Evaluating Field Theory as a Valid Theoretical Construct to Inform Christian Leadership Praxis

Leadership is a popular area of study but appears to be locked within a never-ending loop of retroactive behavioral analysis. Field theory offers modern leadership study an opportunity to break this cycle, potentially unlocking previously undiscovered relationships within the leadership phenomenon. The authors evaluate field theory for Christian application via Trentham’s principle of inverse consistency. After reorientation toward a Christian worldview, field theory is demonstrated as a valid theoretical construct to inform Christian leadership praxis.

Reading the Social Sciences Theologically (Part 2): Engaging and Appropriating Models of Human Development

Part 2 of 2. This series of articles seeks to present a viable hermeneutical framework according to which Christian scholars and educators may read social scientific literature with theological clarity. Part 1 established how Christians may approach and qualify social science models of human development, and introduced the “principle of inverse consistency.” Part 2 develops and applies that principle by establishing the manner in which Christians may engage and appropriate social science models of human development. To that end, this article concludes by proffering a four-step hermeneutical protocol.

Reading the Social Sciences Theologically (Part 1): Approaching and Qualifying Models of Human Development

Part 1 of 2. This series of articles seeks to present a viable hermeneutical framework according to which Christian scholars and educators may read social scientific literature with theological clarity. Part 1 establishes the manner in which Christians may profitably approach and qualify social science models of human development. The “principle of inverse consistency,” introduced at the conclusion of this article, is put forth as a conceptual tool for interpreting developmental models with confessional and intellectual virtue.

Evaluating Knowing and Reasoning in College for Use in Christian Higher Education

This article evaluates Marcia B. Baxter Magolda’s cognitive development theory in Knowing and Reasoning in College (1992) for its potential use in Christian higher education. Baxter Magolda is an educator and researcher who pioneered a study on cognitive development at Miami University. Her study considers both genders’ perspectives on development. This article utilizes John David Trentham’s principle of inverse consistency as a precedent to reorient Baxter Magolda’s model to one consistent with a Christian worldview.

A Symmetric Prior for the Regularisation of Elastic Deformations: Improved Anatomical Plausibility in Nonlinear Image Registration

Nonlinear registration is critical to many aspects of Neuroimaging research. It facilitates averaging and comparisons across multiple subjects, as well as reporting of data in a common anatomical frame of reference. It is, however, a fundamentally ill-posed problem, with many possible solutions which minimise a given dissimilarity metric equally well. We present a novel regularisation method that aims to selectively drive solutions towards those which would be considered anatomically plausible by penalising unlikely lineal, areal and volumetric deformations. In addition, our penalty is symmetric in the sense that geometric expansions and contractions are penalised equally, which encourages inverse-consistency. We demonstrate that our method is able to significantly reduce volume and shape distortions compared to state-of-the-art elastic (FNIRT) and plastic (ANTs) registration frameworks. Crucially, this is achieved whilst matching or exceeding the registration quality of these methods, as measured by overlap scores of labelled cortical regions. Furthermore, extensive use of GPU parallelisation has allowed us to implement what is a highly computationally intensive optimisation strategy while maintaining reasonable run times of under half an hour.