Social Studies

Festivals and traditional ceremonies are part of the cultural heritage of Africa. This is why the traditional Egungun festival in Yorubaland, till date, still enjoys indigenous monopoly. However, its resources as a unique cultural asset of Africans are presently under-utilized and therefore need to be further explored for greater relevance with the sophistication and demands of contemporary age. This, thus, constitute the subject of this paper. The paper, therefore, focuses on the exploration of the content and form of traditional egungun Ado festival in order to define the basis for its enduring value in Ado Ekiti. This is discussed from analytical and mythological perspectives. The paper establishes that for any art to thrive, it must remain dynamic. And more interesting, the paper unravels the dynamics, the beauty, the uniqueness and multiple potentials of this Egungun Ado festival. Through interviews, personal experience and observation, the paper posits that Egungun Ado festival plays pivotal roles in the social, religious and political milieu of the Ado people and has remained a rallying point. It concludes that Egungun Ado festivals with its rich content and form are crucial to the nation building process in African societies and in fact, capable of yielding great dividends in the global economy if appropriately explored. However, it is imperative that African countries implement credible cultural policies to index and protect the vulnerability of aspects of this Yoruba culture in the face of Western encroachments and onslaught of Islam and Christianity.

Over centuries the field of psychology has been dominated by men. For a long time, women have been labeled as inferior and men have dominated the field of psychology. Male superiority and dominance has infiltrated the social structure and reduced the role of the female in society. Myths of Social Darwinism based on sexual selection among other attributes saw the females struggle over centuries. There were many others who refuted this myth including Helen Thompson, Mary Calkins, and Mary Putnam Jacobi. Their theories include equity model and relational theory that has left the women fighting for equality based on early concepts of feminism. The main purpose of the paper is to investigate the history of women psychology and liberation of feminist in research and psychology. Narrative analysis of various literature from different nations on feminism, women and psychological research. The findings indicate that feminism is a thing of the past, there has been development in gender equality. Both men and women have been given equal chances in practicing psychology and more scholarships have been given out to women to encourage them to participate in research and psychology. Continuous empowerment has encouraged women to grow and develop their self-confidence, self-efficacy, and self-esteem.

The transition of the students from secondary school to college/university level becomes a major challenge for majority of the students in Kenya. Moreover, compounding challenges have increasingly affected the student population towards adjusting in the university level. It is therefore recommended that a strategic orientation programme especially on guidance and counselling services for the first year diploma students. Accordingly, this paper advocates for the review of student support programmes towards the adjustment of first year students in the university/college environment. Finally, there is need for the inclusion of psychologists, counselling psychologists and psychiatrists in student support services.

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the correlated factors of landslide using certainty factor (CF) Model in Latyan catchment, north Tehran, Iran. At ?rst, a landslide inventory map was prepared using aerial photographs and the extensive ?eld survey. For this purpose, 208 landslides were mapped and out of which 145 (70 %) were randomly selected for building landslide susceptibility models, while the remaining 63 (30 %) were used for validating the models. In this study, 10 conditioning factors with their classes were evaluated. These factors including: slope; slope aspect; altitude; plan curvature; lithology; land use; distance from faults, rivers and roads and topographic wetness index (TWI). The validation of landslide susceptibility map was carried out using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Results shows that the slope class 20 ?–30 ?(0.10640), slope aspect northwest (0.53335), the altitude 1800 - 2000 m (0.40805), curvature concave (0.00788), geology Jd (0.86675), Land Use forest (0.94588), distance from faults 6500–9500 m (0.47110), distance from river 0–200 m (0.25148) and distance form roads 0–500 m (0.24822) have the highest CF values. The result of ROC curve also shows that the certainty factor model has high value of AUC (0.832) which indicates the model employed in this study reasonably good accuracy in predicting the landslide susceptibility of Latyan catchment.

The paper deals with the fate of homo gravitas. As an archetype of the existing humans, homo gravitas is mirroring in Heraclitus’ universe like into its whole. In spite of this privileged astral position, homo gravitas is experiencing trouble with its own life at home, on the earth and behaves cruelly to its environment. This paper brings proof that all trouble is due to some disconnections occurring with its gravitational and energetic ties. Some of the damage lasts for a long time, but most has been produced during the former cultures. Those disconnections disturb what Paracelsus called the inner harmony of humans and psychic disorders result. They disclose the existing conflicts between the body and the mind. It was evaluated that 25% of total population is seriously affected by the disease called here schizophrenia astralis. It is not an infecting disease, but its danger increases with population growth. By raising awareness and eliminating its causes with equanimity, schizophrenia astralis can be eradicated before it is too late. Then, with a well-balanced body-mind couple, homo gravitas automatically becomes homo astralis. Anyway, there is no longer need to emigrate on other planets or meet aliens.

The Madrassa education system, which produced many legendary figures in strengthening the religious and social wellbeing of the Kerala state, is in the verge of decline. The responsibility for the failure of the system falls on the religious organizations, teachers, parents and the Mahallu committee. Contemporary Kerala society needs the rejuvenation of the Madrassa education system to ensure religious harmony and overall development of the community and the society. This paper tires to expose the failures of the Madrassa education systems in Kerala and puts forth the remedial measures to rejuvenate the system.

This study is a descriptive survey conducted on four primary schools based in the Kgalagadi North Sub-District in Botswana with purpose to cross-examine the instructional challenges faced by teachers based at schools in remote areas. After establishment of validity, interviews were conducted (individual and focus group). Results show that all the four remote schools sampled had homogeneous instructional challenges. Of the challenges, teachers identified discipline and academic challenges as a major factor in all the sampled schools. Even though parental support related challenges did not feature prominently in this study, the study identified that parents we not active in supporting their children in learning. The frequency of these challenges was found to be hampering positive academic output. These challenges were perceived to be capable of adversely affecting Botswana’s national objectives of Vision 2016 pillar of, an educated and informed nation. The study found out that learner achievement at remote schools is low and that parents are not actively involved in their children's education. The final thought of the study was that teachers based at remote schools need capacity building to deal with instructional challenges to enhance their effectiveness. On this ground, the researcher agrees with literature on the need for family learning as an approach to assist parents to support their children.

Now-a-days employees become the most important assets of the organizations. Organizations spend millions of rupees for their employee’s trainings and developments. But after certain time they quit because of many factors. In present study, we focus on two factors that contribute in this problem i.e. pay and supervisor. This study investigates the relationship of employee’s satisfaction of supervisor and pay with organizational commitment. Data was collected from 157 employees of banking sector. The results show that if employees are satisfied with their pay as well as their supervisor then their commitment towards their organization is strong.

The term 'political participation' has a broad inclusive meaning. It is not only related to 'Right to Vote', but simultaneously relates to participation in: decision making process, political activism, political consciousness, etc. Political activism and voting are the strongest areas of women's political participation. Participation in decision-making process is the real tool of women empowerment. Women are going to play a crucial role in selecting their political representative. Politicos can no longer ignore these sections of the society as a large number of youth and women are getting enrolled their names in voters list since 2008 assembly election. As per the electoral rolls (2015), a total of 1.33 crore people are eligible to vote in Delhi of which over 72 lakh are men and around 59 lakh are women. Out of the 673 candidates in the fray for Delhi Assembly elections, only 66 are women. While there were assurances galore on women’s safety in the national capital ahead of the polls, the number of tickets given to women candidates by the three leading political parties was in sharp contrast to the population of women voters in Delhi. In 2015 assembly election female poll percentage was 66.50% which is slightly less than the male poll percentage which was 67.64%. In this election all the Political parties emerged with a women-oriented political agenda to attract women voters. For the purpose of study spatial perspective approach and aggregate data analysis methods were applied to understand female voters’ behavior and their participation in 70 assembly constituencies of Delhi. 

The purpose of this study was to examine gender and age differences in computer usage, competence, attitudes, self-efficacy, and anxiety among teachers. Four hundred and sixty five teachers (223 females and 242 males aged 20 to 50 years) from twenty rural schools in south Jordan participated in the study. The data for the study were collected through the use of quantitative method. The results illustrated some gender and age differences in computer use, competence, attitudes, self-efficacy, and anxiety. However, the differences in computer use between male and female teachers are not similar. Males’ teachers typically had higher scores than females’ teachers in the use of computer for educational purposes. In addition, males’ teachers tend to have higher levels of computer self-efficacy and computer competence than females’ teachers. Likewise, both genders exhibited the same levels of attitudes towards computer use. Females’ teachers seem to have higher levels of computer anxiety than males’ teachers do. Finally, general age differences in computer use, competence, attitudes, self-efficacy, and anxiety among teachers were also found. The outcomes confirm the findings of other studies conducted in different educational settings regarding teachers’ gender and age differences in computer use, competence, attitudes, self-efficacy, and anxiety. Consequently, implications of the study give valuable insight to the future use of computers in schools. Recommendations were made based on findings.