Impact of Structured Teaching Programme to Enhance the Knowledge Regarding Menstruation and Menstrual Hygiene among Adolescent Girls

The researcher conducted a quasi-experimental study on menstruation and menstrual hygiene among the adolescent girls at primary girls’ school (ajarpura kanyasala) under Anand district Gujarat. The study was intended to see the impact of a structured teaching programme in improving the knowledge of adolescent girls specific to rural areas. The objectives of the study were to assess the existing knowledge, to develop a structured teaching program on menstruation and menstrual hygiene, to assess the knowledge after implementation of structured teaching programmes and to find out the association between the knowledge score of the respondent with the selected demographic variables. The quantitative research approach was used with one group pre-test post-test- quasi experimental research design. The sample of 50 was drawn using probability sampling technique. The tool used was structured knowledge questionnaire. The result shows that majority of the respondents were (92%) in the age group of 12-13 years, most of the respondents (90%) were Hindu religion, the family income for most of the respondent (64%) falls in between Rs. 2000-3000, almost half of the respondents were having an elder female sibling (52%), and initial assessment reveals most of the respondents were (82%) having some knowledge about menstruation and menstrual hygiene. The finding shows significant difference between mean pre-test score (15.56) and post test score (27.80) which also reveals the importance of right information is needed to this group to discard any irrelevant practices. The association with certain demographic variables (age, family income, elder female sibling, information about menstruation) also established at 0.05 level of significance.

Study on Standard of English in Primary School Pupils with Special Reference to Teachers Professionalism

First and foremost, the goal of this research is to determine the level of English proficiency among primary school students. Secondly, this study looked into the professionalism of the teacher. Thirdly, this study looks into the factors that may have a negative impact on the standard of English among primary school students. Fourthly, it examines the teacher's ability to teach English to primary school children in the pursuit of quality education. To ensure efficient and effective data collection, this study relied solely on the non-experimental design-descriptive survey method with a quantitative approach. Pre-testing of survey questionnaires was carried out to ensure consistency and reliability.This study was based on researcher classroom experiences. The research was mostly carried out in Bhutan under the auspices of the Department of School Education. The research began on the 18th of December, 2020, and ended on the 18th of May, 2021. The findings, recommendations, and limitations of the study were totally based on the 60 sample collections. The researcher used SPSS and the Microsoft Excel sheet for tabulations and interpretation of data. For the data analysis the researcher used the SAS software and Microsoft Excel.

Determinants of Preferences of the Respondents for the Payment for Environmental Services among the Rural Farming Households in Oyo State Nigeria

This study attempted to uncover the factors that influence preferences of the poor farming households for the attributes of Payment for environmental services (PES) in the Oyo State farm settlement Nigeria. Educational attainment, age of the respondents, previous knowledge of PES, land tenure, provision of micro credit, number of dependents, marital status and main occupation of the respondents. Dependent variable is preference for PES attributes.A multi-stage sampling technique was employed for this study.This study used exclusively Primary data.Which were collected through the use of a well-structured questionnaires and interview schedule for the literate and non-literate farmers respectivelyTotal sample of 395 out of 547respondents (i.e.72%) were drawn cumulatively. The regression results showed that previous knowledge of PES and provision of microcredit are significant at 5% each, while land ownership right is significant at 10% in the educational poverty group. In the consumption poverty group, previous knowledge of PES is significant at 5%, while land ownership right is positively significant at 1%, respectively. Housing/living standard poverty group; previous knowledge of PES and land ownership rights are significant at 5% each. From the findings of this study, it implies that if micro credit facilities are provided to these poor farming households, they will be willing to conserve the environmental resources (i.e. agricultural land). It therefore suggests that a well thought institutional arrangement with PES in view could be put up to enhance natural resource conservation and by extension reduction of poverty.

Post Occupancy Evaluation of Students’ Satisfaction with Hostel Facilities in Federal Polytechnic Offa, Kwara State, Nigeria

The study focuses on post occupancy evaluation of students’ satisfaction with hostels facilities in Federal Polytechnic Offa, Kwara State with a view to determine factors that promote users’ satisfaction with the hostel facility in terms of its services/amenities provided, structural features, environmental features, accommodation details and locational attributes. The hostel is wholly under the management and control of the Polytechnic. Four Hundred and Sixty (460) respondents were taken as the sample size for the study. 28 structured questionnaires were administered to the workforce of the hostel management using purposive sampling while 432 structured questionnaires were administered to the students occupying the school hostel. A total of 341 (74%) questionnaires was returned and found valid for analysis. Data analysis was conducted using descriptive statistical techniques such as frequency distribution table, Weighted Mean Score (WMS) and Relative Importance Indexes (RII). Findings revealed that there were mixed levels of satisfaction with elements of student hostel facilities. There was a strong indication of satisfaction with the environmental features compared to the other four elements of the hostel facilities. The students were dissatisfied with facilities either because they are inadequate in number or quality or because of the location. The study recommends that the polytechnic management should ensure that facilities that aid students' academic performance should be prioritized. This will help to improve the satisfaction level among students with hostel facilities.

Influence of Inclusive Programs of People with Disabilities on Community Development in Bungoma North Sub County

The research investigated influence of inclusive programs of people with disabilities on community development at Bungoma North Sub County Kenya. Mentality on disabled and disability treatment intimately connects with archaic cultural beliefs of humanity and society resonating to why this study and the researcher employed the approaches of understanding the contemporary inclusive programs for sustainable development. This research used descriptive survey research design study since it explained phenomenon and considering underlying questions of Phenomenon occurrence. Use of survey, collecting qualitative and descriptive information about inclusive programs of human beings with disability in the study population was utilized because the research tried to capture everyone within the study area. The research was based on structured questionnaires, which were distributed for data collection. Targeted population was 1000 people peaked from Bungoma North Sub County through stratified method of random sampling however this study drew 10% of the study population that is 100 respondents then issued with poll forms as data tools. Finally but not least disability inclusion in community pops up at the center of realizing the economic and developmental ambitions of a nation or rather state. Constituents for example management, policy, resources & environmental concept, strenuous access to social services among disabled human beings in government facilities, state owned corporations, private sectors or organizations, must be dealt with as crucial factors. Equitable motivation of disabled should be crucial for the institutions and prompt remedy given to uplift the vigor on community development participation ensuring its elevated at peak. This study explored recommendations such as cohesion disability awareness inclusive programs such as development initiatives, education/training in order to reserve adequate resources in ways such as time and finances to ensure optimum inclusion of disabled.

Assessing the Extent of Application of Competency Based Education and Training Approach in Classroom Instruction in Technical and Vocational Education Training Institutions in Kenya

Aims: The major purpose of this study was to assess the extent of application of CBET approach in classroom instruction Study Design: The study utilized the descriptive survey research design. Place and Duration of Study: The study was undertaken in TVET institutions in the North Rift Region, Kenyabetween March 2021 to June 2021. Methodology: Purposive, stratified and simple random sampling was used to sample 280 respondents.The study included 280 respondents of which 152 were males and 128 females with an age range of 35 – 56 years. Results: This study targeted Principals, 6 Industrial Liaisons Officers (ILO), 285 trainers’ and 18 Industrial Supervisors who were associated with either TVET institution or industry. Fromitheitotalisampleisize of 285, 98.2% representing 280 questionnaires for trainers were positively responded to the case request. Findings showed that application of classroom instruction has a moderate positive and significant influence on integration of CBET approach in TVET institutions (r = .476, P< 0.001). Conclusion: The present study rejected the null hypothesis and concludes that the relationship is statistically significant. The sample data support the notion that the relationship between the independent variable and dependent variable exists in the population of TVET institutions in the North Rift. Thus the hypothesis (Ho1) was rejected. This implies that application of classroom instruction influences integration of CBET approach in TVET institutions.

Psychosocial Features for Identifying Hate Speech in Social Media Text

This study uses natural language processing to identify hate speech in social media codeswitched text. It trains nine models and tests their predictiveness in recognizing hate speech in a 50k human-annotated dataset. The article proposes a novel hierarchical approach that leverages Latent Dirichlet Analysis to develop topic models that assist build a high-level Psychosocial feature set we call PDC. PDC organizes words into word families, which helps capture codeswitching during preprocessing for supervised learning models. Informed by the duplex theory of hate, the PDC features are based on a hate speech annotation framework. Frequency-based models employing the PDC feature on tweets from the 2012 and 2017 Kenyan presidential elections yielded an f-score of 83 percent (precision: 81 percent, recall: 85 percent) in recognizing hate speech. The study is notable because it publicly exposes a rich codeswitched dataset for comparative studies. Second, it describes how to create a novel PDC feature set to detect subtle types of hate speech hidden in codeswitched data that previous approaches could not detect.

Influence of Teacher Professional Development on Teaching and Learning in Public Technical Institutes in the Upper West Region, Ghana

Teacher Professional Development (TPD) has received global recognition as one of the most essential elements required for increasing teachers’ knowledge and skills and improving students’ learning. However, not much account has been given on the influence or otherwise of TPD since some appears ineffective in supporting changes in teacher practices and student learning. This study examined the influence of teacher professional development on teaching and learning in public Technical Institutes in the Upper West Region, Ghana.The study adopted the concurrent mixed method design, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative datasets.The study was conducted between September 2019 to September 2020 in two technical institutes, namely, St. Basilide’s Technical Institute and the Wa Technical Institute in the Nadowli-Kaleo district and Wa Municipality respectively. The study sought to find out the type of TPD that teachers in public Technical Institutes in the Upper West Region participate in; evaluate the relationship between TPD and teaching and learning; as well as assess the challenges confronting teachers relative to access to professional development programmes. Evidence was obtained through the use of interview as well as questionnaires including both open and closed ended questions and a 5-point Likert scale. A sample size of 220 was obtained from a total target population of 1,072 at 95% confidence level and 5% margin of error. Results: The findings showed that teachers in public Technical Institutes have considerable access to teacher professional development provided by the Ghana Education Service (GES), Ghana National Association of Teachers, Non-Governmental Organizations, Subject Associations, among others. Like the teachers, majority of the students have a very positive account about how well their teachers teach and how well they themselves are learning. It was found that a highly significant positive relationship (r (44) =.745, p˂.01 given ɑ =.01 and p-value=.000) exists between teachers’ participation in teacher professional development and teaching and learning. Furthermore, the study also showed a Kendall’s Coefficient of Concordance (W) of 0.212 in the ranking of challenges or barriers affecting teacher professional development. The study contends that GES should put in place policies to encourage teachers to participate in professional development programs; the GES should also encourage and partly fund individual schools particularly technical institutes to conduct subject-based in-service training for teachers among others.

To Determine the Influence of Students’ Past Performance Component of Self-Efficacy on Examination Malpractices among Students in Kiambu County Universities Kenya

The purpose of this study was to investigate the possible influence of students’ self-efficacy on examination malpractices among undergraduate students in Universities within Kiambu County. The objectives of this study includes; to analyze the influence of students’ past performance component of self-efficacy. The data collected from the pilot test was used to compute Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient which was found to be r = 0.86, hence the instruments were reliable. The researcher ensured the validity of the instruments by consulting peers and experts from the department of educational psychology, Mount Kenya University. Dependability of qualitative data was ensured through adoption of suitable research method, pre-testing and in-depth interviews. Credibility of the instrument was ensured by triangulating data obtained and creation of research questionnaires based on research objectives. The quantitative data obtained was analyzed using SPSS version 21, and was presented in descriptive statistics inform of frequencies and percentages. Inferential statistics in form of linear regression was used to test the relationship between independent and dependent variables in each objective. Linear Regression Results were presented in model summary tables, ANOVA tables and coefficient tables. Content analysis method was employed to critically analyze qualitative data and presented in textual form. On the first objective, the study revealed that students’ past performance slightly influenced examination malpractices among undergraduate students. The study showed that students’ emotional experiences significantly influenced examination malpractices. Based on the finding, students’ self-efficacy has significant influence on examination malpractices. To address the issue of students’ self-efficacy on examination malpractices, a multi-sectoral approach would be needed, that may involve all the stake holders, that is, the larger society, the government and the students. The incorporation of modern technology in entire process of examination administration and certification would be important in reducing the examination malpractices. An examination policy shift in universities would be necessary too.

Neural Embeddings for Text Analysis: A Case Study in Neoliberal Discourse

This paper examines the notions of neoliberalism and the financialization and marketisation of public life by using computational tools such as sentence embeddings on a novel corpus of neoliberal articles. More specifically, we experimented with distributional semantics along with several Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and machine learning algorithms in order to extract conceptual dictionaries and “seed” words. Our findings show that sentence embeddings reveal repetitive patterns constructed around the given concepts and highlight the mechanical character of an ideology in its function of providing solutions, policies and constructing stereotypes. This work introduces a novel pipeline for computer-assisted research in discourse analysis and ideology.