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Mihir K. Mallick & Simranjit kaur
Lovely Professional University, Phagwara

Special Issue, Volume 8, Number 2, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n2.03

Abstract

Learning environment has tremendous effect on the social and emotional development of the student. Learning environment either at school or home has deep impact on students. Academic resilience refers to academic achievement in spite of a challenging or difficult circumstance in the educational process. The study was conducted to explore learning environment and academic resilience of senior secondary school students and to analyze the relationship between learning environment and academic resilience. The nature of the study calls for the descriptive study. 600 high school students were selected from three regions of Punjab (i.e. Majha, Malwa and Doaba region) through stratified random sampling technique. Self constructed and standardized Learning Environment Scale and Academic Resilience Scale were used for data collection. For analyzing data, parametric statistical techniques were used. Study revealed that boys possessed more scores in academic resilience as compared with girls. Student from urban locality possessed high level of academic resilience. Girl students have high level of learning environment as compared with boys. Locality-wise urban students scored significantly high in learning environment as compared with rural students. Significant positive relation was found between learning environment and academic resilience of senior secondary students.

Keywords: Academic Resilience, Learning Environment, Senior Secondary school students

Anshu Narad & Bilkees Abdullah
Lovely Professional University, Phagwara

Special Issue, Volume 8, Number 2, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n2.02

Abstract

Parental encouragement can nurture the hidden potentialities in children and lead to success in different walks of life. Academic performance is one of the important goals of education and has always been influenced by number of factors including parental encouragement and school environment. Keeping this in view a study was conducted to explore the parental encouragement and school environment of senior secondary school students and to analyze their relationship with academic performance of students. The study was descriptive survey in nature and simple random sampling technique was used for selection of the sample. The participants in the study included 300 senior secondary school girls (150 girls from each type of school i.e. co-education schools and girls’ schools, out of each school 30 girls). For analysis of data, parametric statistical techniques were used. The study revealed that senior secondary school girls studying in co- education schools and girls’ school had similar academic performance. Senior secondary school girls studying in girls schools had higher parental encouragement as compared to their counterparts in co-educational schools. Senior secondary schoolgirls studying in co-educational schools had higher permissiveness as compared to those studying in girls’ school, while those in girls’ school had higher control as compared to their counterparts in co-education schools. Significant positive relationship was found between academic performance of senior secondary school girls with parental encouragement and school environment.

Keywords: Academic Performance, Parental Encouragement, School Environment, Senior Secondary Schools

Dinesh Kumar
Lovely Professional University, Phagwara

Special Issue, Volume 8, Number 2, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n2.01

Abstract

The Teacher Education Institutions plays a crucial role in improving the system of education by training, educating and inspiring the future student teachers. A teacher requires understanding and mastering of skills to make his classroom interactive. For this purpose the exercise of instructional designing or lesson planning becomes very essential. Although innovative lesson plans based on behaviourist, cognitive and constructivist approaches are introduced in teacher education, the learner today, who is more ICT-enabled requires modern 21^st century skills and competencies. The classroom interactive process, used by student-teacher during the professional experience programme, needs a critical analysis and the recent trends in education need to be explored to modify the age old traditional approaches to meet the challenges of the present. This evaluative study explored, developed and ascertained the effectiveness of a hybrid micro-skill called developing and using blends. A number of skills, instructional designs and blended learning literature have been critically analyzed to finalize the components of skills. After conducting primary and secondary data analysis, the effectiveness of the developed skill was checked on high school students selected for this purpose. It was found that in science and social sciences, there is a significant effect of developed micro skill on the academic achievement of high school students, but no significant difference is found in teaching effectiveness of student teachers teaching with and without hybrid micro skill.

Key Words: Blends, teaching skills, instructional design, 5E constructivist approach, blended learning, on line learning.

Nandini Kalita

Ambedkar University, Delhi

Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF

One  of  the  most  awaited  books  of  our  times,  Harper  Lee’s  Go  Set  a  Watchman(a title derived from Isaiah 21:6);  managed  to  stir  up  many  debates  around  its  genesis  when  it  was  published  last  year  after  five  and  a  half  decades  since  the  author’s  magnum  opus  To  Kill  A  Mocking Bird  appeared.  Apparently,  Go  Set  A  Watchman  was  written  before  the  book  that  made  Harper  Lee  one  of  the  most  important  figures  of  modern  American  Literature.  In  fact,  her  iconic  novel  was  born  when  her  editor  T.  Hohoff  after  reading  the  manuscript  of  Watchman  suggested  her  to  rewrite  her  work  focusing  more  on  the  childhood  of  the  central  protagonist.

Though  both  the  works  are  set  in  the  fictional  Maycomb  County,  have  Jean  Louise  Finch  at  the  heart  of  its  narrative  and  grapple  with  the  issue  of  racial  segregation; they  stand  independent  of  each  other. Mockingbird  is  narrated  in  the  first-person  by  young  and  feisty  Jean  Louise( called  Scout  by  everyone)  trying  to  make  sense  of  the  world  around  her  in  which  racism  has  dug  its  feet  really  deep ,  whereas  Watchman  is  a  third-person  narrative, in  which  the  little  girl  of  Mockingbird  have  grown  into  a  twenty  six  year  old  woman  briefly  back  in  the  same  partisan  world  that  she  left  behind  to  live  in  the  “big  city”[i], New York.  Young  Scout’s  vision  of  the  racist  society  of  Maycomb  County   in  the  first  published  novel  is  critical  but still  “rendered  with  sympathy.”[ii] But  her  picture  of   the  same  world  at  twenty  six  is  of  a  hateful,  divisive  society  that  will  go  to  any  length  to  safeguard  the  existing  social  layout  that  privileges  the  white.  This  shift  in  the  central  protagonist’s  perspective  which  radically  alters  the  contours  of  the  narrative  in  Watchman ;  has  earned  the  book  severe  criticism  from  some  quarters  who  saw  the  shift  as  a  radical  departure  from  the  original  narrative.  Keep Reading

Solanki Sandip P, Symbiosis International University, Pune

Sheth Bhagyashree H, Gujarat Technological University, Ahmedabad

Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF

Abstract:

Purpose: This study is mainly done in order to find out the relative effectiveness of celebrity-endorsed advertisements verses animated-character-endorsed advertisements on the purchase intention of children. Further, the study is done for the same product and for the low involvement food product. The study finds that for low-involvement food product category, the impact of animated spokes characters and cartoon characters is more than that of celebrity. Regarding the purchase intention of children, it was found that the impact of animated and cartoon characters in advertisements is more than that of celebrities in advertisements especially for low-involvement food product category.

Keywords: Celebrity endorsed, Animated character, Children, Purchase intention, Television, Print, Advertisements. Keep Reading

Graham Russell

Independent researcher on Earth Giants, United Kingdom

Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF

INTRODUCTION

Earth Giants (Landscape Giants) are created and formed by the mountains and hills and were at one time believed to represent the living and sleeping forms of our ancestors, gods and mythical beings. Earth giants have mainly survived today through the telling of ancient stories, legends and traditions, and have only really survived because we can still see their presence in the landscape. In this paper, I shall reveal a well kept and explosive secret that has been preserved through ancient sites, traditions and religions through successions of generations of ancient peoples all over the world. Students of ancient religions sensed secrets in the landscape, and many others intuitively sought the secret knowledge of this antiquity, a secret landscape that has been documented in ancient and old sources which literally-clearly confirms the former existence of these earth giants whose key had long since been lost.

Despite the generations of change over the centuries, this secret knowledge of the landscape has remained fairly quiet and secretive, yet the knowledge of these earth giants has remained intact and is only waiting to be rediscovered again. Earth giants are startling things; so startling to our present state of knowledge and climate of thought that many dismiss them out of hand without examining the evidence. But this reception is not unusual for discoveries that are destined to expand.

This introduction into earth giants is a brief account and comes from a vast amount of work, with over 23 years of thorough research. My quest in writing this paper is to highlight to the reader, the real reasons why the landscape has been, since ancient times, associated with being sacred and holy land. The reader is introduced to a plethora of mysteries, myths, inspirational theories and photo evidence. So sit back and prepare yourself for an amazing adventure into this world of earth giants and their mysteries. Keep Reading

Shahryar Sorooshian, Universiti Malaysia Phanag, Malaysia

Dinara Tolgambayeva, Independent researcher, Kazakhstan

Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

This report focuses on the effects of cultural diversity (CD) on team performance among university students and explores the relationship between team performance and CD. It identifies that there is a strong indirect relationship between these two concepts. Therefore, the nature of this relationship was investigated in details. The report identified that there are positive and negative effects of CD on intermediate outcomes of the team. The analysis has been performed to further develop the understanding of the subject of CD and the effects on team performance. The results of the analysis have been discussed in details with providing the required information in the analysis part..

 Keywords: Cultural diversity (CD), Team performance, International students. Keep Reading

Fatemeh Ahani & Iraj Etessam

Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF

  Abstract

Following the publication of Adolf Loos’s famous article “Ornament and Crime” in 1908, arguments against ornaments reached an unprecedented level which led to its elimination from the majority of architectural practices in western countries during the first half of the 20 century. The ornamental approach, despite being severely criticized by postmodernist critics in 1960’s, never completely ceased to exist. In an attempt to discover the reasons behind the long-lasting presence of such a practice, this paper looks into different directions of ornament criticism in modern architectural literature. Modern critics condemned ornamentation by ascribing several defects such as deception, decadence, disutility, wastefulness, recession and lack of spontaneity. As a result of such associations, designers repress in themselves what they consider as defective and internalize anti-ornament beliefs of modernism in a form of self-control. This leads to the marginalization of ornament in architectural discussions and practices even after the demise of the modernist movement in architecture.

 Keywords: Architectural Ornament, Criticism, Repression, Naming, Defect Keep Reading

KBS Krishna

Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala

Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF

Abstract:

Identity becomes a problematic issue, especially in the modern era, where it clashes with individuality. The failure to fit into categories prescribed by societies leads to crisis of identity. This crisis is experienced by people of all classes. The article looks at two Indian novels in English – Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August and Rupa Bajwa’s The Sari Shop, where a civil servant and a shop attendant struggle to discover their identity in a world where divisions are watertight.

 Keywords: Identity, Individuality, Individualism, English August, The Sari Shop Keep Reading