Psychology

Corporal Punishment was outlawed in Kenya in line with the Children’s Act of 2001. Consequently, alternative forms of discipline were recommended in our Schools. The purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ perception on the effectiveness of the forms of alternative discipline used in Kajiado County, Kenya. This study was guided by the following objectives: Teachers’ perception of the effectiveness of alternative forms of discipline; exploration of challenges that teachers face in administering these forms of discipline in Kajiado County. This study comprised all public secondary school teacher counsellors, and disciplinary Committee teachers. Twenty participants were selected using purposive sampling technique. Qualitative research approach, and phenomenological design were used in this study. Data was generated using a structured interview guide, and analyzed thematically. Verbatim analysis was used to report direct quotations from the statements made by the participants to capture their strong feelings about the phenomenon. The study revealed that alternative forms of discipline were effective in behavior modification. This study also found out that, lack of counseling rooms, uncooperative teacher attitude, an overloaded curriculum, inconsistence in disciplining students, blurred role of teacher counsellor, and untrained teacher counsellors were challenges that schools faced in the implementation of alternative forms of discipline in schools. Teachers suggested that workshops should be conducted to make them aware of the alternative forms of discipline. The findings of this study will be useful to head-teachers, teachers and policy makers in education in terms of formulation of policy guidelines.

This research intends to study on the impact which emotional intelligence may exert on job satisfaction in employees of Behnoush Company. After reviewing the literature pertaining to emotional intelligence and job satisfaction, we created two separate questionnaires in which emotional intelligence and job satisfaction were central. We aimed, by these questionnaires, at ranking job satisfaction elements. After verifying their reliability and validity they were distributed among members of statistical population. Results obtained from application of Pearson correlation as well as regression tests indicate that there is a positive, meaningful relation between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction. It was also found that the relation of social skills and self-regulation with job satisfaction was more than other relations. Also, using one-way variance analysis test, the relation between demographic features of employees and their job satisfaction was considered. The results proved no relations between the said variables.

Death is an inevitable phenomenon that we should accept it as a part of our life. Because everybody will die and we cannot disregard it in our life. One of the most difficult events that may occur for every child or teenager is that one of his/her relatives be died. In order to therapy the consequences of death, it is necessary to acquire different information about its therapy methods such as cognitive-behavioral therapy. This is why that the present study was aimed to examine the effects of cognitive-behavioral therapy methods on decreasing symptoms of depression among students with abnormal grief. The research methodology of this study is a pretest-posttest design with control group. The statistical population of this study includes the students with grief that experienced one of their relatives’ deaths and had symptoms of abnormal depression based on the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-IR-IV). The sample members have been selected randomly and then were appointed to experimental and control groups randomly. In order to collect the research data, the questionnaire of child and teenagers’ depression has been used. In order to analyze the data and test the research hypotheses, Covariance analysis has been used in the SPSS. The results revealed that there is a significant difference between control and experimental groups’ depression after intervention (p?0.001). Therefore, it can be concluded that the cognitive-behavioral therapy has a significant effect on decreasing symptoms of depression among students with abnormal grief.

Adolescence, as the last developmental stepping stone to adulthood, is a period of pronounced growth and change. Alexithymia is primarily seen as a personality constructs a trait. It means difficulty to express feelings. It affects ones mental health and somatic health positively or negatively. Social support helps the person to maintain mental health. The aim of the present investigation is to study the alexithymia in relation to general health, somatic health and social support among institutionalized and non institutionalized adolescents. The sample for the study consists of 100 institutionalized and 100 non institutionalized adolescents ranging in the age of 16 to 19 years selected randomly from Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh.  TAS-20 Hindi version used to measure alexithymia (Bagby, Parker, & Taylor, 1994), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ- 28) by Goldberg, 1978, Somatic Health Complaints by Urmila Rani Srivastava ( ) and Social Support Questionnaire by Sarason et al., 1983.  Descriptive statistics, correlation and 2X2 ANOVA (for main and interaction effect) were used. RESULTS- The calculated values show the significant association of general health with the somatic health as the values comes out to be .311 and between general health and satisfaction with social support the value found to be -.183. It was found that there was no interaction effect between alexithymia and type of stay on general health. There was significant main effect of alexithymia on GH total and SHC as the values comes out to be 0.00. The values disclosed that there was significant interaction effect of both the independent variables i.e. alexithymia and type of stay on perceived social support. The calculated F-value found to be 3.931 which is significant at 0.05 level. 

The research on Study Habits and Students Academic Performance in English Language among Public Secondary Schools in Oron Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State was conducted in order to seek solution to the increasing nature of poor academic performance of students in English Language among Public Secondary Schools in Oron Local Government Area. Four variables were adopted to include participation in tutorial classes, attendance to classes, use of library and personal time table, which aimed at finding the relationship between each of those variables with academic performance of students. Four research questions and four research hypotheses were set. The related theories of learning used are connectionism, cognitive and psychological theories of learning. The population of study comprises all the 3 Public Secondary Schools in Oron Local Government Area. The instrument used for the study was Study Habit and Academic Performance Questionnaire (SHAPQ) which has a reliability coefficient of 0.99 using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) at P<.05 level of significance. The sample size was 200 students and data collected from the respondents were analyzed using PPMC with the degree of freedom of 198 at 0.05 level of significance. The result of data collections were drawn that: students should participate in tutorial classes, attend classes, use the library and should have a personal time table to improve academically. In conclusion, students should develop good study habits to achieve better academically and otherwise.

The need to have vocational guidance and counseling integrated into the secondary school curriculum has become more necessary in the modern times than it was several years ago. This could be so due to changing nature of job opportunities, job scarcity, explosion of knowledge and new technologies. Vocational Guidance and Counseling is offered to meet learners career needs, aspirations and job mobility. The objective of the study was to determine students’ perception of the impact of guidance and counseling programme on the satisfaction of vocational needs. The research study was guided by Gestalt theory of perception. The theory was appropriate because of the complex psychological backgrounds which informed the respondents perceptions. The target population for the study was all students drawn from secondary schools in North and South Rift Valley region of kenya. Four hundred and fifty students were selected through stratified random sampling from ten secondary schools. Self – developed questionnaires were used for data collection. Ex post facto research design was utilized for the study. The reliability of the instrument was SPQ = 0.893. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics (frequencies, means) and inferential statistics (t – test and Anova). The statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS) used to test null hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The content validity was ascertain through expert judgement opinion. The findings indicated that the respondents perception on the impact of guidance and counseling on satisfaction of vocational needs was uncertain (neutral perception) which meant that the impact was not significant. Students were not convince that the guidance programme has had any effect on self-employment skills, learning about talents, career available outside Kenya and career mentoring. The Category of School (Mixed Boarding) was found significant in its influence on perception of students of on the impact of guidance and counseling on vocational needs while age, gender, school type and class levels was found insignificant. This paper recommends reviewing the vocational guidance programmes to be more practical and consumer friendly for it to be more appealing to learners in order to satisfy their career needs. The paper concludes with a suggestion that vocational guidance can be entrenched in the regular school curriculum for it to be more visible and creation of awareness on the value of vocational guidance and counseling.

Writing and reading. Reading and writing. Keeping a journal to capture the moments that surround you, incubating ideas (Bomer & Bomer, 2001), and organizing ideas. All this seems fairly simple, that is unless you are an English Language Learner (ELL) or an English as a Second Language (ESL) student. Foreign languages are immensely difficult for most learners and thus, teachers and students must have an understanding of each other. Tools, strategies, compensations, and acknowledgements of strengths and weakness behoove the instructor and student. Chen (2000) cites Zamel (1976) and Jones (1986) in that . . . “students writing in a second language proceed in similar fashion as native speakers” (p. 14). Chen (2000) continues to explain that ELL or ESL students all engage in the process of discovery, the process of determining meaning around self. Therefore:[C]ulturally relevant teachers understand that learning is facilitated when we capitalize on learners’ prior knowledge. Rather than seeing students’ culture as an impediment to learning, it becomes the vehicle through which they can acquire the official knowledge and skills of the school curriculum. However, in order to capitalize on students’ cultures, teachers have to know the students’ cultures (Ladson-Billings, 2001, p. 99-100).

Stress has been viewed as an inevitable consequence of work life. A worker will fell stress when his or her does not match their job requirements. Work stress come from a variety of sources and it can affect people in different ways. In the report The Scale of Occupational Stress (Smith et al., 2000 in Jeremy, 2005) it was estimated that there were 5 million workers suffering the high level of stress at work. The study shows the important outcomes that approximately one in five workers reported stress arising from work. There were cause by excessive workloads or lack of managerial support, ill health and back pain, together with certain health related activities such as smoking and alcohol intake.

The purpose of this study was to examine the Status of teacher adequacy in public Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) centres in Nandi County, Kenya. The study adopted descriptive survey design using mixed methodology and pragmatism paradigm. The target population comprised of 1387 pre-school teachers, 1 county Director of ECDE, 6 Sub-County ECDE Directors and 651 primary school head teachers. A sample size of 301 teachers and 208 head teachers was obtained. Stratified and simple random sampling was used to select teachers and headteachers while purposive sampling was used in selecting the county director of ECDE and 6 Sub-County ECDE Directors. Questionnaire and interview schedules were used for collecting data for the study. Validity and reliability of the instruments were determined before data collection. Quantitative data was analyzed using frequencies and percentages while content analysis was used to analyze qualitative information. The study found out that majority of the pre-schools in the study area lacked adequate pre-school teachers, textbooks and play materials. Majority (72.0%) of the employed pre-school teachers had undergone pre-school teacher training courses therefore they had adequate and current pedagogical skills which allowed them to effectively handle pre-school learners. Majority of the pre-schools lacked adequate teaching and learning materials. The study recommended that there is need for employment of more trained pre-school teachers by the county government to improve learning. This is attributed to the fact that there were inadequate trained pre-school teachers employed by the county government yet early childhood education is a devolved function.

This study examined the status of Sport coaching in secondary schools in Delta state, and strategies for its development. The concern was on the issue of manpower development, position of physical educators, facilities and equipment in our secondary schools in the state. It was a situational report, which entailed a descriptive survey where the variables were examined in retrospect. The researcher generated 3 research questions that guided the study. The population of the study was on physical and health education teachers in government public secondary schools in Delta state. There was no sampling as all the 177 physical education teachers in 359 public government secondary schools in Delta state was sampled. Data collected were entered and analyzed using the descriptive statistics of simple percentages. The findings of the study among others were that there is lack of quality facilities and equipment in our secondary schools in Delta state. It was therefore recommended among other things that the Government, Parents teachers association, old boys/Girls should endeavor to provide sophisticated Sports facilities and equipment to secondary schools to enhance effective teaching/learning and productivity. It was concluded that since the Sporting world is in a flux, a sustainable human capital development holds a position potential for cultivating a vibrant base for outstanding Sport performances.