A Case Study Showing Parameters Affecting the Quality of Education: Faculty Perspective

Vol.8  No.1

Year : 2014

Issue : May-Jul

Title : A Case Study Showing Parameters Affecting the Quality of Education: Faculty Perspective

Author Name : Dr. Neeraj Kumari

Synopsis :

The study aims to examine the faculty members' perspective (age Wise, Gender Wise and Work Experience wise) of parameters affecting the quality of education in an affiliated Undergraduate Engineering Institution in Haryana. It is a descriptive type of research. The data has been collected with the help of ‘Questionnaire Based Survey’. The sample size for the study is 110 comprising the faculty respondents. The sample has been taken on the Random (Probability) basis and the questionnaire was filled by the faculty members (teaching B.Tech) chosen on a the random basis from an affiliated Undergraduate Engineering Institution in Haryana. For data analysis and conclusion of the results of the survey, statistical tool like t test was performed with the help of high quality software;’SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science)’. To conclude, for “Selection Process”, “Academic Excellence”, “Infrastructure”, “Personality Development and Industry Exposure” and “Management and Administration”, the two samples (Age & Work-experience wise) have same perceptions with respect to the parameters. For “Selection Process”, “Infrastructure”, “Personality Development and Industry Exposure” and “Management and Administration”, the two samples (gender wise) have same perceptions with respect to the parameters. While for “Academic Excellence”, the two samples (gender wise) have different perceptions with respect to the parameter.

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Role of Teacher Educational Institutions in Developing Personality of Student Teachers

Vol.8  No.1

Year : 2014

Issue : May-Jul

Title : Role of Teacher Educational Institutions in Developing Personality of Student Teachers

Author Name : PRAKASH SRINIVASAN, Dr.S.Amaladoss Xavier

Synopsis :

Teacher Education is an integral part of any educational system. It should provide a platform in developing the holistic personality of a student teacher. This paper reports on personality of student teachers and the role of Teacher Educational institutions in developing it. The sample consists of 1080 student teachers of Madurai revenue district. A Multidimensional Personality Inventory constructed by Manju Rani Agarwall was used to get the data from the student teachers. Percentage analysis, Mean, Standard deviation and 't' tests were used for analyzing the data. The results showed that there is significant difference in personality of Government Aided and Self Finance College student teachers.

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Impact of Perceived Teachers' Competence on Students' Performance: Evidence for Mediating/ Moderating Role of Class Environment

Vol.8  No.1

Year : 2014

Issue : May-Jul

Title : Impact of Perceived Teachers' Competence on Students' Performance: Evidence for Mediating/ Moderating Role of Class Environment

Author Name : Sarwat Sultan, Muhammad Shafi

Synopsis :

The purpose of the present study was to explore the impact of perceived teachers' competence on students' performance moderated by perceived class environment. The sample consisted of 500 students (250 male & 250 female) taken from public and private schools from the rural areas of Dokota Town, Tibba Sultan Pur, and Mailsi. Participants' age range was between 12-14 years old. Teaching Competence Scale (Passi & Lalita, 2009) and Class Environment Scales (Kelly, 2010) were used to measure the perceived teachers' competence and perceived class environment, respectively. For the purpose of the present research, scales were translated into Urdu through back translation method. Results indicated that perceived teachers' competence predicted the students' performance, but did not predict the perceived class environment. Further results indicated that there is no mediation and moderation effect of class environment on the relationship between teachers' competence and students' performance.

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Institutional Influence on Behavioural Disorders in Early Adolescents

Vol.8  No.1

Year : 2014

Issue : May-Jul

Title : Institutional Influence on Behavioural Disorders in Early Adolescents

Author Name : N. B. Jayalekshmi, B. William Dharma Raja

Synopsis :

Early adolescence is a period of transition between childhood and late adolescence, is where one experience dramatic changes physically, and psychologically. These transitions cause cognitive, emotional, and social changes. The developmental changes that occur during this period cause varying degrees of disturbance in them. The period of transition leaves its mark on the individual's behaviour, as they feel unsure of themselves and insecure in their status. This intrudes them to be aggressive, self conscious and withdrawn. When an individual's behaviour is unusual for a particular age, this leads to poor adjustment, and is termed as behavioural problems. Schools play a significant role in the early adolescents' development because of the environment they provide. Though researches have been carried out focusing school environment of early adolescents, the investigators were interested to find if institutional variables can be significant contributors to the behavioral disorders exhibited by early adolescents. The study was designed to investigate the impact of institutional variables on behavioral disorders in early adolescents, studying in Standard IX. Random Sampling Technique was done on the basis of nature of the school, locality of school, type of school and medium of instruction to draw the sample size of 1275. Self constructed tool on Behavioral Disorders was used. Collected data were analyzed using statistical techniques such as t-test, ANOVA (Analysis of Varience). The statistical results revealed that institutional variables significantly contributed to the behaviourial problems in early adolescents. There should be some guidance service in each school, in order to provide some strategies for managing the behavioral problems among early teens as well as reducing the problem at this stage.

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Preservice School Personnel's Knowledge of Stimulant Medication and ADHD

Vol.8  No.1

Year : 2014

Issue : May-Jul

Title : Preservice School Personnel's Knowledge of Stimulant Medication and ADHD

Author Name : Sekhar S. Pindiprolu

Synopsis :

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most commonly diagnosed disorders among children today. Stimulants are commonly prescribed to children with ADHD to improve attention span and decrease distractibility, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Given the increased use of stimulant medication, school personnel need to be aware of the implications and limitations of the stimulant medications on a child's academic and behavioral performance. In this study, pre-service school personnel's awareness of the symptoms and causes of ADHD and the effects of stimulant medication was examined using a13 item questionnaire developed by Snider, Busch, and Arrowood (2003). Further, the differences in knowledge levels between the Graduate and Undergraduate students were examined. The sample consisted of 76 Undergraduate and Graduate students majoring in Special education, General education speech and Language pathology, and School psychology. The findings indicated that pre-service school personnel (a) had higher knowledge scores than reported in previous literature and (b) were less aware of the lack of long-term efficacy data and the side effects of medication. Independent Samples ‘t’ test indicated that there were no differences between the graduate and undergraduate student groups on the overall knowledge scores. Based on the results, it is recommended that the side-effects of stimulant medication should be incorporated within the teacher education curriculum.

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A Study to Investigate the Relationship between Locus of Control and Academic Achievement of Students

Vol.8  No.1

Year : 2014

Issue : May-Jul

Title : A Study to Investigate the Relationship between Locus of Control and Academic Achievement of Students

Author Name : Dr. Aijaz Ahmed Gujjar, Rukhma Aijaz

Synopsis :

Motivation is regarded as the alpha and omega of learning .It is the heart of teaching learning process. Motivation is defined as an internal state that arouses, directs, and maintains the behavior over time. Thus motivation is the pivotal component of learning and locus of control which is one of the important factors it stems from. Locus of control is a belief about the primary source of a person's behavior- either internal (within a person) or external (with in a person's physical and social environment). The main aim of this research was to measure the locus of control of students in order to determine the degree of their externality or internality of locus of control. And to find out the gender difference in locus of control orientation at College and University levels to relate the locus of control with academic achievement. Sample of study consisted of 466 students, out of which 205 were boys and 261 were girls. This sample was chosen from two female college and one male college located in Rawalpindi city and one Co-education University Institute located in Islamabad city. The college students were mostly of 16 and 17 years age group, where as University students were in the 20 and 21 year age group. For the purpose of measuring locus of control questionnaire was used with a few modifications. Academic achievement was measured by the marks obtained by the sample in their recently held examination at their institutions. The obtained data were analyzed and interpreted using statistical tools such as: Mean Standard Deviation, t-test and correlation coefficient. The results show that the majority of students were found to be more internal than external in their locus of control. This result is enlightened with others studies that, locus of control and academic achievement were related positively to each other. Boys were found to be more internal than girls at college level however, no gender differences in locus of control were found at the University level.

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A Study to Assess the Achievement Motivation of Higher Secondary Students In Relation to their Noise Sensitivity

Vol.7  No.4

Year : 2014

Issue : Feb-Apr

Title : A Study to Assess the Achievement Motivation of Higher Secondary Students In Relation to their Noise Sensitivity

Author Name : Prema Latha

Synopsis :

Disturbing sounds are often referred to as noise, and if extreme enough in degree, intensity or frequency, it is referred to as noise pollution. Achievement refers to a change in study behavior in relation to their noise sensitivity and learning in the educational sense by achieving results in changed responses to certain types of stimuli like noise sensitivity.It is the more specialized skills which are taught in school which depends greatly both on the effectiveness of instruction and practised on the students interest. This study is an attempt to explore the relationship between achievement motivation and noise sensitivity of higher secondary students. Data were collected from 200 Higher Secondary students which was selected through stratified random sampling from four schools in Kanyakumari District through questionnaire. Data were collected through survey method and were analyzed with the help of descriptive, correlational and regression analysis. Findings revealed that the achievement motivation of Higher Secondary students are highly related to their noise sensitivity and student with a positive attitude to the noise sensitivity tend to develop a high achievement motivation.

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Effects of Employing the Text, SRA Decoding Strategies on the Word Recognition for a High School Student with Learning Disabilities

Vol.7  No.4

Year : 2014

Issue : Feb-Apr

Title : Effects of Employing the Text, SRA Decoding Strategies on the Word Recognition for a High School Student with Learning Disabilities

Author Name : Alyson Lykken, Julie Wakeman, Jennifer Neyman , Thomas McLaughlin, Kim Zumwalt

Synopsis :

An objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of employing the SRA Decoding Strategies text on word recognition for a ninth grade male with a learning disability. The student was enrolled in a high school special education resource room in a large urban school district in the Pacific North west in a direct instruction reading resource room. A multiple baseline design across three sets of sight words was used to test the effectiveness of the decoding program. The overall results indicated that the program worked well with the participant. The decoding strategies generalized to novel words for which he had not received any training. The efficacy of employing direct instruction procedures with high school students with learning disabilities was discussed in this paper.

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Effects of Direct Instruction Rewards Program Strategies to Teach Separation Of Complex Words To Two High School Students with Disabilities

Vol.7  No.4

Year : 2014

Issue : Feb-Apr

Title : Effects of Direct Instruction Rewards Program Strategies to Teach Separation Of Complex Words To Two High School Students with Disabilities

Author Name : Lauren Mullaney, Megan Baker, Katie Rutherford, Jennifer Neyman , Thomas McLaughlin, SUSAN STOOKEY

Synopsis :

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effects of the Direct Instruction REWARDS® program on reading complex words of two fifteen-year-old boys in a reading resource room. Both participants had difficulty in reading and were diagnosed as learning disabled. During baseline, both participants had difficulty in syllabication. The results showed that through the REWARDS® program and by promoting generalization in phonemic reading, the program was successful and efficient. The students had stated that they felt more comfortable towards the end of the intervention with the ® REWARDS® program and produced large improvements in reading. The benefits of employing REWARDS were also discussed in this paper.

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Challenges to the Concept “Partnership with Parents” in Special Needs Education

Vol.7  No.4

Year : 2014

Issue : Feb-Apr

Title : Challenges to the Concept “Partnership with Parents” in Special Needs Education

Author Name : Mohaned Abed

Synopsis :

It is observed that professionals would meet the needs of individual children if they work closely with the child's parents [58]. The growing of a child is a continuous process which requires a coherent, close partnership between home and school, since the house is the first educational environment, and the first community in which a child lives and grows. Education, habits and trends are taken from these very first, essential experiences. Besides, when children begin their school life, they do not break the relationship to their family but remain under various, significant influences from the family members, including parents and siblings. Moreover, schools are considered as a main factor of the development of children's experiences. Therefore, it is not possible to categorise them as being less important than the experiences gained at home. Consequently, it is seen that they should complement each other.

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In Pursuit of Effective Schools: From Western Perspective

Vol.7  No.4

Year : 2014

Issue : Feb-Apr

Title : In Pursuit of Effective Schools: From Western Perspective

Author Name : ANAMIKA RAI, Anand Prakash

Synopsis :

This review paper begins by asking what makes few schools outstanding. What makes them successful? What have we learned from last two decades of studying School Effectiveness (SE)? To answer those questions, this paper attempts to identify the patterns and trends of Studying School effectiveness from western perspective. The main purpose of this review study was to understand and fix the criteria of assessing SE. A brief literature review was carried out to bring those factors that contribute SE. The focus is on the substantive findings that emerged from the review. Literature gives an insight that educationists have given more importance to enrolment, retention, and dropout rates, whereas many have viewed SE in terms of classroom pedagogy or teaching and learning, the content aspect etc. The large section of effectiveness studies have focused exclusively on students' cognitive outcomes in the areas such as reading, mathematics or public examination results. However, there is less evidence about the studies on school processes indicators that are important in determining the schools' success. The results from reviewed literature reveals that many SE factors, three broad key process indicators have found to be the most frequent ones, i.e. effective leadership of school heads, positive school culture and environment of teaching and learning. The critical perspective of previous literature are useful in understanding how this set of key variables as a whole defines the quality of schools at all levels. Finally, it provides few recommendations for policy development to bring about improvement.

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Constructivist Approach to Teacher Education: An Integrative Model for Reflective Teaching

Vol.7  No.4

Year : 2014

Issue : Feb-Apr

Title : Constructivist Approach to Teacher Education: An Integrative Model for Reflective Teaching

Author Name : Vijaya kumari Nonda Shivarama

Synopsis :

The theory of constructivism states that learning is non-linear, recursive, continuous, complex and relational – Despite the difficulty of deducing constructivist pedagogy from constructivist theories, there are models and common elements to consider in planning new program. Reflective activities are a common feature of all the programs of constructivist Teacher Education .It is used at both Pre-service and In-service level of Teacher Education. Several studies have proved that, critical reflection upon experience continues to be an effective technique for professional development. The paper discussing the nature of constructivist approach to teacher education emphasizes the role of reflective activities in teacher training. Based on the results of the research reviews in the field of constructivist teacher education and reflective teaching, the findings of the study strongly suggests the integration of reflective teaching practice in the preservice teacher education curriculum and suggests a proposed integrative model for reflective teaching. The study investigated the effects of different methods of teaching science on the achievement, basic science process and skills and scientific attitude of standard six pupils with different achievement levels. The study revealed that methods have differential effects on different contexts, that is, different pre-achievement levels. These differences were due to differences in the process variables. The study suggests that to implement any method, the context needs to be considered for its effectiveness and hence student-teachers need to be trained in analyzing their teaching in terms of context variables to establish relationship between presage-context-process-product so that the student teacher can improve his/her teaching as a student and develop transformation learning as a professional. In this study effectiveness of these three methods on achievement, scientific attitude and basic science process skills were found out by establishing fidelity of each method. This could be done effectively through reflective teaching training. Hence the findings imply that student teachers need to be trained in reflective teaching so that they will be familiar with the different approaches of reflective teaching and tools and techniques used for observing and analyzing classroom interaction and improve upon their teaching skills.

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