Social Sciences

This study focused on the impact of role-play on Promoting Functional Use of L2 in Low-immersion EFL Context of Iranian High school Learners. Role-play was supposed to have a great impact on the understanding and producing linguistic functions and speech acts. Among all the functions introduced by Halliday (1985), three were utilized in this research. Heuristic function which deals with the use of language to ask for information about things, informative function dealing with the use of language to inform about external things, and the Interactional function which has to do with the use of language to interact socially with others. About 100 students, 60 females and 40 males high school students, were asked to participate in this research. Having assigned them into two groups of control and experimental ones, pre-test and posttest were run. In order to evaluate the results, ANCOVA test was administered. The results showed that gender had no significant effect on role-playing the Halliday’s functions. Furthermore, it was statistically proved that role-play would lead to a better production of speech acts, especially the three functions utilized in this study. Besides, Implementing Role-play could affect and enhance the scores of Iranian EFL learners. This study would have been a great help to teachers to run their classes more efficiently and proficiently. Key words: Functions, Role-play, Low immersion contexts, gender

School reforms highlight the need for young people who make up the bulk (over 70 percent) of most African nations’ populations to be empathetic, reflective, creative, innovative and resilient servant leaders. While the formal curriculum plays a key in achieving these educational goals, there exists other factors that shape students’ beliefs, attitudes, intellectual and behavioral structure, which this article refers to as the invisible curriculum. A substantial number of scholars suggest that the hidden curriculum accounts for as much as 90% of all students’ learning outcomes. Its influences are even visible on students’ leadership styles, adaptive response to hardship and the ability to rebound back (resilience), creativity-the act of conceiving something unique, innovation-the implementation of something new, and in general their worldview, even to keeping a job in the future. The stressors associated with 21st century young people training to be innovative, creative, resilient and servant leaders necessitated an investigation on the role played by the hidden curriculum in students’ worldview through a sequential explanatory mixed method design. Four hundred and eighty-six closed-ended questionnaires were distributed to randomly selected undergraduate students. Out of the 486 distributed questionnaires, 417 were filled and returned and the information therein informed the follow-up qualitative phase to explain and enrich the quantitative data. An interview was then developed to guide in gathering explanations from purposively selected 10 students to provide in-depth explanations as why some factors were perceived as more influential than others. The results of the research indicated that hidden curricula are manifested through teachers’ demeanors and conduct not explicitly prescribed in any formal document but creates lasting impressions on young peoples’ worldviews and ultimately their behavior. For this reason, the researchers suggest educators must pay cautious attention to the human climate in formal learning contexts and the society in general if they wish to succeed in nurturing holistic leaders for the accomplishment of Vision 2030.

Marriage nowadays faces a various issues especially when divorce becomes trend among Malaysian. It is believed that success in marriage by maintaining quality of relationship may influence the other aspect of life.However, it is important to know the roles of marital communication and conflict resolution in order to maintain quality of relationship. This study examines the role of communication and conflict resolution on Muslim newlywed couples' marital quality. The Family Stress Theory (FST) and Marital Communication Theory (MCT) of marital communication and conflict resolutionwere used to explain influence between communication dimension, conflict resolution, and marital quality. Participants were 571 married Muslim individually selected from area Selangor. Self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. Results indicate that there are significant differences in conflict resolution between the genders. However, people who are olderand more educated reported higher marital quality. It also noted high levels on communication and conflict resolution ensure better quality marriage among respondents. Meanwhile, increasing on total household among them tend to have lower marital quality. Future studies need to consider using longitudinal data Marriage nowadays faces a various issues especially when divorce becomes trend among Malaysian. It is believed that success in marriage by maintaining quality of relationship may influence the other aspect of life.However, it is important to know the roles of marital communication and conflict resolution in order to maintain quality of relationship. This study examines the role of communication and conflict resolution on Muslim newlywed couples' marital quality. The Family Stress Theory (FST) and Marital Communication Theory (MCT) of marital communication and conflict resolutionwere used to explain influence between communication dimension, conflict resolution, and marital quality. Participants were 571 married Muslim individually selected from area Selangor. Self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. Results indicate that there are significant differences in conflict resolution between the genders. However, people who are olderand more educated reported higher marital quality. It also noted high levels on communication and conflict resolution ensure better quality marriage among respondents. Meanwhile, increasing on total household among them tend to have lower marital quality. Future studies need to consider using longitudinal data to fully understand the impact of communication and conflict resolution towards marital quality.

This study includes, comparing management, and teachers’ demographic factor on private and public sectors universities. It was descriptive in nature. It focuses on teachers’ demographic variations of grade, income, experience in determining students’ satisfaction, to measure the effects of students’ demographic variations of family income, parental qualification and profession in determining their level of satisfaction. As managements’, and teachers’ demographic variations were also taken as independent variables while their scores of respondents on research instruments were taken as dependent variables. For sampling a stratified random sample of 700 respondents was collected from respondents of three distinct groups’ i.e. students, management, and teachers. Three different tools were developed and use to get the views of students, management and teachers in public and private sector universities. Collected data was analyzed statistically (descriptive and inferential statistics). Various statistical tests such as mean, Standard Deviation, Analysis of variance, correlation and regression were used to explore research variables with the help of SPSS 21. It revealed that the university students are more satisfied from experienced and highly paid professors.

This paper focuses on 17 local governments in savannah Sahel of Yobe State Nigeria. The level of community participation, in afforestation programme development for rural communities is attributed to sense of community. A Sense of community and rule enforcement is a necessary condition for community afforestation programme development. This paper provides an approach for sense of community and rule enforcement in relations to community afforestation programme development. The main purpose of the study was to assess the sense of community and rule enforcement in community afforestation programme development in Yobe State, Nigeria. Sense of community and rule enforcement has been identified as bridge to effective community participation in afforestation programme development. The study used survey design in which questionnaire was used to collect the data from the selected communities and villages. The result shows that about 89 percent change in afforestation programme development was as a result of changes in rule enforcement and sense of community. It can be concluded that the use of this domain allows community leaders to scrutinize their achievements, address their constraints and measure their progress.

There is a paradigm shift among the digital learners of 21st century due to the rapid increase in the usage of gadgets, such as computers, mobile phones, social networking sites, blogs and etc. Among International Baccalaureate teachers today, use of gadgets is widely used to engage their students and in the process, try to use technology tools such as Web 2.0 for collaborative projects, connecting participants beyond the traditional classrooms. This paper explores on digital literacy in the context of IB World School students learning engagement, using technology. As such, an implementation of Wikispaces Classroom for 6 weeks in an Information Technology Communication and Visual Arts lesson was used to capture their digital literacy in a Grade 5 classroom. The outcome of the research encapsulates the students’ perceptions towards their new learning experience through Web tools: Wikispaces Classroom for Visual Arts. As a result, student’s engagement in learning Visual Arts has increased and learning has generated knowledge in Visual Arts and other subject areas. This paper recommends digital literacy tools engage students in learning, which impact curriculum design and planning for future. 

This present study was mainly focused upon gender based analysis of occupational stress among academic managers at higher educational level. The major objective of this study was to compare the level of occupational stress among academic managers at higher educational level. The researcher used Occupational Stress Inventory–revised (OSI-R) to measure stress in academic managers. It comprised 140 items which was used for collection of data from the principals of government degree colleges in the province of Punjab, Pakistan. In order to select representative sample from the population, simple random sampling technique was used .Data were collected through registered mail and personal visits to the offices of principals. Total sample size was 120.for data analysis; both descriptive and inferential statistics were used. Data analysis revealed that significant difference was found in responses of male and female academic managers regarding to occupational stress, role stress and personal strain. Whereas no significant difference was found in responses of male and female academic managers regarding personal resources stress.

The story of human civilization is a newer ending struggle towards a better and improved way of life. Discrimination, inequality, injustice and explanation of any kind becomes, a matter of deep concern for any civilised society. Talk of rights related to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual is gaining importance day by day. Human rights also have implications in the process of globalization. It is important to understand the term of human rights and to recognise it as an instrument of social justice. This paper has made an attempt to understand the concept of human rights and efforts made for the protection of human rights at international level.

The culture contains components including deeds, beliefs, arts, faiths and other social findings that are inherited through the society and form life context. These social activities are generally being formed within public and urban areas. One of these public areas is Town Square that expands cultural identity within society by users. Hierarchy also helps this study through investigation for ways of areas arrangement near each other. The main research question is how and where cultural areas of Town Square have been formed. In this study we practiced to investigate cultural identity hierarchy within Iranian Town Square to realize this question. This research aims at studying Iranian Town Square hierarchy and to extend and promote their culture. The research method applied in this study is explanatory – analytical and is a kind of field studies. Data collection method is of library and field type through observation and using schemes and figure. The study first introduced literature subject and then practiced to investigate cultural, physical and social activities within Iranian prominent Town Square including yazd, tehran, and Isfahan. In this research, cultural activities position within Town Square and their effects on social stability regarding components like cultural identity, function and framework have been investigated. Results of this paper practiced to provide effective strategies for cultural activities stability and to promote cultural identity.

The present study assessed the contributions of Aga Khan Education Services Pakistan (AKESP) in Early Childhood Development (ECD) in Chitral. The study aimed to find out head teachers, teachers and parents’ views about contributions of AKESP in Early Childhood Development (ECD) centers at Chitral, and to assess their views about contributions of ECD centers in physical, social, cognitive, emotional, academic and moral development of children. The study was descriptive. Data were collected from parents, teachers and heads of ECD centers from valleys of Chitral through two sets of questionnaires. Findings report that ECD centers are contributing a lot in providing facilities for children at these centers and that ECD centers are contributing a lot in the social, emotional, moral, academic and physical development of children. However, ECD Centers of AKESP may focus on launching more programs for cognitive development of children and programs of teachers training in ECD.