Inquiry-based teaching in mathematics classroom in a lower secondary school of Karachi, Pakistan

There is greater demand on schools to provide autonomy to the learners in the learning process. Diverse strategies are suggested by academicians to achieve the desired autonomy. One such strategy is inquiry-based teaching which provides students with enhanced autonomy in the learning process. This study explores how inquiry-based teaching could be introduced in mathematics classroom in a lower secondary school of Pakistan through an action research process? Analytic memos, sample of students work, reflections from critical friend, observations, field notes and interviews were the main tools of data generation during the study. The results of the study report that inquiry-based teaching in mathematics classroom in lower secondary school of Pakistan could be initiated through change in physical setting of the classroom, changing role of students and teachers in the learning process, focusing autonomy rather than efficiency of the students in the learning and modifying the current examination system

From training to improving classroom practices: Learning from school improvement program intervention in a mountainous public secondary school in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan

This study reports learning from a professional development (PD) session and classroom action research from an English class conducted in the mountainous northern part of Pakistan. The researcher got training from Professional Development Centre North (PDCN) as a member of the Quality Assurance Team and then conducted a five-day workshop for teachers on various general teaching techniques, lesson planning, writing reflections/portfolios and classroom management. After the sessions, the teachers applied these knowledge and skills in their respective classes, and English teachers did action research with the researcher to improve the language skills of grade 7 students for three cycles. Pre- and post-intervention tests, teachers’ reflective diaries, lesson plans, portfolio books and discussions with teachers were sources of data collection. The present study shows that there is a thirst amongst teachers for professional grooming. Also, students gradually benefit from new teaching techniques. This study suggests including various PD models in the school development plan to improve teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge, which will result in improved learning outcomes for students. The sustainability of these initiatives is a challenge due to the lack of proper mechanisms and policies in the government schools of Gilgit-Baltistan. Therefore, there is a need for a school policy for English teachers’ PD at the classroom level to improve teaching practices and students’ learning

School-based teachers’ professional development policies: learning from the practices of English classroom at public secondary school in northern Pakistan

Professional development (PD) is critically important for the professional survival of classroom-level teachers across the globe and Pakistan is no exception. Mentoring and action research are one of the various forms of PD. Conducting PD sessions help teachers improve pedagogy, classroom practices and to become self-directed learners (Slepkov 2008; McNif, 2016). This study reports learning from a PD session and classroom action research from English class in a mountainous northern part of Pakistan. Techers were exposed to various techniques of general teaching, lesson planning, writing reflections/ portfolios and classroom management through a 5-day workshop. After the sessions, the teachers taught English to grade 7 students for three cycles. Pre- and post- intervention tests, teachers’ reflective diaries, lesson plans and portfolio books were sources of data collection. The study shows that there is a thirst amongst teachers for professional grooming. Also, students gradually benefitted from new teaching techniques. The study suggests mentoring and action research to be integral part of school professional development plan, so as to improve learning outcomes of students and teachers’ professional growth. Sustainability of these initiatives is a challenge due to lack of proper mechanism and policies. There is a need for a school policy on classroom level research to improve teaching practices and learning

Food Habits and Helminth Parasites of Skittering Frog (Euphlyctis cyanophlyctis) in the Lower Dir, Pakistan

A total of 30 specimens of Skittering frog (Euphlyctis cyanophlyctis),(Anura: Dicroglossidae) were captured from seven selected localities inthe Dir Lower, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan from Aprilto August 2016. They were euthanized with the help of Chloroform(CHcl3) solution. The biometry of each specimen was measured, thendissected to examine for helminth parasites and foodstuff. All helminths were isolated, washed with normal saline at room temperature,and then preserved in 70% GL ethyl alcohol. Later on, the parasiteswere classified and studied under the electric compound microscope. Ina total of 30 specimens, 17(56.66%) were found infected with 62 helminths parasites belongs to four different species. Among four species,one was Cestodes Nematotaenia dispar species and remaining threewere Nematodes i.e. Cosmocerca species, Cosmocercoides (Raillietnema species) and Strongyloides species. Cosmocerca with a percentageof 56.45% was the most dominant. In the total of 30 specimens’ alimentary canal, 10 were found empty, containing nothing while in remaining20 were full of 9 types of food materials which included insects i.e.Ants, Beetles, Wasps, Spiders, Mosquito larvae and cockroaches, andnon-living things like stone pebbles and mollusks shells. Among the serial, flies and snails were in the lowest prevalence and ants were recorded the most important component of the frog diet. Among the insects,ants have occurred in higher prevalence 44.50% and flies 1.15% withthe lowest prevalence. The results emphasize the significance of furtherexpected studies in the Dir Lower to get a good understanding of thehelminth parasites with the ecological relations of their hosts

Referral patterns and diagnoses at a single Neurophysiology Center in Quetta, Pakistan: An audit of 1600 Cases

Neurophysiologic tests such as EEG, video EEG, Polysomnography (PSG), Nerve conduction studies (NCS) and electromyography (EMG) are the next steps after neurological examinations. These tests play a significantly important role in the decision-making and management of various neurological diseases. Data regarding the availability and frequency of these tests are not being compiled in Pakistan eventually resulting in a lack of awareness about these tests among physicians as well as patients. This motivated us to conduct a medical audit to assess frequencies, mode of referral, and final conclusion of these tests in detail. A total of 1600 tests were included. Among these, 677 were EEGs, 6 were VEEGs, 923 were NCS/EMGs, and 11 were PSGs. In EEGs 7% were of neonates, 58% were in children under age of 18 years and 35% were beyond 18 years. 65% were normal and 35% were with seizures. Among NCS/EMGs, 23% were normal, 15% were carpal tunnel syndromes, 7% were radiculopathies, 7% were sensory motor axonal polyneuropathies and 9 % were mononeuropathies other than CTS. GBS and CIDP were 6.5% and 1 % respectively. In the sleep studies 8 tests were positive for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), 2 for the restless legs syndrome and 1 for the narcolepsy. In VEEG 2 studies demonstrated typical routine or habitual seizures, 3 were normal and 1 showed typical non epileptic psychogenic seizures. EMG/NCS referrals were highest followed by EEGs. EMG/NCS tests were mostly referred by orthopedic and neurosurgeons while EEGs were predominantly referred by pediatricians. The tendency for VEEG and sleep study was very uncommon among neurologists and physicians. Over all non neurologist referrals were more than neurologist’s referrals

Sentence Embedding Approach using LSTM Auto-encoder for Discussion Threads Summarization

Online discussion forums are repositories of valuable information where users interact and articulate their ideas and opinions, and share experiences about numerous topics. These online discussion forums are internet-based online communities where users can ask for help and find the solution to a problem. A new user of online discussion forums becomes exhausted from reading the significant number of irrelevant replies in a discussion. An automated discussion thread summarizing system (DTS) is necessary to create a candid view of the entire discussion of a query. Most of the previous approaches for automated DTS use the continuous bag of words (CBOW) model as a sentence embedding tool, which is poor at capturing the overall meaning of the sentence and is unable to grasp word dependency. To overcome these limitations, we introduce the LSTM Auto-encoder as a sentence embedding technique to improve the performance of DTS. The empirical result in the context of the proposed approach’s average precision, recall, and F-measure with respect to ROGUE-1 and ROUGE-2 of two standard experimental datasets demonstrates the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach and outperforms the state-of-the-art CBOW model in sentence embedding tasks and boost the performance of the automated DTS model

Impact of Heads’ Teachers’ Supervision on Secondary School Performance in Bannu Division

To highlight the important role of teachers’ supervision by head in Secondary School is the main purpose of this paper. Nature of this study was descriptive. Attempt was made to examine the impact of teachers’ supervision by heads’ on Secondary schools performance. The secondary schools’ teachers and 10th class students’ record made the population of the study. The sampled respondents were 330 out of 1650. Questionnaire of five point Likert scale was utilized for data collection. Analysis of data was made through SPSS (Version 16.o). Through utilizing Linear Regression; the impact of teachers’ supervision by heads on Secondary school performance was analyzed. The results showed that there is clear impact of teachers’ supervision on Secondary school performance. Keywords: Head of School, Teachers’ supervision, Public School, Private School, Bannu division. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-36-12 Publication date: December 31st 201

Impact of Sports Activities on Students Academic Achievement at Secondary School level in District Bannu KPK, Pakistan

The present study aims to find the impact of sports activities on students’ academic achievements at secondary school level in district Bannu, KPK, Pakistan. The study was naturally descriptive. All the secondary schools’ students of district Bannu were the population of the study. As a sample 500 students were randomly selected. A self-made questionnaire was used as data collection having five point likert scales. The final 9th class board exam (DMCs) were the source from which the researcher obtained the academic achievements of the students which were recently issued by the Bannu Board. As descriptive statistic t-test was used. While Pearson coefficient correlation was used as inferential statistic. Both findings and conclusion indicates that sports activities and academic achievements of the secondary level school students have no significant relationship with each other. Keywords: Sports, student, academic, achievements, secondary schools. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-33-11 Publication date: November 30th 2019

Decolonizing nature/knowledge: Indigenous environmental thought and feminist praxis

This faculty-student collaborative article is a result of a graduate seminar on ‘Environmental Education’ taught at the Aga Khan University’s Institute for Educational Development in Karachi, and it illuminates new perspectives and pedagogies of nature from the global South, specifically South Asia. Drawing inspiration from feminist and indigenous thought, the narratives of ecology shared here center the place of emotions, experience, memory and spiritual intimacy, offering one means of decolonizing environmental studies and expanding our understanding of ‘environmental consciousness’. These narratives defy ontologies of nature-human separation, capturing not just the co-existence of animals, spirits and humans but their co-constitution. Such indigenous ecologies of knowledge and wisdom, we argue, offer a timely corrective to fragmented and exploitative constructions of the natural environment as mere resource, pleasure, or commodity, while providing a profound, alternative basis for a richly layered, spirited, environmental education