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In this article, authors Deborah Helsing, Annie Howell, Robert Kegan, and Lisa Lahey argue that today's educational leaders face a host of complex demands as they strive to implement lasting, meaningful change in their school environments. As these demands often require a level of personal development many adults may not yet have, there is a need for professional development programs that are genuinely developmental. This article describes one such program that provides the opportunity for participants to make qualitative shifts in the ways that they understand themselves and their work. Using case study methodology, the authors explore the psychological development of one participant as she increases her capacity to determine, and be guided by, her own theories, values, and expectations of her personal and professional relationships and responsibilities. (Contains 5 notes.)

Abstract Background Domestic violence, which may be psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional, is a major public health problem due to the long-term health consequences for women who have experienced it and for their children who witness it. In populations of women attending general practice, the prevalence of physical or sexual abuse in the past year from a partner or ex-partner ranges from 6 to 23%, and lifetime prevalence from 21 to 55%. Domestic violence is particularly important in general practice because women have many contacts with primary care clinicians and because women experiencing abuse identify doctors and nurses as professionals from whom they would like to get support. Yet health professionals rarely ask about domestic violence and have little or no training in how to respond to disclosure of abuse. Methods/Design This protocol describes IRIS, a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial with the general practice as unit of randomisation. Our trial tests the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a training and support programme targeted at general practice teams. The primary outcome is referral of women to specialist domestic violence agencies. Forty-eight practices in two UK cities (Bristol and London) are randomly allocated, using minimisation, into intervention and control groups. The intervention, based on an adult learning model in an educational outreach framework, has been designed to address barriers to asking women about domestic violence and to encourage appropriate responses to disclosure and referral to specialist domestic violence agencies. Multidisciplinary training sessions are held with clinicians and administrative staff in each of the intervention practices, with periodic feedback of identification and referral data to practice teams. Intervention practices have a prompt to ask about abuse integrated in the electronic medical record system. Other components of the intervention include an IRIS champion in each practice and a direct referral pathway to a named domestic violence advocate. Discussion This is the first European randomised controlled trial of an intervention to improve the health care response to domestic violence. The findings will have the potential to inform training and service provision. Trial registration ISRCTN74012786

A study was conducted to show that today's educational leaders face complex demands as they attempt to implement meaningful change in their school environments. A program that provides the opportunity for participants to make qualitative shift in the ways that they understand their work is also described.

This article explores the value for the organization of assessing leaders’ mental complexity using a measure of developmental stage known as the Subject–Object Interview. We first describe the existing literature that uses constructive-developmental theory to explore leadership, focusing particularly on Kegan’s theory of Adult Development. We then describe our application of this theory to participants in a leadership development fellowship at the World Economic Forum. As in many organizational leadership contexts, the program makes “mental demands” on its participants to be predominately at Kegan’s Self-Authoring stage of meaning making. Fellows’ successes and struggles related to their developmental stage, although the nature of these relationships was not always straightforward. This finding underscores the importance of utilizing a developmental assessment that can provide rich and nuanced data as a tool for a leader’s personal development, as well as for insight into leadership development programs and processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]