Exploring virtue and ethical stewardship for transformative learning in universitiy's business leadership programmes

This thesis introduces a new concept termed virtue ethical stewardship (VES) and explores the pragmatic dimension of transformative learning (TL) in terms of VES. It is defined as developing the character of doing good when discharging responsibility. While the character is the habit of being: the combination of traits, values and virtues (Crossan et al., 2013), doing good is the aligned motive, intention and belief. The idea that students have the potential to construct new meaning for their learning experiences suggests the transformative possibilities of the university’s education. Transformation becomes evident when transformative learning is understood as changes in elements of the identity (Illeris 2014). Thus, VES transformative learning framework is developed to offer a new way to develop leaders as stewards who are more ethical in the future. Consequently, university education can be a social phenomenon that transforms students to agents of action and responsibility (Biesta, 2015; and Mezirow, 2009) who address the societal concerns about the questionable moral behaviour of some leaders. The methodologies used are phenomenological, underpinned by a critical realist view. This led to a narrative method with a two-stage approach for field texts collection and two-phase method of interpretation and analysis. The study identifies four main self-aware interconnected influential conditions for VES transformative learning: childhood upbringing (parental/custodian); roles and responsibility (organisational); the environment (environmental); and the motivation and ability to learn (personal), and two conditions: personal values and instincts, requiring attention. Conditions are acknowledged using a constructed moral status’ table to suggest where stewards are in relation to VES and might be needed to enhance the status

Determinants of timber exports in Nigeria: an error correction modeling approach

Abstract This study analyzed the factors influencing the exports of timber in Nigeria with the aid of Error Correction Model (ECM) representation procedures. The analysis was carried out with the data collected on roundwood and sawnwood over 33 years (1970 – 2003) using the long run restricted ECM. The statistical significance of the ECM terms for roundwood (-1.110) and sawnwood (-1.772) validates the existence of relationship among the variables. This suggests the short run dynamic effect of the changes in export quantities of roundwood are determined by one-year lagged export quantity of roundwood & domestic output-consumption ratio of roundwood, domestic output-consumption ratio of roundwood and domestic-international price ratio of roundwood, while that of sawnwood is determined by lagged values of the official exchange rate, domestic consumption-output, domestic consumption-output and world export-output ratios of the sawnwood. Efforts to boost timber export from Nigeria needs to incorporate policy measures that will improve the quantity and quality of timber products in order to meet the local and foreign demands.Roundwood; Sawnwood; Nigeria; Exports; Co-integration and Error-correction model

Associated anomalies in cleft lip and palate: analysis of 811 consecutive patients

Introduction: Clefts are common birth defects and may be associated with oro-facial congenital anomalies. It has not been established if specific types of anomalies are frequently related with clefts, or which organ is most commonly affected. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of associated anomalies in consecutive cleft lip and palate patients treated at two referral centres in Northern Nigeria.Methods: Cleft lip and palate at two referral hospitals in Northern Nigeria from January 2012 to December 2015 were studied. Data were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16.Results: A total of 811 cleft lip and palate patients were managed. Fifty-five percent (447) were male and 45% (364) were female while 71% (578) were children and 29% (233) were adults. The prevalence of associated anomalies was 11.5%. The most common associated anomaly among cleft patients was facial anomaly (64% of cleft patients). Associated anomalies were most prevalent in patients with isolated cleft palate. Hypertelorism was the commonest type of facial anomaly recorded.Conclusion: Our study showed a low incidence of associated anomalies with a higher incidence in isolated cleft palate cases.Key Words: Cleft lip, Cleft Palate, Associated Facial Anomaly, Congenital anomal

Oil, state-capital and labour : work and work relations in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation

This study is, above all, about the men and women whose labour form the basis of Nigeria's economy and social stability: the petroleum workers. Those we will come across here, work in perhaps the most important single enterprise in Nigeria; the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. The study itself was inspired by (i) an attempt to understand what work and work relations mean for these people, and (ii) by my dissatisfaction with the conventional wisdom in Industrial Relations analysis; which in the past years has inspired the regulation of the working lives of these petroleum workers as much as any group of employees in Nigeria. The study is on the NNPC, with special attention to the NNPC Refinery at Warri. The work itself is divided into three main parts; Part I, which is the Introductory section, is further divided in four chapters. Chapter 1 explores the main conceptual issues of this study, explains the research methods and examines some methodological issues that derive from the fieldwork. In Chapter 2, the labour process literature is reviewed, and this forms the analytical basis for the discussions in Parts II and III, while Chapters 3 and 4 provide the background information on Nigeria and NNPC respectively. Part U examines, under four chapters, the nature of work and processes of shopfloor relations in NNPC generally, with particular emphasis on the Refinery. Chapters 5 and 6 examine the nature of work and the internal labour market, while Chapters 7 and 8 look at the specific forms of relations on the shopfloor and their implications for shopfloor struggles. In Part III, I focus on unionism in the industry and the processes of interest mediation within the NNPC. The study takes conceptual issues with the main contributions to the Labour Process debate and argues for a more studied and coherent re-assesment of Braverman's work, by recognizing its theoretical and methodological objectives. The study concludes with a re-exposition of the main conceptual issues; first by emphasizing that it is only within the framework of a rigorous conceptual redefinition of production relations that we can overcome the limitations of conventional Industrial Relations discourse. Second, and central to this, is a re-conceptualized method of theory, which enables us to understand the socio-cultural peculiarities of each national or regional context, and overcome the limited vision of liberal-pluralist industrial relations ideology. In this sense, the study places strong emphasis on Marx's method of abstraction, both as a method of different levels of abstraction, and of one-sided abstraction. The Refinery, where the bulk of the field research was done, is located in the riverine belt of southern Nigeria. Although often referred to as Warri Refinery, the plant is situated in the Ethiope local government area of Bendel State, outside Warri (see Map A). This complication is a result of the settlement pattern in this area of southern Nigeria; Warri, for instance, is surrounded by tiny pockets of settlements, each with distinct lineage/clan history and traditional political autonomy. Two of such settlements are Jeddo and Ekpan villages which share the north-western borders with Warri, but in a separate local government area. It is on the territories of these two villages that the Refinery is located, although I will continue to refer to the plant as Warri Refinery

A semi-automatic computer-aided assessment framework for primary mathematics

Assessment and feedback processes shape students behaviour, learning and skill development. Computer-aided assessments are increasingly being used to support problem-solving, marking and feedback activities. However, many computer-aided assessment environments only replicate traditional pencil-and-paper tasks. Attention is on grading and providing feedback on the final product of assessment tasks rather than the processes of problem solving. Focusing on steps and problem-solving processes can help teachers to diagnose strengths and weaknesses, discover problem-solving strategies, and to provide appropriate feedback to students. This thesis presents a semi-automatic framework for capturing and marking students solution steps in the context of elementary school mathematics. The first focus is on providing an interactive touch-based tool called MuTAT to facilitate interactive problem solving for students. The second focus is on providing a marking tool named Marking Assistant which utilises the case-based reasoning artificial intelligence methodology to carry out marking and feedback activities more efficiently and consistently. Results from studies carried out with students showed that the MuTAT prototype tool was usable, and performance scores on it were comparable to those obtained when paper-and-pencil was used. More importantly, the MuTAT provided more explicit information on the problem-solving process, showing the students thinking. The captured data allowed for the detection of arithmetic strategies used by the students. Exploratory studies conducted using the Marking Assistant prototype showed that 26% savings in marking time can be achieved compared to traditional paper-and-pencil marking and feedback. The broad feedback capabilities the research tools provided can enable teachers to evaluate whether intended learning outcomes are being achieved and so decide on required pedagogical interventions. The implications of these results are that innovative CAA environments can enable more direct and engaging assessments which can reduce staff workloads while improving the quality of assessment and feedback for students

Routine antenatal syphilis screening in South West Nigeria - a questionable practice

Background: Untreated maternal syphilis is strongly associated with adverse birth outcomes, especially in women with high titre syphilis. The WHO recommends routine serological screening in pregnancy. Some workers have advised a reappraisal of this practice, having demonstratedlow sero-prevalence in their antenatal population. In view of this, the aim of this study was to determine the seroprevalence of syphilis in the antenatal population presenting at a major hospital in south-west Nigeria.Methods: This was a cross sectional study of healthy pregnant Nigerian women attending Adeoyo Maternity Hospital in the capital of Oyo State. The case record of every pregnant woman presenting for their first antenatal clinic visit over a 4-month period (September 1st to December 31st 2006) was reviewed.Results: During the study period, two thousand six hundred and seventy-eight women sought antenatal care. Three hundred and sixty-nine women (369; 13.4%) had incomplete records and were excluded from analysis. The records of the 2,318(86.6%) women with adequate records were subsequently reviewed. The mean age of the women was 27.4years (± 5.34) and the mean gestational age 26.4 weeks (±6.36). The modal parity was 0. Only three patients were found to be reactive for syphilis giving a prevalence of 0.13%. Conclusion: The sero- prevalence value in this study is quite low and may justify the call to discontinue routine antenatal syphilis screening. However, a more rigorous screeningprogram using diagnostic tests with higher sensitivity maybe necessary before jettisoning this traditional aspect of antenatal care.Keywords - Pregnancy; syphilis; prevalence; serology; screenin

Stochastic frontier modelling of working capital efficiency across Europe

This paper adopts the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to model working capital efficiency (WCE) on a sample of 6,170 European firms from 2009 to 2018. We find: (i) larger firms are more efficient with their working capital management (WCM) than smaller firms, (ii) higher cash holding contributes to WCE, (iii) high competition is less conducive to WCE than low competition, (iv) export and sales growth potential decrease WCE and (v) WCE increases with access to bank credit. In the analysis, a distinction is made between the "old" EU countries and the "new" EU countries. The results are sensitive to the year of admission into the EU. The results are robust to omitted variable bias, using a more novel approach

Comparison of Pregnancy and Neonatal Outcomes Amongst HIV Positive Women and HIV Negative Women at the University College Hospital Ibadan, Nigeria – A Cross-sectional Study

The effect of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and possibly Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) on pregnancy and neonatal outcomes has been a controversial issue with some researches reporting no association while others reporting significant association. This study aimed at comparing the pregnancy and neonatal outcomes between Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) positive women and HIV negative women who delivered at University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan. This study was a cross-sectional study carried out at the University College Hospital, Ibadan Nigeria. The case notes of all the HIV positive pregnant women and their comparison group who delivered in the year 2013(January 1st- December 31st) were retrieved. Data was summarized with frequency tables and mean (SD). Association between categorical variables was analyzed using chi-square test or Fisher test and association between continuous variables were analyzed using independent T-test. A probability value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Compared with the HIV negative women the HIV positive women had higher parity (p<0.001), lesser educational qualifications (p=0.004) and lower occupational positions (p<0.001). The differences for selected pregnancy and neonatal outcomes were not statistically significant; antenatal complications, blood loss at delivery, gestational age at delivery, birthweight of the babies, Apgar score, perinatal death and congenital anomalies. The socio-demographic characteristics were different in both groups and highlight need for programs to address these factor

The pragmatics of children’s representation in selected yoruba proverbs

The study primarily investigates children‘s representation in Yoruba proverbs, verbal forms of handed-down traditions known for their  archetypal knowledge accumulated by people. How children are portrayed in this discourse is significant to the situational usage of proverbs for character molding and cultural value sustainer in any society: an area less explored by scholars. Purposively, fifty English medium children-related Yoruba proverbs were selected from the corpus of Nigerian proverbs with Mey‘s Pragmeme adopted to track children‘s representation in the discourse. The study reveals that children are represented as a prototype of homes, malleable,  sustainers, innocent and delinquent. These are framed within contexts of societal collectivism and parenting; with inference, reference, metaphor and voice as contextual features. These project pragmatic functions of behaviour-regulating and responsibility-motivating practs. Largely, the foregoing cumulatively portrays children as heirs whose upbringing rests on homes and society at large. The study therefore concludes that the awareness of the above, expectedly, should aid appropriate usage of proverbs sine-qua-non to the proper indoctrination of children into adulthood for sustaining cherished cultural values, shape their worldview and enhance a sanitized   society. Keywords: Yoruba proverbs, Children‘s representation, Pragmeme, Indoctrination and Cultural value

Work specification for the construction of 33kv overhead lines across a lagoon using equal level dead-end lattice tower supports

Bare overhead distribution conductors are typically flexible and uniform in weight along their lengths. This weight causes the span to form a catenary (sag) which changes with conductor temperature, ice, wind loading and time. This catenary is capable of tripping circuits because it often results to short circuit and da mage power system equipment with attendant loss of revenue to utility company. This paper presents a case study of 33kV overheadline construction crossing a 200m wide ‘Lagoon’ which requires minimum sag - tension design and estimation of Dead - End Lattice To wer weight specification that would determine weight of Tower foundation. These two parameters were obtained using the standard mathematical equations and the specifications for Aluminium Conductor Steel Reinforce (ACSR). The results of various Parameters evaluated in this research work are presented and discussed. The Sag and Tower weight results were applied to the proposed project which was successfully completed and commissioned. Keywords : Aluminium Conductor, Catenary, Dead-End, Lattice Tower, Tripping Circuits, Parameters, Overhead Lines, Sag - Tension, Tower Weight, Tower Foundation, Steel Reinforce, Specifications