Church Multiplication

Book Review: Primal Leadership – Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee

November 28, 2012 By Daniel Im

The following is an analytical book review of Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee’s Primal Leadership.

The thesis of Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee’s Primal Leadership is that it is neither a high IQ nor masterful skills that truly make a leader – the key essence is a high level of emotional intelligence.

This emotional intelligence helps leaders create resonance, which is “a reservoir of positivity that frees the best in people” (Location 46). Leaders can do this by moving between the six different leadership styles, while also increasingly growing in the four emotional intelligence domains. If leaders grasp these truths, then the impact across their lives, teams, organizations, and society will be revolutionary. [Read more…] about Book Review: Primal Leadership – Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee

Incarnational Ministry in the Inner City

November 17, 2012 By Daniel Im

During my recent visit to L.A., I visited Macarthur Park with my classmates. It was originally built in 1880 as a vacation destination for the rich, but then it degraded into a gang banging, drug filled, crime scene from the 1960’s-1980’s. Now, it is a cleaned up multicultural neighborhood that is predominantly Mexican and Central American.

While I was there, I visited Innerchange, which is an incarnational Christian order among the poor with locations across the world. They are communities of missionaries who are intentionally choosing to live in marginalized neighborhoods in order to live out the Gospel there, in both word and deed. It’s because of their presence in that neighbourhood, along with Mama’s Hot Tamales, that MacArthur Park is now what it is.

What impacts me the most about this experience is how Innerchange is not just in the neighborhood to temporarily fix a problem, but that they are there living in the neighborhood with the people.

They are ministers amongst the poor who are critically thinking about how to transform problems into assets.

Book Review: The Mentor’s Guide – Zachary

August 15, 2012 By Daniel Im

Lois Zachary does not only set out the basic principles and best practices of mentoring in The Mentor’s Guide, she actually goes a step further and helps readers discover their own personal mentoring style and preferences.

Through many exercises, she guides the reader through introspection and action. Thus, she not only conceptually ties mentoring to adult education, but she actually writes in a manner according to the principles of adult education.

Consequently, she challenges the prevailing myths of mentoring, and proposes a model of mentoring where both mentor and mentee are fully engaged and learning from one another. Her proposed model is one that is based on critical reflection and application, rather than knowledge transfer and acquisition (Location 300).

Book Review: On Teaching and Learning – Vella

August 13, 2012 By Daniel Im

Jane Vella’s On Teaching and Learning is a magnificent follow-up book to the principles of dialogue education she laid out in Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach (2002).

In this book, Vella takes the principles of dialogue education and shows what it looks like to put them into action through both the traditional face-to-face educational setting and also in an online setting.

Dialogue education is not merely a pedagogy; it is more importantly a way to make society a place of peace (xix). Thus, teaching with dialogue education involves listening to learners, empowering them, and respecting them (xix). Consequently, the following statement appropriately sums up the necessary subconscious of dialogue educators – “the dialogue is not a dialogue between teachers and learner, but among learners, of whom the teacher is one” (xxi). [Read more…] about Book Review: On Teaching and Learning – Vella

Book Review: The Adult Learner – Knowles

August 9, 2012 By Daniel Im

Knowles’, Holton’s, and Swanson’s The Adult Learner serves as a comprehensive overview of the field of adult education.

Andragogy, in contrast to pedagogy, is a field that focuses on adult learning and everything that ensues. It is “any intentional and professionally guided activity that aims at a change in adult persons” (Location 1174). It does not merely translate pedagogical principles to an adult context, but it is an attempt to focus on the adult learner and “provide an alternative to the methodology-centered instructional design perspective” (Location 124).

This book proposes and argues for six principles of andragogy: the learner’s need to know, the self-concept of the learner, the prior experience of the learner, the readiness to learn, the orientation to learning, and the motivation to learn (Location 155). These core principles are set in the context of individual and situational differences, which are subject matter differences, individual learner differences, and situational differences. This is then set in the context of the broader goals and purposes for learning, which are institutional growth, individual growth, and societal growth (Location 164).

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