Donnach Transcending potential through academic and professional development

  • Skip to content
  • Jump to main navigation and login
  • Jump to additional information

Nav view search

Navigation

Search


You are here: Home / Learning / Adult Learning and Development / Adult Development Bibliography

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Learning
  • Leadership
  • Psychology
  • Organizations
  • bd Blog
  • About Donnach
  • Contact Dr. Duncan

User Menu is closed

  • Login
  • Register
  • Contact Us

Donnach.com is transforming to

synthegrate gill2

  • Leverage higher education to elevate work, career, family, & life
  • Stop methodological myopia by converging perspectives and disciplines to solve complex problems in dynamic and challenging environments

Synthegrate (TM) will offer adult working professionals a practical integrative approach to synthesizing life compartments by leveraging higher education as an essential force for transcending self while elevating family, work, career, and life. Stop using failed metaphors like "balance" and "juggle", and start the mind shift to synthegration.

Find out more about synthegrate (TM) >

System perspective illuminates stress as an essential force for wellness

While contemporary wisdom decries stress as a global disease that must be eradicated before it kills us all (Manzies, 2005; Oz, 2009), general system theory provides important perspective that illuminates stress as essential to growth, wellness, and survival. The system perspective provides insight into reasons contemporary society seems increasingly incapable of coping with daily reality, and suggests functional adaptability strategies for leveraging stress as a functional force.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1972) argued that perspectives that see stress as a killer disease need to be balanced by the understanding that “stress… creates higher life” (p. 192). If organisms simply return to homeostatic equilibrium after being disturbed by external forces, life would have never evolved beyond amoebas. “Life is not a comfortable settling down in pre-ordained groves of being; at its best, [life] is… inexorably driven towards a higher form of existence” (p. 192).

  • Read "System perspective illuminates stress as an essential force for wellness" >

Grand Review at Chancellorsville Abraham Lincoln with Joseph Hooker

A great leader's hiring choices can undermine the mission: How Lincoln's choices of generals almost lost a war

Unlike many who have natural ability and the work ethic to excel, Abraham Lincoln had something that few leaders seem to possess: humility. However, his combination of humility and perserverance might have contributed to hiring decisions and employee practices that hindered his mission and threatened the outcome of the Civil War. The failures of Lincoln's generals took a heavy toll on the morale and lives of soldiers, who wished for their own Lee, Jackson, or even a Napoleon to lead them. The front line soldiers were not alone in questioning the competencies of the generals. Reading his letters and proclamations to these leaders, Lincoln asked questions and recommended actions that the leaders sometimes seemed to ignore...

  • Read "A great leader's hiring choices can undermine the mission: How Lincoln's choices of generals almost lost a war"... 

[NEW] Adult learning and development resource center

humdev2A transforming economy and personal motivation for growth are making learning a permanent condition for Americans. Economically, many workers are finding they must continuously upgrade their skills and knowledge if they want to maintain employment, let alone remain competitive for paying jobs. Likewise, employers are finding they must constantly adapt their workforces and processes to an increasingly dynamic environment.

Motivationally, rising affluence and a greater variety of learning opportunities in American society are allowing a more diverse and affluent population to pursue education as a means to realize and transcend personal and societal potential. Once perceived as a remedial means to help adults catch up on education they should have had as youth, the adult education industry has emerged to facilitate perpetual learning that supports individual, social and economic well-being. The growth of adult education programs in non-traditional institutions is causing a rethinking of teaching practices in traditional institutions that seem slow to adapt to the diverse needs and abilities of adult learners.

The new Adult Learning and Development resource center at Donnach.com that explores philosophies, principles, and practices for fostering adult student success and creative longevity through higher education.

  • Visit Adult Learning and Development Resource Center >

ACBSP EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING TRACK.
Synchronous online learning: Increasing online student success with direct faculty engagement using Live Sessions

More than 50 higher education professionals joined me during the ACBSP Excellence in Teaching Track for a presentation on the impact that synchronous activites can have on students in online classrooms. The presentation explored literature on the tradeoffs students face for the convenience of online learning and opportunities that live interaction might offer to students in online environments. We also reviewed the results of a School of Business project to test the impact of live sessions on the psychological factors that serve as predictors of student success in otherwise asynchronous environments. The results found significant improvement in student learning outcomes and faculty satisfaction in comparison to control groups.

SUMMARY & SLIDES: ACBSP EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING TRACK. Synchronous online learning: Increasing online student success with direct faculty engagment using Live Sessions>

Neurogenesis: The hippocampus is a brain cell factory that daily generates thousands of stem cells, which act like seeds of new brain cells. Image: Harvard Medical

Best years ahead for the adult brain

Neurology is providing new insights into how the brain works and develops, literally illuminating how the mind learns at different stages of life. These emerging discoveries are providing a scientific focus that some physical scientists believe will relegate learning theory to the historical dustbin by demonstrating what is happening in the brain and showing the biological processes involved with receiving, storing, and processing information (Kagan, 2008). Likewise, using the input>process>output model of the computer, cognitive psychology is providing a scientific foundation on the structure and function of mental processes that account for human behavior, and providing images of how and where learning occurs in the brain (Hunt & Ellis, 2004).

  • Read "Best years ahead for the adult brain" >

Secrets hidden in Great Wave offer leadership clues for thriving in chaos

Secrets hidden in Great Wave offer leadership clues for thriving in chaos

Katsushika Hokusai’s woodblock print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" is an archetypal image that Westerners associate with Japan. But, more than a picture of waves threatening to devour fishermen as Mt. Fuji looks on, a closer look illuminates key concepts in chaos theory that Western science did not “discover” until the 1960s, while offering lessons for fostering adaptability and growth in turbulence. 

Applying to leadership the concept of fractals illustrates how similarities emerge from turbulence. From this perspective, leadership is not about isolating elements, behaviors, traits, and situations to fix symptoms; leadership becomes recognizing connections and patterns among seemingly disparate elements interacting within turbulence to solve complex problems. Rather than imposing the same practices on dynamic context, the leader develops the capacity to let context illuminate the solution.

  • Read Secrets hidden in Great Wave offer leadership clues for thriving in chaos...
Donnach.com Contact Form

You're welcome to lurk and learn while I rebuild Donnach.com

With a mission to provide adults with knowledge and skills for extending creative longevity, strengthening resilience, and tapping a rich array of possibilities for enriching life, Donnach.com seeks the means to exceed potential through academic and professional development. Explorations will include:

Leadership

  • Leadership Perspectives
  • Leading Change

Learning

  • Learning Perspectives
  • Adult Learning and Development

Organizations

  • Organizational Perspectives
  • Organizational Effectiveness
  • Organizational Performance
  • Organizational Learning

Psychology

  • Human Development
  • Social Psychology
And don't forget to check out my blog> 
 
All of the content on Donnach.com is copyrighted by Brent Duncan, PhD with all rights reserved. The content is provided for individual learning only with neither advertising nor cost.
 
Send inquiries through:
  • Donnach.com Contact Form >

bd

Close info

Additional information

Recently added

  • Traits make the leader
  • Defining the indefinable phenomena of leadership
  • Recollections of the Loma Prieta Quake of 1989
  • synthegrate® will help adult working professionals leverage higher education to elevate work, career, family, and life
  • Proactive coping theory offers tools for handling challenge before it happens
  • Delta Mu Delta chapter explores how to transform people and cultures in turbulent competitive environments
  • Précis of Nutt’s “Formulation Processes and Tactics Used in Organizational Decision Making”
  • Managing the communication cycle to build successful relationships and grow through conflict
  • Tapping the power of teamwork to enhance student performance and satisfaction
  • A Gamer’s Guide to Winning at College through Team Learning
  • ACBSP EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING TRACK. Synchronous online learning: Increasing online student success with direct faculty engagement using Live Sessions
  • A great leader's hiring decisions can undermine the mission: How Lincoln's choices of generals almost lost a war
  • The human machine
  • Integrating disparate lenses to see the elephant
  • Transcending myopia for a fuller understanding of human development