Journal of Education and Educational Development

8-24

Authors: Anusha Mirza, Nasreen Hussain

This study sets out to investigate the attitude KS3 pupils have towards mathematics and the factors that influence this attitude. A case study approach was used as the pupils were a unit of the school under study and a survey method was chosen to provide scope to the study. Purposeful sampling was employed for the selection of 200 pupils from years 7 and 9 who were from target achiever and non target achiever groups. Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inventory (Tapia, 1996) was administered to the participants to measure their attitude towards mathematics. Data were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17. The result for the first hypothesis indicated that there is a significant difference on the variable of mathematics attitude of year 7 and 9 target achievers and non target achievers pupils (t=4.11, df =199, p <.05) and for the second hypothesis, the difference in the variety of attitudes is statistically significant in the pupuls from both groups (t=2.3, df =210, p <.05). The results of the research will enable teachers to understand the factors that effect attitude of pupils towards mathematics at secondary level and direct head teachers to establish effective teacher training and support system to help pupils to develop an interest in mathematics.

42-59

Authors: Jamila Bano, Zahra Jabeen, Sadruddin Bahadur Qutoshi

This study aimed to explore teachers’ perceptions about parental role in developing reading habits of children to improve their academic achievement. The study was conducted in one of the private schools of Gilgit city situated in the Northern part of Pakistan. Using a case study approach to research within the qualitative design, semistructured interviews were used for data collection, which enabled the researchers in capturing qualitative experiences, opinions, beliefs and perceptions of purposefully selected research participants. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis approach and emerging themes were represented in the form of figures to provide a clear understanding. The study confirmed that reading habits, for example, out of school reading and reading for pleasure, have influenced academic performance and parental role is pivotal in developing children’s interest in reading because healthy reading activities can help them to develop critical thinking and analytic skills. This could also develop their vocabulary to a great extent. Consequently, children exhibit improvement in their overall academic performance. The findings confirmed that if parents focused on reading improvement of their children in early ages, they could better develop reading as a routine activity. The study recommended that parents should play an active role in developing attitude towards reading by providing reading materials and creating a reading friendly environment at home.

80-95

Authors: Dr. Muhammad Fareed, Saniya Jawed, Sidra Awan

English language is taught as a compulsory subject up to graduate level in Pakistani educational system. Despite studying English for over 14 years, majority of students coming from non-elite schools, lack required command in English language skills to pursue their higher education and professional careers. With this background in mind, the current research focused on teaching English reading and writing skills and the problems faced while teaching these skills at Secondary School Certificate (SSC) level in private non-elite schools in Karachi. The sample of the study comprised 20 SSC level students, 12 SSC level English language teachers of non-elite private schools and 5 student notebooks. Data were collected through open-ended questionnaires, group interviews and notebook analysis. Data were examined using thematic analysis. The findings revealed that teaching English language reading practices include reading the text aloud, translating the chapter, providing the central idea and meanings of difficult words to the students. The major problems faced by the teachers in teaching reading skills are learners’ lack of interest in reading, lack of concentration and low reading comprehension skills. The study also revealed practices of teaching writing skills such as provision of model texts and relevant vocabulary items. The major problems while teaching writing skills are lack of pre-writing activities, learners’ deficient command over vocabulary, grammar, spellings and punctuation, lengthy syllabus and limited time.

108-122

Authors: Nasrullah Khan, Dr Niaz Muhammad Aajiz, Akber Ali

This study attempted to compare the management practices in public and private universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa, Pakistan. The comparison is based on availability of written rules and regulations, distribution of tasks, availability of managers, access to officers, time management, work load, staff promotion procedure and appraisal system. Additionally, the comparison is also based on transparency, political intervention, use of authorities, nepotism and biasness, human resource availability and functions, academic decisions, existence of different decision making bodies, committees and their role in policy making and implementation and management styles. The population comprised all recognized universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa and a convenience sampling of six universities included three from public and three from private sector. The findings showed that both sector universities had the required offices, staff members and managers. The areas where private universities were observed weak as compared to public universities were lack of proper staff vacancy advertisements and induction policies, vague appraisal system, low salary packages and limited freedom to managers. Public universities were found unsatisfactory in areas including staff induction on merit based policies and political intervention, lack of monitoring system and lack of collegiality amongst university offices. The study recommends that universities in both sectors should prepare staff and student manuals for transparency procedures, should improve the skills and knowledge of its staff/managers by conducting seminars/ workshops/ trainings in collaboration with HEC and other regulatory bodies on regular basis, and establish public private partnership to improve university management system in Pakistan.

139-155

Authors: Muhammad Abid Ali, Suhailah Hussien

This is the second part of my article published in JoEED, Vol.4, Issue 2, on Iqbal’s educational aims and objectives. In the first part the thrust was on the development of an individual self as a Muslim and the second part caters for Iqbal’s recommendations on how this individual can be developed as an effective instrument for serving the Islamic society and the Ummah. As mentioned in the first part, Pakistan lacks an education system to match the ideological needs of a Muslim society. The need to revive the grand narrative of the golden age of the Islamic world is currently being felt with great intensity. Iqbal being the ideologue of Pakistan has given us sufficient guidelines to draw our education system on the precepts of Islam. While Iqbal’s Persian anthology Asrar-i-Khudi narrates on how to develop an Islamic individual, his second anthology Ramuz-i-Bikhudi deals with how to develop this individual self as an effective member of the Islamic society. In this research qualitative content analysis of Ramuz-i- Bikhudi was carried out under the supervision of a celebrated expert on Iqbal and educational aims, objectives were derived for this purpose. It is sufficient to note that at the end of this anthology, Iqbal vows that his recommendations comply completely with the teachings of the holy Qur’an. The end objective of Iqbal was to prepare an individual who is an effective human being.

172-188

Authors: Asfandyar Fida, Abdul Ghaffar, Amir Zaman, Asif Niwaz Satti

Emotional intelligence is a contributing construct to learning and other personal and career developments. It is a perplex notion involving many conceptions which resulted in various tools of emotional intelligence. University education is a terminal stage when young people are ready to enter the job arena and are expected to be emotionally sound. Numerous studies have been carried out on the differentiation of emotional intelligence of the learners, particularly at graduate and postgraduate levels. This study is an attempt to investigate emotional intelligence of the university students. Since there are differences in the findings of various studies in terms of gender; therefore, this study also considers to explore the discrepancy of the emotional cognizance of the male and female learners at university level. The target participants of this investigation were the students of all five faculties of a university in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, a province in Pakistan. The Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS) developed by Wong and Law (2002) was used for data collection. The outcomes of the investigation showed that female learners were ahead of male in emotional intelligence. Further, the learners of business and economics had superior level of emotional intelligence, while students of Arts and Humanities had inferior level of emotional intelligence. The study put forward some valuable suggestions, particularly through curricula enhancement and for further research activities.