Groupthink Research Articles

UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESS OF DECISION-MAKING IN UNIVERSITIES IN A VUCA-WORLD

Making decisions in higher education institutions is realized in the context of the VUCA-world – that is, in the conditions of instability, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, which are significant markers of today’s social, cultural, and organizational reality. The article is a case study of designing and implementing a new educational program in one Russian university. The analysis is shaped in a chain of interconnected decisions revealing the specifics of management decisions in modern universities. The study is based on mixed research methods, including five in-depth interviews with the most important actors involved; observation of the situation development stages; interviews with other actors involved; analysis of state regulatory documents and standards; analysis of university regulatory documents and standards. The case is studied via organized anarchy theory, power and authority in organization theory, risk avoidance and bounded rationality perspectives were used. The analysis of the case has identified the involved parties’ power boundaries blurring, the uncertainty of the «game rules», the exclusion of some important stakeholders from the decision-making process, the experience and expertise partially lacking in new decision-making situations, the ambiguity of several demanded organizational procedures. There are presented a number of strategies that can potentially reduce the level of uncertainty and improve the quality of decisions taken at universities. These include decomposing a problem situation, using techniques for analyzing complex decisions, increasing the role of participation and involvement, managing the distribution of information flows, preventing the phenomenon of group thinking. The article proposes measures of organizing political negotiations, improving the quality of communication, applying the principles of self-learning organization. The article contains a new and weakly presented in Russian scientific literature analysis of the theory and practice of decision-making management. The described strategies are designed to create solid background for mostly mature management decisions in universities.

Handling cross-disciplinary conflicts for innovation: two action cases facilitated by artefacts

Collective thinking accelerates the process of problem-solving in unconventional and innovative ways, but very few cases were reported. The purpose of this study is to explore cross-disciplinary collaboration, the emergence of conflicts during cross-disciplinary interactions and the role of artefacts to accelerate the process of innovation. Using two academic case studies observed and analysed by ethnography and active participation methodology to study the iterative collective thinking process and conflicts handling. It is found that cross-disciplinary teams engulf with conflicts due to divergent thinking and cross conversation. It is also found that artefacts help to converge the group thinking and enable cross-disciplinary collaboration. This paper provides real-life cases in higher education especially on how to practically handle and leverage cross-disciplinary conflicts for innovation. In this study, only small groups were observed and most of the team members were from Europe. Future research with more groups and people from more places can be conducted.

A Case-Based Tropical Medicine Curriculum for Interdisciplinary Global Health Track Residents

Global health education is essential for equipping physicians to improve population health both at home and abroad. Global health is a multidisciplinary specialty with physicians who come from many backgrounds, making it important to reinforce concepts in its education that might not have been the focus of their previous training. Tropical medicine, and its focus on infectious disease, is one area of global health that many physicians may not have focused on extensively. We developed a curriculum for tropical medicine for residents in the Indiana University Interdepartmental Global Health Track, a 2-3 year co-curricular focus on global health with residents from Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Med-Peds, Pediatrics, OBGYN, EM, and others. Research has shown that case-based learning (CBL) is effective in engaging students and faculty compared to other educational methods. It is believed that utilizing CBL in delivering a tropical medicine curriculum to these residents will develop proficiency in the subject over the 8 sessions developed. Residents will learn about a variety of infectious diseases in each session by working through a case, engaging in critical thinking in small groups, then taking a quiz. Following completion of all sessions, they will be complete a summative test and a survey subjectively assessing the curriculum. We hope this novel curriculum will prove effective in teaching the essentials of tropical medicine to Global Health Track residents and will serve as an example for the development of other tropical medicine curricula.

미디어법 개정 과정에 나타난 18대 국회 상임위원회의 의사결정에 영향을 미치는 커뮤니케이션 특성 연구 : 의회 조직이론, 개인 의사결정속성, 조직커뮤니케이션 특성, 집단사고 징후를 중심으로

본 연구는 18대 국회 문화체육관광통신위원회의 미디어법 개정 관련 회의록 분석을 통해 법개정 과정에 나타난 국회의원의 의사결정특성, 조직 커뮤니케이션 특성, 집단사고 속성들은 어떠했으며, 이런 속성과 국회의원의 개인적 속성(여야, 성별, 연령대, 학력)이 개정안 찬반 결정에 어떻게 영향을 미쳤는지 분석하였다. 연구결과, 형식성 ＞ 당파성 ＞ 전문성 ＞ 국민대표성 ＞ 자기권위성 ＞ 타협성 ＞ 연대성 순으로 의사결정 특성이 발현되고 있었고, 조직커뮤니케이션 특성 관련, 여당은 공식성이, 야당은 복잡성이 강하게 표출되고 있었다. 집단사고는 만장일치에 대한 환상 ＞ 반대자에 대한 직접 압력 ＞ 도덕성의 환상 순으로 표현되고 있었다. 젊을수록 집단사고가 높았고, 50대가 만장일치에 대한 환상이 가장 많았으며, 이는 당파성이 50대가 압도적이었던 결과에서도 밝혀졌으며, 야당, 연령이 낮을수록 미디어 개정안에 반대하였다. 세부적으로 50대에게서 자기방어가, 60대에게서 자기강화가 많았다. 연대성, 타협성, 당파성, 전문성, 권위성, 형식성 모두 찬반의 결정에 중요한 영향을 미치는 변수들임이 확인되었다. 또한 조직커뮤니케이션 특성인 당파적 집권화와 복잡성도 개정안 찬반에 영향을 미치고 있었다. 마지막으로 의회조직이론 관점에서 보면 여당은 의회조직이론 중 정당이론적으로 상임위원회 기능을 활용하였고, 야당은 정보이론과 분배이론적 관점에서 상임위원회 활동을 하고 있었다.

Respons Publik Muda Islam tentang Kepemimpinan Non-Muslim di Indonesia

This paper discusses the young Muslim public's response to non-Muslim leadership in Indonesia. The democratic system provides equal opportunities for everyone to be leaders in various levels of government. However, the debate over non-Muslim leaders remains common, especially in this contemporary era. How the young Muslim public tendency to respond to non-Muslims leadership becomes the point discussed in this paper. This study finds out that there were three young Muslim public tendencies regarding to non-Muslim leadership. First, the tendency of those groups expressively denies the leadership of non-Muslims. The explanation of the Islami texts authority, the Muslim social reality, and the history of national leadership form the basis of this group's thinking. Second, there were groups that accept on the basis of reason, i.e. the social context and political interests, namely anyone has the opportunity and opportunity to be a leader among the Muslim majority. Third, groups that tend to accept with certain conditions, such as having the ability, commitment to uphold the values ​​of Islam, and non-discrimination.

Perbedaan Keterampilan Berpikir Kritis Siswa yang Berbantuan Media Audio Visual dan LKS Cetak Sebagai Panduan Percobaan pada Metode Eksperimen dengan Pendekatan Verifikasi Kelas XI Semester 2 SMA Negeri 1 Sewon

This research purposed to know the differences of student cognitive critical thinking and psychomotor skills, along with knowing where was the better group between audio visual media and paper sheet in student cognitive critical thinking and psychomotor skills as experiment guidelines . Critical thinking skills that analyzed were belonged to priority, analyzed, synthesis, and evaluation aspects.This research was an quasi-experiment with the static pretest posttest group design. The populate was belonged to all student of XI IPA 1, XI IPA 3, and XI IPA 5. The sample was given by cluster random sampling, and the result is XI IPA 1 as the group help by audio visual media, XI IPA 5 as paper sheet. The instruments were 10 questions of critical thinking skill and psychomotor observation sheet. Data were obtained from posttest and psychomotor observation scores. Data analyzing used independent sample T-test and different populate average estimation test.The results showed that there were differences of student cognitive critical thinking and psychomotor skills between of the group that helped by audio visual media and paper sheet, along with the student cognitive critical thinking and psychomotor skills of audio visual media group are better than paper sheet, it was because of the ranges of different average populate estimation in cognitive aspect was ranging from 0,1246 9,2313 and psychomotor was 7,752 12,906 for each α = 5%

Beyond people group thinking: A critical reevaluation of unreached people groups

Since its inception at the 1974 Lausanne Congress, the concept of “unreached people groups” (UPG) has revolutionized global mission. Today, “people group thinking” represents perhaps the predominant paradigm in global mission. Yet for all its influence, few have carefully examined UPG’s questionable underlying assumptions. This article critically reevaluates two central tenets of UPG. First, using biblical and sociocultural analysis, we assess the conceptual foundation of UPG—the idea of the people group. Second, we engage theologically with mission strategies that arise from UPG. We conclude that UPG relies upon flawed biblical, theological, and sociocultural assumptions, and propose that missiology move beyond UPG in theory and practice.

Alts and Automediality: Compartmentalising the Self through Multiple Social Media Profiles

Alts and Automediality: Compartmentalising the Self through Multiple Social Media Profiles

Fedezzük fel a megoldást: keressünk mintát!

Az MTA Tantárgypedagógiai Kutatási Programja támogatásával egy olyan kutatási programot dolgoztunk ki, melyben a problémamegoldó gondolkodás sajátosságait vizsgáljuk az alsó tagozatos kortól kezdve tanárjelöltekkel bezárólag különböző képességű csoportokban. Dolgozatunkban egy olyan problémára adott tanulói válaszokat elemzünk, amely mindegyik korosztály számára valós problémaszituációt jelenthet. Kutatásunk elsősorban a tanulók modellalkotó és szabályfelismerő képességeiről ad képet, általánosabban arról, hogy a sorozatképzés, szabályfelismerés (összefoglalóan mintakeresés) és a megalkotott szabály indoklása hogyan vezet felfedezéshez. Külön vizsgáljuk azt is, hogy a probléma különböző típusú reprezentációi hogyan befolyásolják a problémamegoldás folyamatát.

Trauma-informed practice in intellectual disability services: Recommendations for mental health professionals in the UK

This paper reports on the thinking of a multi-professional national group promoting trauma-informed working in Intellectual Disability services, in which the Faculty is collaborating. The paper explains the need to take account of trauma and attachment difficulties in clinical and social care services, and the need to promote trauma-informed approaches. A simple acronym, SECURED, is proposed as an aide-memoire for professionals to apply in their work.

Numeraire Effect, Anchoring, and Technological Literacy in Initial Coin Offering

There is a high correlation between the returns of cryptocurrencies and those of utility tokens, which are claims to products and services yet to be developed that are issued through ICOs and traded on crypto-exchanges. I demonstrate the presence of a numeraire effect in the pricing of these tokens and present evidence that it is driven by a combination of group thinking and representativeness bias. Investors mistakenly overestimate the probability that a cryptocurrency-denominated token is issued by a blockchain firm, and thus believe the fundamental value of the token is correlated with that of Bitcoin. I show that a 1% increase in the return on Bitcoin during the month before a token first lists on a crypto exchange predicts a 5% higher ICO return for a cryptocurrency-denominated token than for a fiat-currency-denominated token. If a token is denominated in a cryptocurrency on one exchange and its otherwise identical twin is denominated in a fiat currency on another exchange, then a 1% increase in the cryptocurrency return relative to the fiat currency predicts a 60 bp divergence in their prices. Consistent with being driven by a combination of group thinking and representativeness bias, the numeraire effect is more pronounced for tokens with more complex business plans. Experimental evidence corroborates these empirical findings and suggests that the numeraire effect is present in other asset prices as well and can explain home-currency bias. The combination of high volatility and numeraire effects undermines the ability of cryptocurrencies to serve as units of account.

Social entrepreneurship and charismatic leadership: Master Cheng Yen and Tzu Chi Foundation

Successful social enterprises are usually accompanied with charismatic leadership, which is instrumental to stimulate followers to help accomplish social missions. Based on three key behavioural components of charismatic leadership, namely envisioning, empathy, and empowerment, we propose an analytical framework to demonstrate how a faith-based organisation, Tzu Chi Foundation under the leadership of Master Cheng Yen, develops effective motivational strategies to help mobilise an enormous number of followers to fulfil the goals of social missions. In order to capture the interaction between leaders and followers and its performance, we use qualitative study method by focusing on important details. Due to the inaccessible interview with Master Cheng Yen, data are adopted from articles, reports, and researches of Tzu Chi Foundation and its followers. Notwithstanding, we take stock of an earned-income social enterprise, DA.AI Technology, which is created by some successful entrepreneurs following Master Cheng Yen, as a case to provide a way to avoid the tensions of mission conflicts. We finalise to discuss that even Tzu Chi Foundation could not escape from the trepidation of succession issue and group thinking as over-relying upon charismatic leadership might incur.

KESULITAN BERPIKIR ABSTRAK MATEMATIKA SISWA DALAM PEMBELAJARAN PROBLEM POSING BERKELOMPOK

This study based on the difficulty of students to think abstractly in the material geometry. There are still many students who feel confused when should imagine and then describe each object geometry because basically a lot of material geometry using visualization mathematical model that concretely not real and do not always exist in everyday life. The difficulties caused students cannot resolve the problems on the material geometry. This illustrates the poor ability of students' mathematical abstraction. One of the methods that can improve the ability of mathematical abstraction is a problem posing learning groups. The purpose of this study is (1) to describe the difficulty of students of abstract mathematical thinking in problem posing learning groups; (2) determine the factors that cause difficulty in abstract mathematical thinking in problem posing learning groups. This study used a qualitative research approach and descriptive. The subjects of this study are students of class X IPA 1 SMAN 1 Leuwimunding Leuwimunding 2015/2016 totaling 36 students. The instrument used in this study is a matter of mathematical abstraction ability tests, questionnaires and interview guidelines. The results showed there are still many students who have difficulty in abstract mathematical thinking in problem posing learning groups which are (1) students lack mastery of concepts; (2) the student does not perform direct experience with the object; (3) students are less able to apply the concept in an appropriate context; and (4) students have difficulty in manipulating abstract mathematical object. While the factors that lead to difficult students to think abstractly derived from external factors, namely the lack of media use props in learning

PENSAMENTO DE GRUPO: O RISCO DE DECISÕES EQUIVOCADASE A DIVERSIDADE DE PERSPECTIVAS NA SOLUÇÃO DE PROBLEMAS

Faz-se uma análise dos efeitos perniciosos do pensamento de grupo e de quanto ele pode conduzir a decisões equivocadas na busca de unanimidade, coesão e harmonia do grupo. Discutem-se como as ilusões de concordância podem suscitar uma falsa segurança quanto às competências e desempenhos dos grupos. Apontam-se os dilemas de confrontos individuais nas discussões e de como determinantes externos podem moldar o comportamento dos indivíduos em situações de grupo. Apresenta-se como contraponto a aprendizagem organizacional como antídoto aos perigos do pensamento de grupo, bem como o conhecimento e a compreensão mais aprofundada das divergências, a fim de evitar os riscos de decisões equivocadas.

Ranking the strategies for Indian medical tourism sector through the integration of SWOT analysis and TOPSIS method

PurposeOrganizations have to evaluate their internal and external environments in this highly competitive world. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis is a very useful technique which analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an organization for taking strategic decisions and it also provides a foundation for the formulation of strategies. But the drawback of SWOT analysis is that it does not quantify the importance of individual factors affecting the organization and the individual factors are described in brief without weighing them. Because of this reason, SWOT analysis can be integrated with any multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) technique like the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), analytical hierarchy process, etc., to evaluate the best alternative among the available strategic alternatives. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, SWOT analysis is integrated with a multicriteria decision-making technique called TOPSIS to rank different strategies for Indian medical tourism in order of priority.FindingsSO strategy (providing best facilitation and care to the medical tourists at par to developed countries) is the best strategy which matches with the four elements of S, W, O and T of SWOT matrix and 35 strategic indicators.Practical implicationsThis paper proposes a solution based on a combined SWOT analysis and TOPSIS approach to help the organizations to evaluate and select strategies.Originality/valueCreating a new technology or administering a new strategy always has some degree of resistance by employees. To minimize resistance, the author has used TOPSIS as it involves group thinking, requiring every manager of the organization to analyze and evaluate different alternatives and average measure of each parameter in final decision matrix.

Introduction: The Future of Scholarly Knowledge in the Humanities

IntroductionThe Future of Scholarly Knowledge in the Humanities James Miller (bio) it seems fitting that david bromwich kicked off the new school's two-day conference on "The Future of Scholarly Knowledge." A quarter-century ago, Bromwich helped shape our ongoing conversations about the future of the academy by publishing Politics by Other Means: Higher Education and Group Thinking, a polemic of rare eloquence. Then as now, Bromwich himself defies stereotyping: he champions the idea of tradition, but he's an open-minded pluralist whose heroes range from Burke and Hume to Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. And he writes a plain prose that exemplifies the pleasures of demotic English in the hands of a scholar who knows how to wear his learning lightly. As Bromwich's keynote paper for the conference makes plain, the terms of his critique remain largely unaltered: today, as he did 25 years ago, he deplores how young scholars are advised "to aim at corporate approval, at the sacrifice of the difficult thing that intellectual self-knowledge may be. There has never been a more desolate title of a scholarly essay than 'The Way We Think Now.'" That is true enough, even though the late Clifford Geertz, who wrote the classic essay of that title, was jaunty, even insouciant, while contemplating the barbarians inside the academy's gates, quite unlike Bromwich, whose lamentations are keen. In his opening remarks, Bromwich directed our attention to two different forces that he believes darken the prospects for free inquiry in the contemporary academy: the growing influence of learning [End Page 557] assessment experts who demand that scholarship and teaching undergo a kind of cost-benefit accounting to demonstrate their utility to students; and the countervailing influence of the intellectual fashionistas of the academic left, who beat the drum of "social justice" in an effort to secure "safe spaces" for individuals belonging to previously marginalized and oppressed groups. As Bromwich puts it, the most militant proponents of social justice on campuses "have discouraged the inquisitive instincts that nourish education quite as effectually as the funding giants who demand to know the cash value of every course a student might take." Even worse, "the branch of the humanities that has gone furthest to make a fetish of 'resistance' and 'transgression' has itself sponsored protocols of intellectual conformity as thoroughly routinized as any in academic history." The three panelists who convened the day after Bromwich's keynote to discuss the challenges to scholarly knowledge in the humanities were a diverse group, including Daniel Kevles, a historian of science; Rosalind Morris, an anthropologist with a strong interest in the humanities; and Akeel Bilgrami, a multifaceted philosopher from an analytic background. In his paper, Daniel Kevles issued a salutary reminder that the pursuit of useful results in applied research sometimes fosters progress in fundamental knowledge in the sciences—it would be too glib simply to denounce all forms of instrumental inquiry. The American land grant research universities that sprang up in the nineteenth century were built, in part, on the promise that they would produce advances in knowledge that would prove useful to society as a whole. I would add that it is also worth recalling how Enlightenment proponents of universal education, such as Condorcet, hoped that the spread of free public schools would be instrumental in fostering "real equality, the final end of the social art," by enabling all citizens to "have the knowledge necessary to conduct himself in the ordinary affairs of life, according to the light of his own reason, to preserve his mind free from prejudice, to understand his rights and to exercise [End Page 558] them in accordance with his conscience and his creed" (Condorcet [1794] 2012, 126). Rosalind Morris, in sharp contrast to Kevles, issued a sweeping denunciation of the instrumental focus of the "corporate university"—and she clearly received Bromwich's keynote address as the provocation he intended. At one point in her spoken remarks, she made plain her core disagreement with him: deploring his lack of sympathy for students seeking safe spaces, she declared that "the problem is that there should be an aspiration for an imagination of the place of the other."1...

問題解決学習過程における集団思考の形態分析 : 愛教大教科教育センター所蔵「中学校社会科歴史的分野の授業記録」を手がかりにして

問題解決学習過程における集団思考の形態分析 : 愛教大教科教育センター所蔵「中学校社会科歴史的分野の授業記録」を手がかりにして

Application and evaluation of Mini-CEX in training clinical diagnostic thinking ability for interns

Objective To explore the application of mini-clinical evaluation exercise (Mini-CEX) in training the diagnostic thinking ability for clinical interns. Methods 83 interns who came to the First Peo-ple’s Hospital of Lianyungang for clinical practice in June 2015 were divided into the experimental group (45 interns) and the control group (38 interns) according to their schools. The two groups received the same clinical teaching according to internship program of five-year clinical medicine, while the experimental group had to take a weekly Mini-CEX training in clinical sections. The diagnostic thinking ability of the two groups was measured by the Diagnostic Thinking Inventory in Chinese version at the beginning and the end of the in-ternship respectively. SPSS 21.0 was applied to processing the data. Measurement data were ex-pressed as mean plus or minus standard deviation, and t test was used in the comparison between groups. Results At the end of the internship, the total score of diagnostic thinking, the score of knowledge structure in memory and the score of flexibility in thinking of the experimental group were higher than scores at the beginning sta-tistically, and the experimental group had a statistically higher score than the control groups in knowledge structure in memory [(69.36±4.28) vs. (66.95±4.78), P=0.018]. Conclusion Mini-CEX train-ing can en-hance the clinical diagnostic thinking ability of interns by improving their knowledge structure in memory. Key words: Mini-clinical evaluation exercise; Clinical diagnostic thinking; Interns

استخدام إستراتيجية اليد المفكرة في تدريس مقرر الهيدروليكا لتنمية المفاهيم الهيدروليكية والتفكير العملي لدى طلاب الصف الثالث الثانوي الصناعي

ملخص البحث باللغة العربية: هدف البحث الحالي إلى التعرف على فاعلية استخدام استراتيجية اليد المفکرة في تدريس مقرر الهيدروليکا لتنمية المفاهيم الهيدروليکية والتفکير العملي لدي طلاب الصف الثالث الثانوي الصناعي . وقد تکونت عينة البحث من (64) طالبا موزعة على مجموعتين إحداهما مجموعة تجريبية وعددها (32) طالبا والأخرى مجموعة ضابطة وعددها (32) طالبا من طلاب الصف الثالث الثانوي الصناعي تخصص شبکات المياه والأعمال الصحية بمدرسة أسيوط الثانوية الصناعية الميکانيکية بمحافظة أسيوط. وقد تکونت أدوات البحث من وحدة خواص السوائل الساکنة مخططة وفقا لاستراتيجية اليد المفکرة وسجل نشاط الطالب في وحدة خواص السوائل الساکنة ، ودليل المعلم لتدريس وحدة خواص السوائل الساکنة ، واوراق عمل المنزل في وحدة خواص السوائل الساکنة ، واختبار تحصيلي للمفاهيم الهيدروليکية في وحدة خواص السوائل الساکنة ، واختبار التفکير العملي. وقد تم تحليل محتوى وحدة خواص السوائل الساکنة بمقرر الهيدروليکا بالصف الثالث الثانوي الصناعي تخصص شبکات المياه والأعمال الصحية وذلک لتحديد الأوزان النسبية للمفاهيم المتضمنة بالوحدة بهدف بناء اختبار تحصيل المفاهيم الهيدروليکية، وإعداد دليل المعلم وسجل نشاط الطالب واوراق عمل المنزل في وحدة البحث. وقد تم تطبيق أدوات البحث قبليا على مجموعتي البحث التجريبية و الضابطة ثم التدريس للمجموعة التجريبية باستخدام استراتيجية اليد المفکرة، والتدريس للمجموعة الضابطة بالطريقة المعتادة. و تم تطبيق أدوات البحث بعديا و استخدام الأساليب الإحصائية المناسبة لحساب الفرق بين متوسطات درجات طلاب المجموعتين التجريبية والضابطة. وقد توصلت نتائج البحث إلى فاعلية استخدام استراتيجية اليد المفکرة في تدريس مقرر الهيدروليکا لتنمية المفاهيم الهيدروليکية والتفکير العملي لدى طلاب المجموعة التجريبية مقارنة بالمجموعة الضابطة. Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate Effectiveness Using of Mighty Hand Strategy to Teaching of Hydraulic Course in Developing of Hydraulic Concepts and Practical Thinking for Third-Year Secondary Industrial School Students. The research' samples consisted of 64 students specialized in architecture distributed into two groups (experimental and control), with 32 students in each in MechanicalIndustrialSecondaryAssiutSchool at Assiut Governorate. Research tools included (1) teaching unit of ‘Static Properties of Liquids’, planned according to Mighty Hand Strategy (2) a student activity worksheets in teaching unit of ‘Static Properties of Liquids’ (3) a teacher’s guide of teaching unit of ‘Static Properties of Liquids’’,(4) Home worksheets and an Hydraulic concepts test in the unit of Static Properties of Liquids, and practical thinking test. The content of the unit ‘Static Properties of Liquids’ in the teaching planning and Hydraulic course was analyzed for third-year secondary industrial school students, sanitary work and water network specialization, to determine the weights of the concepts included in the unit to build the Hydraulic concepts test and the preparation of teacher’s guide and student’s activity worksheets and Home worksheets in the unit ‘Static Properties of Liquids’. The tools of the study were administered using a pre-post design on the study groups, and the experimental group was taught by using Mighty Hand Strategy in and using the Traditional method with the control group. The tools of the study were post-administered and the appropriate statistical procedures were used so as to calculate the differences in the means of scores for both the experimental group and the control one. The results of the study indicated that Using of Mighty Hand Strategy to Teaching of Hydraulic Course was effective in developing concepts and Practical Thinking of the experimental group as compared to the control.

Foreign Policy Analysis and the Making of Plan Colombia

This article, through a Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) perspective, analyses the only long-term foreign policy decision ever made in Colombia. Since FPA portrays a theory of human political choice to analyse foreign policy behaviour, this analysis will specifically focus on Plan Colombia’s decision-makers as a case study using empirical examples. The purpose is to understand the specificity of this foreign policy decision-making process from an unexplored perspective, namely Groupthink theory. Although Janis has asserted that the process would negatively affect decision-making quality, this article contradicts this assumption based on both the boundaries and opportunities encountered when applying mainstream FPA to a non-US case study. As such, a major challenge remains when it comes to judging quality and, correspondingly, expecting certain outcomes. This article demonstrates that group cohesiveness and concurrence-seeking tendencies may be useful for explaining successful foreign policy decision outcomes.