A Special Kind of Ambition: The Role of Personality in the Retention of Academically Elite Teachers

2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (9) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Brady K. Jones
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Discriminant Function ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
The United States ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Regression Analyses ◽  
Preparation Program ◽  
Self Interest

Background Creating greater stability in the teacher labor force and improving teacher quality is an important education policy priority in the United States. While there is a robust literature on the external, environmental reasons teachers stay in or leave the occupation, little is known about the role internal, person-level factors play in teacher retention, especially among academically elite teachers. Focus of Study This study explores the role of personality, holistically defined, in teacher commitment. Participants The sample for this study consists of 107 graduates of a single teacher preparation program. They are classified as “academically elite,” as this preparation program is very selective and demands high GRE scores. Research Design Discriminant function and regression analyses are used to test which of a rich set of personality measures, both traditional self-report measures and coded narrative accounts of life and career high points, predict long-term commitment to teaching in this sample. Results Discriminant function analysis exploring differences between very long-term committers (15+ years) and short-term committers (7- years) suggests that long-term committers are distinguished by a “special kind of ambition”: they set goals that are both more difficult and more prosocial than their counterparts with a shorter commitment to the occupation, and in personal narratives they more often show “enlightened self-interest,” a combination of self-interest/self-promotion with concern for and connection to others. In addition, regression analyses show that these personality variables significantly predict retention in the sample as a whole, even when controlling for school advantage. Conclusions These results provide evidence that personality does play an important role in teachers’ occupational commitment, call into question pervasive stereotypes in the United States of teachers as unambitious, and suggest ways academically elite teachers might be able to shift the ways they think about their work in order to sustain themselves in the occupation.

Privatized Democracy: The Role of Election Services Vendors in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 705-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadine Suzanne Gibson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Logistic Regression ◽  
The United States ◽  
Minority Population ◽  
County Level ◽  
Regression Analyses ◽  
Purchasing Decisions ◽  
Term Maintenance

Election equipment in the United States is exclusively purchased from private-sector vendors. When a jurisdiction purchases voting equipment, it is actually purchasing the hardware and software along with a variety of services for the initial implementation and long-term maintenance and support of the system. Election services constitute roughly one third of county-level election expenditures. The results of logistic regression analyses estimating the likelihoods of county purchases of different election services from election services vendors suggest a relationship between purchasing decisions and county demographics, namely the size of the minority population. Localities in states with centralized contracting systems were also substantially more likely to purchase all forms of vendor services.

The Artist as Environmentalist: Ansel Adams, Policy Entrepreneurship, and the Growth of Environmentalism

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
John C. Morris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Entrepreneur ◽  
Policy Entrepreneurship ◽  
Ansel Adams

The role of the policy entrepreneur in the policy process forms an integral part of our understanding of the formulation and implementation of policy in the United States. For all its theoretical importance, however, little work has been done to develop or test the propositions of entrepreneurship offered by Kingdon (1984). By examining the life of Ansel Adams (1902-1984), this paper explores more fully the concept of policy entrepreneurship and seeks to develop a more robust concept that accounts for the long-term, diffuse series of activities that precede Kingdon’s “stream coupling” in the policy process. The analysis suggests that such an approach offers some promise for capturing a broader spectrum of policy activity.

Planning or Improvisation

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-120
Author(s):  
Alasdair Roberts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Governance Strategies ◽  
The Face ◽  
Imperfect Knowledge

This chapter assesses the role of planning in the design of governance strategies. Enthusiasm for large-scale planning—also known as overall, comprehensive, long-term, economic, or social planning—boomed and collapsed in twentieth century. At the start of that century, progressive reformers seized on planning as the remedy for the United States' social and economic woes. By the end of the twentieth century, enthusiasm for large-scale planning had collapsed. Plans could be made, but they were unlikely to be obeyed, and even if they were obeyed, they were unlikely to work as predicted. The chapter then explains that leaders should make plans while being realistic about the limits of planning. It is necessary to exercise foresight, set priorities, and design policies that seem likely to accomplish those priorities. Simply by doing this, leaders encourage coordination among individuals and businesses, through conversation about goals and tactics. Neither is imperfect knowledge a total barrier to planning. There is no “law” of unintended consequences: it is not inevitable that government actions will produce entirely unexpected results. The more appropriate stance is modesty about what is known and what can be achieved. Plans that launch big schemes on brittle assumptions are more likely to fail. Plans that proceed more tentatively, that allow room for testing, learning, and adjustment, are less likely to collapse in the face of unexpected results.

The role of intuition in vaccination attitudes

2020 ◽  
pp. 135910532092516
Author(s):  
Julia Schindler ◽  
Simon Schindler ◽  
Stefan Pfattheicher
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regression Analyses ◽  
Vaccine Preventable Diseases ◽  
Processing Mode ◽  
Affective Information Processing ◽  
Affective Information ◽  
Prior Experiences ◽  
The U.S

This study tested the idea that faith in intuition (people’s reliance on their intuition when making judgments or decisions) is negatively associated with vaccination attitudes in the U.S. populace. Intuition is an implicit, affective information processing mode based on prior experiences. U.S. citizens have few threatening experiences with vaccines because vaccination coverage for common vaccine-preventable diseases is high in the United States. Experiences with vaccination-side effects, however, are more prevalent. This is likely to shape an intuition that favors refusal over vaccination. Results of multiple regression analyses support this supposition. With increasing faith in intuition, people’s vaccination attitudes become less favorable.

Transformation of E-Fulfilment Industry Capabilities

2011 ◽  
pp. 1082-1088
Author(s):  
Paul Alexander ◽  
Janice M. Burn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transformation Model ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Business Change ◽  
Business Opportunities ◽  
New Business

Over the last decade, organisations have been forced to re-examine the role of ICT as a support tool and accept that it has become a major driver for business change (Ash & Burn, 2003, pp. 297-308.). Indeed, new business opportunities have arisen solely based on e-business: e-fulfilment is one such example (Alexander & Burn, 2004, p.1). These services were estimated to be worth US$1,006 Trillion in the United States alone, or 10.1% of their GDP in 2000 (Rogers, 2002). Furthermore, 21% of all logistics transactions are expected to be online by 2005, with the long-term possibility that traditional freight companies will ultimately cease to exist (Homs, Meringer, & Rehkopf, 2001). This article explores the concepts which are encompassed in the term e-fulfilment, and presents a model of e-fulfilment activities. This model is then validated through the analysis of e-fulfilment capabilities of 48 UK based e-fulfilment companies. The findings from this analysis lead to an extension of the model and suggest a long term transformation model for the industry as a whole.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
B. Zorina Khan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Modern Knowledge ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

Knowledge and ideas, incentives, and institutions are central for understanding technological change and long-term economic growth. This book bridges the current disconnect between the economics of technological change and the analysis of institutions. The discussion draws on detailed information about the experience of over one hundred thousand ingenious men and women in Britain, France, and the United States, whose inventions helped to create the modern knowledge economy. These results overturn longstanding myths of invention about elites, innovation prizes, and “entrepreneurial states,” and instead highlight the pivotal role of property rights and markets in ideas in explaining technological progress and the wealth of nations.

MISSION AND MANPOWER

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-196
Author(s):  
ALEX J. STEIGMAN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Child Health ◽  
Health Services ◽  
The United States ◽  
Child Health Services ◽  
Child Health Care ◽  
Long Term Trends

THE SPECIAL ARTICLE by Stewart and Pennell, "Pediatric Manpower in the United States and Its Implications," is interesting and timely. It will be viewed differently by various readers, by some as seen from their personal perch, by others in terms of the broad reaches past and present of pediatrics as a discipline. The purposes of the Special Article are to highlight the manpower situation and to point out long-term trends and implications in the light of the growing responsibility of pediatrics. The authors say that one requires a "delineation of the role of the specialty of pediatrics in child health care," and "while this role may be shared by other types of physicians, the responsibility for the development, maintenance, and improvement of child health services was clearly assumed by pediatrics when, as a specialty, it adopted as its objectives the protection and promotion of the health of children."

The Role of Grit Among Kenyan Immigrants in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 212-231
Author(s):  
Sharon Ndolo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Research Study ◽  
The United States ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Positive Outcomes ◽  
Research Findings

This research study examines the role of grit in the success of Kenyan immigrants in the United States. It gives an illustration as to why grit is more relevant than IQ in the accomplishment of long-term goals. It will also examine the importance of learning from a motivational point of view. Finally, it will investigate how Kenyan immigrants with grit handled challenging situations that they faced while in the United States and the positive outcomes that resulted after their decision to be passionate on their set goals. A qualitative approach was selected as the research design for this study using unstructured interviews. The research findings indicate that grit contributed to the success of the five Kenyan immigrants in the United States. Challenges that people face in life can lead to feelings of worthlessness and giving up on set goals. However, the grit predisposition present in all the five participants in the study enabled them to overcome their challenges as noted in the findings, and they all accomplished their set goals.

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