Journal of Education and Educational Development

25-42

Authors: Meltem Emen, Durmuş Aslan

Perspective taking is a fundamental skill that helps us to understand others’ thoughts, feelings and perceptions. Past studies have shown that there were significant relations between young children’s perspective taking abilities and age, gender, formal schooling and socioeconomic status. The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between perspective taking skills and language development in preschool children. The study sample included 98 three to five-year-old children (53 girls and 45 boys) attending six kindergartens located at the city center of Adana, Turkey. Children came from families with similar demographic characteristics. As data collection instruments, Perspective Taking Test for Children (PTC) and Peabody Picture-Vocabulary Test were used. Data were obtained by individual interviews. Firstly, children were presented the PTC. The next day, Peabody Picture-Vocabulary Test wasapplied to the children. The results show that there was a significant and positive correlation between perspective taking skills and language development of the children. These correlations were high value for the age of three years, moderate for four years old and high for five years old. It was also determined that language development of children predicted their perspective taking skills significantly.

62-77

Authors: Naeem Akhtar Rana, Nasreen Hussain

Effective Communication Skills demonstrate the capacity and efficacy of any business graduate. These skills allow the business students to express and utilize their knowledge to benefit any organization. However, the business industry have continuously raised their concerns on the lack of effective oral and written communication skills to serve the requirements of rapidly growing communication within and outside organizations. Among many factors, teaching methods, at higher education, have been identified that did not allow developing working skills to their full effects. Therefore, many methods have been developed and tested around the world to increase the necessary skills among business students. Scholars and researchers have tried to explore and test Experiential Learning (EL) techniques in teaching different courses of business administration programs. In the past few decades EL techniques have frequently been used in business pedagogies. EL theory presents a playfield where learners can learn the best by doing (Kolb, 1984). The traditional teaching pedagogies have proved insufficient to cater the needs of the learners and corporate world. Although business education around the world has already inculcated EL strategies into its system; however, in Pakistan EL theory is at its initial stage and the trainers and teachers are striving to find out appropriate tools and strategies to effectively utilize the theory. In this regard, the researcher developed an ERE cycle which was based on Kolb’s (1984) EL theory and tested its impact on the grades of the students oral and written communication skills. The study was conducted using one sample t-test in the paradigm of quantitative research. Three classes of BBA and MBA were selected for this study who were studying Oral and written communication courses. This research compared mean scores of these three classes with the population mean of the last three years. The results showed a significant positive difference between the sample mean scores and population mean. The study proved that EL based ERE cycle could prove very effective in enhancement of the skills of business communication students that was reflected in their performance in exams. The study would provide communication faculty, trainers and institutes to explore and utilize the effectiveness of ERE cycle and perform further researches to extend the utilities of EL based teaching methods.

95-110

Authors: Shirin Nooruddin, Shelina Bhamani

Teachers in the recent fast transforming technological era are required to regularly upgrade their knowledge, skills and attitudes to meet the needs of the 21st century learners & learning. This study explores the engagement of the school leaders in continuous professional development (CPD) by using a case study method. An elite school was selected as a sample case considering its recognition of CPD models and its constructive implications on learning. Two school leaders consisting of school headmistress and CPD convenor were selected using a purposive sampling method. The data were collected using an in-depth interview strategy and having a semi structured interview guide that could allow subjective detailed questioning and responses. Also, researchers own observations of CPD programmes provided relevant data for the study. The data analysis revealed that school leaders pursue CPD in a very systemic and process-oriented manner. The process starts from exploring individual teachers’ needs to providing them with avenues to upgrade their teaching with timely support and monitoring. This study synthesizes the findings and present essential characteristics of effective professional development. Strategies for policy makers, school leadership, school administrators and teachers to engage in continuous, relevant and contextualized professional development endeavours are discussed.

126-137

Authors: Sheikh Muhammad Irfan, Kamal Ahmed Soomro, Nasreen Hussain

This study was conducted to examine the relationship between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies (MARS), and academic attainments (AA) of undergraduate business students. It also investigated the relationship between reading practices (RP) and MARS. There are three different categories of MARS – global, problem solving, and support reading strategies. The Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI), developed by Mokhtari and Reichard (2002) was used as the instrument for this study where the sample consisted of 571 male and female students of undergraduate business program from private and public universities of Karachi. The results showed Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies significantly predicts academic attainments of university students. The findings suggest that conducting workshops or training sessions for promoting MARS may be helpful to enhance students’ concentration towards the reading process that may affect their learning.

154-170

Authors: FIZZA ANWAR

This research was conducted to determine the effects of activity-based teaching on student motivation and academic achievement. Pretest and post-test control group design of experimental research was employed for this study. Two MCQ achievement tests were used as research tools for the data collection as pre-test and post-test. The first step in this project was to gather information about what motivates students to learn. Pre-test was conducted from both groups and results were tabulated. The second step of the project was to examine the effect of hands-on activities on student motivation and for analysis MCQ achievement test was used along with specially designed work sheets from both groups. T-test was used to analyze the data. The results of this study showed that a majority of students’ scores increased in experimental group as compared to the control group. The mean value indicated that participants from experimental group showed more achievement in post-test 15.6, while the control group students scored 10.7. The post-lesson survey showed that the majority students found the activity based teaching to be more interesting than lecture based teaching.

188-192

Authors: Abdulrauf Farooqui

21st Century learner can be described as ‘technowiredcompuchildren’. This refers to youth focused inquiry based learning system offered at Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU). All learning systems involve the successful completion of high quality assignments indicating that the student has done additional reading beyond the course material and has made out all-out-effort towards completing assignments with ingenuity. The Commonwealth youth program (CYP), Post Graduate Diploma in ‘Youth in Development Work’ played a significant role in promoting the student’s based reading cum writing, speaking and listening skills, motivated thinking process and above capacity for critical thinking. This paper provides an insight into the value of completing high quality assignments at one’s own initiative.