creating new perspectives and strengthening youth's role as agents of change in society and in their personal lives.

Bushfires and natural hazard disasters have a significant impact on young people and risk reduction strategies have largely focused on addressing their vulnerability and mitigating the effects of trauma. In the 21st century practitioners, researchers and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, are calling for young people to become ‘agents of change’ in disaster management. When young people are included in disaster management there are benefits for themselves, their peers, community and the environment at local, state and national levels. Our program, with young people affected by Australia's 2019–2020 Black Summer bushfires, highlighted their frustrations at the limited opportunities to be actively involved in relief and recovery, and their concerns about the combined impact of the climate crisis and bushfires. Their focus aligns with a shift in young people's acts of citizenship and community involvement as they seek opportunities to engage with issues that impact them and their future.Young people's engagement in a youth-focused, empowerment-oriented, animal-welfare program in the Australian state of Victoria, The Activators, demonstrates how young people join the dots between bushfire recovery, the climate crisis and environmental issues to undertake local acts of citizenship. This article focuses on young people's experiences and a young person's powerful narrative of Loss, urgency, grief and loneliness. We draw on the challenges and opportunities of young people's individual and collective experience of the program. Our analysis investigates how a programmatic intervention empowered young people to become agents of change through acts of citizenship in their local communities. Adopting similar approaches would enable young people to be actively involved in disaster, prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, across all levels of planning and community engagement.

Leadership Development of Student Pharmacists

The story of women's participation in the ecumenical movement can indeed be described as a pilgrimage of justice and peace, as well as a story of mission. From the earliest days of ecumenism--whether in its formal, institutional structures or in the lively work and witness of local communities around the globe--questions about women's role in the churches have been intertwined with questions about the social, economic, and cultural forces that affect women's lives. With changing emphasis shaped by particular time and context, the consistent thread in the journey has been a will to respond to the call to participate in God's mission in the world in ways that contribute to wholeness and fullness of life for all God's people and to the flourishing of creation. While not always named or recognized as such, gender justice has been at the heart of this journey. Consistently, women have been seeking ecumenical space in which the diverse experiences of women, their voices and visions, and the conditions of injustice and oppression that have been the lot of many women around the world can be lifted up and addressed. And in that space, women have claimed their own agency of resistance and transformation. The story of women's work and witness in the World Council of Churches (WCC) is only one facet of this journey. Each church family and world communion could tell its own story and each local context has had times of ecumenical witness and action--often connected with global programs, but also representative of particular local needs and issues. Nevertheless, the WCC has played a key role since its inception in linking ecumenical women in local contexts with international networks and global currents. A review of WCC programmes and structures committed to the journey of gender justice reveals both the rich heritage of ecumenical women's work and the challenges and gaps that continue. Affirming the "service and status of women" In the 1940s, when the WCC was still in the process of formation, Twila Cavert, a Young Women Christian Association (YWCA) leader from the US, together with other women, gained the support of WCC leaders for a pre-assembly women's meeting and a survey of woman leaders worldwide about their vision for the work of women in the whole church. (1) The questionnaire netted detailed replies from women in 58 countries, and prompted the Reformed Church of France to request that the question of women's role be placed on the agenda of the first assembly in Amsterdam in 1948. There, the study report on "The Life and Work of Women in the Church" was received and its recommendation for a permanent commission to undertake ecumenical inquiry into issues related to women's ministry was accepted. Susannah Herzel writes of the significance of these first steps for the participation of women in churches around the world: "So the infiltration had begun. Member churches of the ecumenical movement had agents of change in their midst, and the troubling questions would be increasingly difficult to ignore." (2) The material generated by the study was developed into a book by Kathleen Bliss, published in 1952 as The Service and Status of Women in the Churches, (3) Interpreting the reports through the framework of women's various types of service--voluntary, full-time and professional, ordained, and participation in church governance--Bliss examined the contributions and limitations of each area of endeavour. She asked whether the churches were making the best use of women's gifts, or helping women to participate as Christians in the changes taking place in society as a whole. Writing during a period of flux in women's public and private roles, Bliss urged churches to recognize the implications of changing family and employment patterns. She asserted that "what is needed is ... an imaginative act of understanding ... [of the] ... revolutionary change in the place of women in society." (4) These reports from around the world provided evidence that responses to women's ministries ranged from indifference to active opposition. …

Care provision and research efforts for persons with dementia are generally directed to psychiatric symptoms (agitation, depression, apathy), behavioral problems (wandering, communication, eating, falling), and treatments (medications, restraints, care environments).1 Focusing on cognitive functioning and patient management contributes to what has been referred to as "the biomedicalization of dementia."2 Research undertaken from this vantage point provides valuable information about stress inherent in caregiving situations or what makes caregiving more palatable and easier for caregivers. Yet we are offered little, if any, insight into understanding how a disease rooted in bodies translates into the lives of persons. Insights about the individual and personal experiences of persons with dementia could assist us in improving the quality of care and quality of life of these persons. The article in this issue of the Journal by Albert et al.3 that focuses on the perspectives of persons with dementia is a welcome addition to the literature. The authors' focus on quality of life among persons with dementia is similarly notable because quality of life is one of the most hotly debated concepts in research today, and exploration of quality of life in persons with dementia is at an early stage. In their study, Albert et al. used proxy ratings of patient activity and affect to construct a composite quality of life score for a cross-sectional sample of 130 persons with dementia. Using indicators they identified as representative of both objective (activity) and subjective (affect) dimensions of the dementia experience, they measured quality of life among persons with dementia. It is encouraging that the proxy reports appeared reliable and that the quality of life measure captured a "great range of variation in the experience of dementia." Of more interest for the potential effects on their findings is an examination of some of the assumptions that undergirded their research since these assumptions reflect the prevailing wisdom of most dementia research. See also p 1342 The study begins with the assumption that persons with dementia have an experiential world that we know very little about. This assumption frames the study and raises two important issues. The first issue relates to our presumed lack of understanding about their world. Persons with dementia are humans and have a large store of human experiences that predate their disease. Therefore, their world with dementia cannot be a complete mystery because, to a large degree, they are us. Second, interactions with persons suffering from dementia often leave us frustrated. Does the frustration come from our inexplicable sense that we are missing some of "their" meaning, or is it just as likely that our frustration stems from their inability to understand "our" meaning? Fundamentally, these questions address beliefs about whether persons with dementia experience their world in a meaningful way and whether we have any common ground to help us understand their world. The next assumptions present additional issues for the investigation. The researchers state that "we do not know what dementia patients experience because they cannot tell us." Most persons with mild to moderate stages of dementia, however, have little trouble telling us about their experiences, if we make the effort to ask and listen. In these early-to-mid stages of the disease, the effects of dementia on language and communication are not as pronounced as they are in advanced stages of the disease.4 In the case of Alzheimer's disease, specifically, grammatical abilities are preserved, while semantic memory, attention, and long- and short-term memory show progressive deterioration. Although these changes may increase the time it takes to interact with individuals at later stages of the disease, there is every indication from earlier research that meaningful information can be obtained.5–8 This is particularly true if the topic is of personal importance to the persons with dementia. People with advanced dementia cannot tell us about their experiences using the same verbal economy of expression of persons without cognitive impairment, but this does not mean that we are prevented from knowing what they experience. At this advanced stage, the lexical vocabulary that is preserved may seem repetitious, bizarre, and nonsensical, but that does not signify a lack of meaning. Indeed, researchers who have interacted with persons with advanced dementia over a prolonged time frame have described the thoughtful, protective, emotional, sensitive, and empathetic interactions evidenced by these individuals.5–10 The issue of judging something as nonsensical may have less to do with the (dis)abilities of the person with dementia than the (dis)abilities of the researcher. Sacks highlighted this point when he described how the neurological and psychological testing of clients gave him no idea of anything other than people's deficits.11 It was when he saw people in their own worlds that he could appreciate the depths of their experiences — and see how a different intelligence and creativity had emerged. How might studies about nonverbal beings and humans with limited verbal expressiveness contribute to our understanding of the role of communication in conveying experiences? There have been many studies that have systematically examined the worlds of others with limited verbal expressiveness, such as research with animals,12–15 infants and children,16,17 and adults with different expressive abilities (i.e., those who are aphasic, deaf, mute, or have neurological changes or mental retardation).11,18–22 These studies have demonstrated that a lack of human vocal cords, or the inability to use such body organs in "typical" ways, does not imply a lack of communicative ability or that a person is mindless and incompetent. Communication is about more than words, even though we may believe words are the most efficient means of transmitting information, messages, or signals. Body language, gestures, and expressive acts may actually be more reflective of internal feeling states and experiences than vocalizations. Although humans tend to assign primary significance to speech, verbal assertion is no proof of an emotion or experience any more than lack of verbalization is evidence an emotion is absent or an experience is less than worthy.12,14 In the instances where we can no longer rely on verbal expression for answers to our research questions, we must move from an objective, detached, disinterested stance to a mode of understanding that is subjective, personal, and phenomenal. This leads to another assumption underlying the research of Albert et al.: that of measures and meanings. The researchers state that we are unaware of the experience of demented patients because "we have not attempted to measure features of their daily lives that may convey information about this experience." The authors then measure features of the daily life of persons with dementia — such as reading, exercising, going to a museum or a movie, listening to radio or television — through the use of a proxy, either a family caregiver or an institutional care provider. The authors assume that increased positive affect and increased activity among persons with dementia are indicative of high quality of life. In reality, objective and quantitative measurement of a priori identified quality of life characteristics without sufficient prior attention to a full examination of the subjective and qualitative experiences of persons with dementia may lead us to "measure" aspects of quality of life that lack meaning for these persons. Albert et al. appreciated this issue, as they raised the question of what the quality of life items really measure and how they cannot be certain that a person with dementia "meaningfully" engages in an activity. Without longitudinal studies situated within the lifespace of persons with dementia,1 it will be difficult to state with certainty whether activities are engaged in meaningfully or have the same meaning they once did, or (perhaps a more important question) were "ever" meaningful to a person. The importance of knowing the answers to the meaning question are highlighted by some of Albert et al.'s intriguing findings. First, although the frequency of positive affects declined with increasing severity of dementia, "at the most severe stages of cognitive decline some caregiver proxies reported an 'upswing' in patient contentment and pleasure." In addition, anxiety (a negative affect) appeared to abate at the most severe stages of dementia. These are most interesting findings, and worthy of exploration. The prevailing view of dementia is that it brings cognitive and functional deficits to those persons it affects, causing them to lose their ability to interact and make meaning. In reality, however, there are diversities in the dementia experience. Indeed, the findings of Albert et al. reinforce this variability. Care providers of persons with dementia recognize this variation in experiences and attempt to tailor their care to the individual they are interacting with at a particular moment. Case reports and other research have highlighted the benefits of this individualized approach.23–25 An individualized approach challenges us to go beyond the narrow idea of dementia as a contraction of life to a new and more complex vision of a unique and creative world of those persons living with dementia. This new vision is one in which people with dementia may actually have a more personal, unique, and individual experience because of their dementia. Similar to Sacks'20 description of cases of persons with autism, amnesia, Tourette's syndrome and other neurological conditions, could certain qualities of the mind of persons with dementia be preserved, perhaps even enhanced? Though demented and irregular in one sense, could persons with dementia be mentally interesting and personally complete in another sense? Sacks presents detailed case studies, gained from "house calls at the borders of human experience," that describe the paradoxical role played by defects, disorders, and diseases as they bring out latent powers, developments, and expressions of life. Sacks calls this happening "the creative potential of disease." What would happen to our understanding of the experiences of persons with dementia if we were to make some basic assumptions that there is potential in disease, even diseases as awful and frightening to us as dementia? Accepting that there are diversities in the dementia experience and that the meaning of these experiences is uniquely individual, and perhaps creative, demands that we begin to embrace research methods that are sensitive to the personal and particular experiences of persons with dementia. Ethnomethodological approaches (such as participant observation and interviewing by comment) can assist us in gaining understanding of the subjective experiences and quality of life of persons with dementia. Instead of examining a person with dementia, ethnomethodological approaches allow us to engage with persons living with dementia as we seek to understand where meaning in quality of life for these persons can be found. Let us envision a new paradigm for our research, one in which ethnomethodologists and quantitative researchers collaborate so that our measurements are based on ethnomethodological data. There is a pressing need to comprehend the life world of persons with dementia before developing instruments to help us explain the relationship between dementia and quality of life. Paraphrasing Masson and McCarthy,14 scientific humility suggests that a complete understanding of the life world of persons with dementia may be impossible, but we will come far closer if we do not begin by insisting that we already know more than we do about what experiences they do and do not have. Let us together challenge the assumption that "the subjective world of the demented patient is not directly accessible," as we continue to make successive approximations to this subjective world. Until we have a synthesis of ethnomethodological and quantitative approaches, we may remain content with an inverse relationship between dementia severity and quality of life. For the millions of persons who live with dementia, let us not be satisfied with such a relationship.