Archives

The present study was established to find out the impact of peer relationships on the self-concept of the student with special need. The self-made questionnaire was developed to investigate the general perception of teachers about peer relationships in southern Punjab. All items were constructed while keeping in view all domains of self-concept, self-esteem, role performance, identity, and body image impact on child social abilities. The study focused on exploring the impact of peer relationships that is helpful, to develop high self-concept, increase the academic achievement of learners with special need. The present research study was conducted in 6 districts of southern Punjab schools and centers involving 101 teachers from the special education department as participants. This research study was quantitative.  Questionnaires were developed and approved by experts in the field of special education. The participant’ responses were analyzed to infer conclusions. The results of the study support our claims that it is very necessary to have strong peer relations to improve the self-concept of special needs child and it can academically beneficial for them. The research suggests that teachers should be involved in building a good relationship with special need child so, they can achieve good social and academics outs in a better way.

Keywords: Peer relationship, self-concept, multiple disabilities, teacher perception, self-image, body image, self-identity, role performance.

The purpose of this study was to explore research supervisors’ beliefs and practices related to supervisory support provided to research students at MPhil and PhD level. This study used a qualitative case study research methodology. The study was delimited to four Social Science departments (related to Education, Psychology, Sociology, and History) in a public university in Pakistan. All supervisors of the selected departments were invited to participate in this study. Through purposive sampling technique, ten research supervisors from the selected departments were recruited as a sample for the study. Lee’s (2008) framework—based on five approaches to supervision related to supervision, namely, functional, enculturation, critical thinking, emancipation, and relationship development—was used to develop a semi-structured interview guide and subsequently analyse the interview data. In-depth interviews were conducted to collect data from the supervisors. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with willing participants at the mutually agreed time and place. All interviews were audio-recorded with the permission of the participants, and the audio recordings were used to transcribe interview data into transcripts. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse transcripts. Findings show that most of the supervisors’ understanding of the supervisory support were closely related to the five conceptions of supervision. Not all supervisors use all the approaches to supervision. Workshops related to the supervisory support should be arranged using national and international experts in order to make the supervisory practices of supervisors more effective.

Keywords: Supervision; public university; content analysis; case study

The current research aimed to design a scale to measure teacher educators’ conceptions regarding sustainable development. A systematic review of the relevant literature was conducted to generate and operationalize the initial item pool. Initially, the quantitative scale consists of 54 items in total covering the following four dimensions i.e. environmental, social, economic and moral. After the expert opinion 10 redundant and ambiguous items were deleted from the tool. A total of 44 items were finalized for the scale under four domains with thirteen items under social dimensions, 10 items under economic and environmental dimensions and eleven items under moral dimensions. Through a survey, the scale was administered to 60 teacher educators chosen from 3 public sector teacher education departments of Punjab. The validity and reliability of the scale was statistically tested by computing confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis. The values of factor loading were between .973 to 0.512. A total of 07 items were dropped from the pooled items resulting in the retention of 37 items on the final version. The final scale indicates adequate reliability and validity across four dimensions of sustainable development. Theoretically, this scale contributes significantly to the identification of moral dimension of sustainability. The scale for teacher educators’ conception regarding education for sustainable development could be a useful for understanding the ways in which teacher educators think about sustainability and could be useful to investigate the relationship between sustainable development conceptions and other variables.

Key Words: Scale, Conception, Sustainable development, four dimensions, Education for sustainable development, Teacher educators.

Supervision is akin to the process of meta-evaluation for the improvement of educational process and it is also used to monitor teachers’ performance in public schools. As figure of public schools is increasing day by day, it is evident that multiple approaches such as mentoring, inspection, supervision and monitoring are being employed by administration to handle the problems of school personnel for example, teachers’ absentees, missing approach of professionalism, depletion in teaching quality, to strengthen the performance, competence of educators and to boost the quality of public schools. The main consideration of this study is just a supervision, which is acknowledged as an administrative tool of assessment and accountability use to sustain and uplift the performance of teachers in school. The core objective of this study is “to analyze the impact of supervision and visit report on teachers’ efficiency”. Simple random sampling technique was used in selecting 371 teachers of secondary schools from tehsil Bahawalpur. The scholar gathered teachers’ feedback about “the impact of supervision and visit report” on a self-designed questionnaire, of five points Likert scale. Meanwhile teachers’ responses were also gathered by inducing two open ended questions about strength and weaknesses of supervision. The reliability of the research tool was 0.915, which was measured by using Cronbach alpha. The mean scores and measures of dispersion were calculated using SPSS, version 17. The independent sample t-test and One-way ANOVA was applied to analyze the data. According to findings supervision can help teachers to develop professionalism. The teaching style can be improved if supervisor uses the technique of motivation while there may be create certain questions/issues on visit report and supervision if used non-professionally.

Keywords: supervision, visit report, accountability, quality

Academic procrastination is defined as postponing academic duties and abandoning academic tasks in such a way that academic failure, unhappiness, and stress result. Perfectionism is referred to as deciding of purposes and goals that causes an individual to experience negative opinions. Adaptive perfectionism is associated with getting good marks on tests for academic achievement, but maladaptive perfectionism is not correctly associated with academic achievement. In other words, maladaptive perfectionism can cause academic procrastination among students. Individuals who possess perfectionism enforce high standards illogically upon themselves and express procrastination. In academia, motivation is defined as an internal process that used to activate and sustain activities for achieving specific academic targets and goals. Motivation as intrinsic or extrinsic has an impact on procrastination among students. With this background, the present study was conducted to find the influence of perfectionism and academic motivation on academic procrastination among students. The sample was comprised of 250 respondents randomly selected from well reputed and high ranked universities of the province of Punjab. Three well-structured instruments were used for data collection: Frost’s Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, the Procrastination Assessment Scale-Student and Academic Motivation Scale, College 28. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data collected to derive conclusions and formulate recommendations. Findings of the study showed a strong positive correlation between perfectionism, procrastination, and academic motivation. Items of all the mentioned scales were highly consistent. Procrastination, motivation and its subcategories also depicted no variation on the basis of gender. Motivation had an impact on procrastination, but perfectionism did not reveal any impact on procrastination among students. It was recommended that instructors concentrate on appropriate strategies for lowering the decimal of procrastination. They should develop motivational tools and help students to formulate their future goals in order to cope with academic responsibilities. Conducting seminars and other educational activities could be a better alternative opportunity for improving level of personal development of students.

Keywords: Perfectionism, Procrastination, Academic Motivation

Physical violence among students has been mostly observed in school students. Physical violence experiences among students affect badly on the emotional and psychological health of students. Physical violent activities including slapping have also been found among the school educators and students. The paper explores the nature of physical violence and its effects on school schools. The paper provides a pathway to policy makers to revise the school policy in the lights of in nature of physical violence and its effects. Unstructured interview was used as a tool of research. School educators and students were included in the sample of study. Purposive sampling technique was used in the selection of respondents. The data were collected personally by the researcher. The participants of study agreed that physical violence among students is threat for the school safety. The study concluded that physical violence among the secondary school students exist in the form of peer fighting and intergroup fighting. Slapping has been observed commonly among the students during recess timing of schools. The study recommends that school education policy should be clear about the physical violence among the students. School educators should be trained concerning the nature of physical violence among students.

Keywords: Physical, Violence, Safety, School, Secondary School Students

Student, family and school related factors contribute for the academic performance of students at secondary school level. Self-regulated learners get ready to face educational challenges and have potential to solve their problems on their own. They try their best to achieve mastery on learning goals by self-motivation, self-directedness and self-evaluation. A causal comparative research design was used to investigate the effect of self-regulated learning (SRL) on secondary school students’ academic performance. Private and public sector secondary school students (N=1098) were targeted for collection of data through multistage probability sampling technique. ASLI (Academic Self-regulated Learning Inventory) was used to amass students’ responses for using SRL strategies. Results showed that all phases of self-regulated learning process have considerable effect on academic achievement of secondary school students. Private school students were more invigorating in their self-regulated learning process and tend to have higher grades than public school students. Secondary school educators and policymakers may be more active in introducing SRL strategies to students so that they may adopt such practices and progress in learning.

Key words: self-regulated learning, secondary school graders, academic attainments, academic performance, self-motivation, self-directedness

The present study focuses on investigating pedagogical techniques in relation to developing reading skills at secondary level in the schools of Jaranwala. The researchers have selected the area of reading skills as it is esteemed as mother of all skills. As students learn to pronounce and use new words and the input increases, students can improve other related skills writing and speaking skills. The contextual use of words can evoke an image in the mind of the reader and pave the way for better understanding of the word usage and its definitions rather than mere factual information of a dictionary. The researchers have been teaching English for more than five years and observed that most of the students feel difficulty in reading even after being promoted to the secondary classes. In this vein, an investigation of the students’ failure or unable to read correctly at this stage is an interesting avenue which is relatively less explored. For that purpose, the researchers have formulated a questionnaire to collect data from the language learners. The analysis of the collected data has been carried out by using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) in terms of representation of table of mean, median, mode and standard deviation. The results show that teachers should revise their teaching techniques to improve the reading skills of the students. The present study is significant as it recommends the language teachers to enhance their teaching methodology in the diverse field of ELT.

Keywords: Pedagogical techniques, Reading skills, ELT, Teaching methodologies

The subject of Social Studies has a potential to promote national and international development and is vital for peace education. The main purpose of the study was to identify the SLOs of Social Studies curriculum of (2017) regarding peace contents in the context of learning domains and to examine the status of identified peace promoting contents in classroom teaching. All the curriculum experts who were involved in curriculum development process run by Ministry of Education and currently engaged in National Curriculum Council (NCC). All the teachers of Social Studies subject were included in target population. At first phase of the study, one most relevant expert from each category i.e. Curriculum Expert, Subject Specialists and working teachers were selected through purposive sampling. SLOs of Social Studies regarding peace promoting contents were identified and validated from experts. In second phase the sample for schools & teachers were selected according to status of sector wise schools in Federal Directorate of Education (FDE). The collected data of teacher’s responses were organized by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) for data analysis. Frequency and percentage were used to interpret the results. It was found that more focus on knowledge level domain and less emphasis on skills and attitude was there. 

Keywords: Peace Education, Social Studies curriculum, classroom teaching

The current study translated and validated the Flourishing Scale (FS) in Urdu, by a standardized forward and the backward method. We used 235 male and 339 female undergraduate students (N = 574) from BS (Honours) courses, and used Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to confirm its factor structure. A unidimensional structure with excellent model fit indices was revealed. To assess convergent and discriminatory validies we used Core Self-Evaluation (CSE) scale, which has two subscales namely, Positive Core Self-Evaluation (PCSE) and a Negative Core Self-Evaluation (NCSE). A significant positive correlation (r = .29, p < .001) with PCSE and a significant negative correlation (r = -.18, p < .001) with NCSE were revealed expressing adequate convergent and discriminant validities. In addition, cross-language validation was performed on a separate (N = 60) sample of undergraduate students, which revealed high positive correlation a cross language orders (r > .90) with a high test-retest reliability of a week that revealed excellent temporal stability (r = .90). Urdu translated FS is psychometrically strong and can measure flourishing in Pakistani undergraduate students and adults.

Keywords: Flourishing Scale (FS), Positive Core Self-Evaluation (PCSE), Negative Core-Self-Evaluation (NCSE), convergent validity, discriminant validity, success, well-being

The current study investigates the prospective teachers’ Pedagogical Technological and Content Knowledge (TPACK). It was aimed to explore: 1) the level of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) of prospective teachers. 2)  and the prospective teachers’ weak and strong areas of TPACK knowledge. The study group consisted of 85 prospective teachers enrolled in B.Ed (Hons) degree programs at Karakoram International University. The survey data was analysed using the SPSS 22 software. Standard deviation and Mean were used to illustrate the level of pre-service teachers regarding various TPACK knowledge domains. Pedagogical Knowledge (PK) of pre-service teachers has the highest score. The Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK) contains the second-highest score. Technological Knowledge (TK) has the third highest value. The Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) has the fourth-highest score. The Content Knowledge (CK) has the second-lowest score, and the Technological Pedagogical & Content Knowledge (TPACK) domain has the lowest score. It is suggested that there should be more courses to improve the teacher’s level of technology integration in relation to content and pedagogy.

Key words: TPACK, PK, TK, PCK, CK, TPK, Pre-service Teachers, B.Ed (Hons)

In a fast changing landscape of a globalized world and knowledge-driven economies, producing graduates with multiple competencies is critical as well as challenging for the universities. Given the growing importance of soft skills and their employability prospects, the present study draws on quantitative and qualitative data and examine soft skills of undergraduate students in four public universities of Pakistan. Total 426 students were participants in the survey questionnaire while 25 participated in interviews. Results show that although students’ self-assessment of different soft skill shows high levels quantitatively; however, there still appears a wide gap between policies, classroom practices vis-à-vis achieving soft skills targets. Although the Higher Education Commission Pakistan (HEC) incorporates soft skills in curriculum; however, we find the lack of clear policy direction about integration of soft skills in actual classroom teaching and practices.  Noticeably, vital soft skills such as entrepreneurship and professional ethics are absent from the curriculum.  We observe that without establishing a comprehensive policy framework and integration of soft skills in pedagogies, the graduating students are likely to encounter potential obstacles in finding reasonable jobs. Applying such framework could train students as a sustained and competent human resource, employable in the global economy.

Keywords: soft skills, employability, Higher Education Pakistan, higher education policies and practices

Identification of gifted students helps to understand the abilities and potential weaknesses of the students. The school administration may use this information to plan interventions and accommodations to manage the emergent demands of gifted students. The main objective of the study was identification of the students’ characteristics that can be used to identify them as gifted students as well as the factors that determine students’ level of intelligence. This is not only a valuable striving but a legal and human right of the student as well. There is no considerable effort prevailing in the public sector school system in Pakistan to acknowledge the needs of talented and gifted children. For this study, a questionnaire was developed on a 4 point rating scale and distributed among 600 Respondents who were selected through random sampling method. The study was an exploration of the stakeholders’ perspectives about the characteristics of gifted students both in academic achievement and co-curricular activities. The study finds out that Secondary School Teachers (SSTs) use both curricular and co-curricular activities to distinguish gifted students however; teachers also suppose that students’ abilities are associated with their examination marks. Identification of gifted students at the right time may prove beneficial for the economy of a country so it is recommended that special arrangements should be taken in the policy for gifted students so that they keep on their track.

Keywords: Gifted students, Secondary school, Education, Talent

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of institutional leadership competencies and the opportunities of participatory decision making on the attrition / retention rate of teachers at the secondary level of education in Pakistan. A semi structured questionnaire was used to achieve the purpose of this study. Researchers collected dara with 398 questionnaires distributed in person and through postal service. In addition to this , the researchers use the reflective open-ended responses and the follow up interviews with the teachers and  identified themes through Nvivo 11 software. The responses were evaluated on the basis of three selected variables: teachers' views on the institutional leadership competencies (independent variable), professional and administrative collaboration in the participatory decision-making process (independent variable), and the teachers' retention / attrition (dependent variable), and four indictors were tested, i.e. gender, age, level of education, and the type of institution. Various themes were identified in the data that addressed the selected variables for this study. The study indicated that the leadership competencies and the participatory decision-making opportunities exert many implications on the teachers' retention / attrition, although statistically it was found insignificant on three indicators in both streams: (1) gender, level of education and the type of institutions in the stream namely the effect of leadership competencies on teachers' retention / attrition; and (2) gender, age, and the type of institution in the second stream namely participative decision making and teachers' retention / attrition. The study concluded that positive institutional culture under competent leadership and the opportunities in the administrative and professional participatory decision making may lead to achieve high quality professional standards for the teachers.

Key Words: Leadership competencies, Participatory Decision making, Teachers' retention/attrition, Secondary Education Pakistan

The purpose of this research was to investigate the facilities and hurdles as experienced by early childhood teachers and head teachers about early childhood education (ECE) programme implemented in the province of Punjab. The researchers carried out the research study by taking enrollment rate, retention rate, implementation problems and shortcomings of the early childhood education programme. The mixed methods approach was used by the researchers to achieve the study objectives. The population of the study was 324 (head teachers and Kachi class teachers) of 162 schools where the ECE program was being implemented in Hafizabad. A sample of 100 (50 head teachers and 50 teachers) was selected through purposive sampling technique. To collect data from the sampled participants, three tools were developed by the researchers i.e. student enrollment and retention sheet, an observation sheet and semi-structured interview protocol.  Coding technique and descriptive statistics for example frequencies and percentages were applied to analyze data. It was found that there was an increase of enrollment in ECE classroom students. All basic facilities were found present in schools that included safe drinking water, furniture, ECE kit, a separate classroom for ECE purpose; problems found during implementation of ECE programme were of financial as well as administrative nature. Recommendations of the study were to provide finances to resolve financial problems and to give continuous trainings to class teachers as well as head teachers regarding ECE classroom activities.

Key Words: Early Childhood Education (ECE), Enrollment, Retention, Punjab