American Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Zhuoxi Ye

European colonization took place from the early 15th century until the early 19th century. Over 400 years, European countries had dramatically changed and influenced their colonies. European ideas did not only impact the economy and the culture, but also social welfare and people’s thoughts. The consequences of European colonialism are identified today as colonial legacies. This article discusses a colonial legacy -- education—and the effects that this has had in India and China.

Josephine Adhiambo Agunda, 2018, Henry Onderi, Jack Ajowi

The education of females has a profound effect on national development as lack of their education has been linked to poor sanitation and high illiteracy rate. As the world grows even more dependent on technologically driven competencies, girls’ participation in mathematics affects future career and economic opportunities. It is documented that women’s participation in mathematics related fields such as engineering is below 20%. There was therefore need to conduct a study in Kisumu County, Kenya to establish the influence of teaching load as a classroom based predictor as an independent variable on girls’ academic achievement in mathematics in secondary education at form four level. The dependent variable was Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination results of girls between 2010 and 2014. The objective of the study was to establish the influence of teaching load on girls’ academic achievement in mathematics at form four level. Correlation research design was applied to examine the degree of influence that exists between two or more variables by use of statistical data. The target population consisted of 142 public secondary schools which presented female candidates for KCSE between 2010 and 2014, 142 Principals, 142 Heads of mathematics department and 390 mathematics teachers who taught the girls under study. Stratified random sampling technique was applied whereby schools were categorized as girls’ secondary schools and mixed secondary schools. Purposive sampling was done to select all the 18 girls’ secondary schools in Kisumu County while systematic random sampling was applied to select 38 out of 124 mixed secondary schools in Kisumu County. The sample constituted 39% of the study population. Data was collected using questionnaires, interviews and document analysis. Instruments of data collection were validated by the researcher’s supervisors and reliability of the instruments was established through test retest method by carrying out a pilot study in 5 schools which were not part of the study sample. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics in form of frequency counts, percentages, means, Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation and regression analysis. Qualitative data from interview schedule was analyzed by using thematic analysis. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22 was applied to assist in analyzing data. The findings of the study concluded that there was a negative relationship between teaching load and quality academic achievement among girls in mathematics at form four level. The study recommended that more mathematics teachers should be employed to reduce the teaching load for effective classroom performance.

Udaya Raj Paudel

The violence and trauma of Indian partition changed the social and political course of the Indian subcontinents in such a way that its repercussions and ramifications are still palpable. Along with the number of death and the amount of destruction, the event left a deep psychological scar on the mind of millions of people in general and on the mind of women and children in particular. Such ‘age of foolishness, the season of darkness and the time of despair’ could leave no writers of the time and aftermath untouched. And so far the representation of Indian partition violence and trauma is concerned, whatever the cause and whoever the culprits accused or censured, most of the historians have done their best to silence violence by focusing on the great causes rather than the events themselves. The actual acts of abduction, uprooting, train raids, trauma, madness, suicide, murder and acts of destruction are vexed to keep under the carpet. Unlike this, Sadat Hasan Monto, one of the greatest Urdu writers, visualizes the unprecedented objectivity in the rendition of this heartrending milieu in his stories: “Toba Tek Singh,” “Cold Meat”, “Open It” (“Khol Do”) and “The Dog of Titwal.” Thus, methodologically, this paper makes content analysis of the purposively selected secondary resources where violence and trauma remain at the center rather than ‘the politics of blame’ on Muslims or Hindus as perpetrator of the consequence.

Naseer Ahmad Mir

The great Mughals known for their grandeur was expressed and observed both by Asians as well as by the European travellers. Besides, these sources provide us information on various fields of Mughal history, here I have focused on their day to day travel and tent settlement. An endeavour has been made to look how these tents acted as weather shields and transitory capitals moreover ensured their pomp and highness.   

Viktor Zinchenko

 In the article it is also analyzed the philosophical, educational, economic and political trends, perspectives and forms of further social sustainable development on the basis of creation of new forms of humanism. In planning of the social changes the emphasis should be placed on the analysis of the humanistic values and on the analysis of new social institutions that will allow to understand the real mechanisms of the practical construction of a new global society. Institutional revolution should go far beyond the expectations of traditional social theory in depth and breadth. From the point of view of historical progress every new stage of human society evolution is quite different from the previous one that creates prerequisites for new material and spiritual integration of humanity. We studied the specifics of post-industrial strategies of social development and transformation of social institutions, government management models in the context of globalization in today’s industrialized systems. The article analyzes the dynamics and prospects of evolution of the self-organizing systems of society, governance, structure and functioning of the algorithm model of direct democracy and civilian government.

Gbenemene Kpae, Eric

The negative impact of oil exploration on the Niger Delta environment cannot be overemphasized. Majority of the damage to the environment are due to oil spill and gas flares. Oil spills are due to corrosive and expired pipelines, while others are due to third party involvement. Apart from oil spills, gas flares has also been very destructive to the environment as toxic gas are released into the atmosphere daily. This gas flares causes breathing problems to inhabitants of local communities of the Niger Delta area. This research examines the patterns, trends, drivers and dynamics of conflict over environmental degradation in the Niger Delta. The study also determines existing mechanism for management of conflict over oil spills and gas flares in two selected communities: Bodo and K-Dere in Rivers State. We adopted a qualitative research design, and relied on primary and secondary sources of data. We found that oil spills and gas flares were the cause of conflict between the oil prospective companies especially Shell and oil bearing communities.

Asma Alqarni

Education has proved to be more critical than natural resources as seen in nations such as Singapore, which has minimal resources but an excellent economy (Sayed & Baker, 2014). Informational inventions have become a central part of the educational systems forvarious countries. Technology is used in teaching different subjects, including foreign languages; hence it is vital in the education sector. One of the communication innovations that have been integrated into the learning system is e-learning in which the student and the tutor do not see each other face-to-face as they do in traditional learning (Buran & Evseeva, 2015). Two methods, blended and flipped, have been said to be effective tools of education. 

Andrew Makori

The study set out to investigate the views of current female and male secondary school principals regarding barriers or hindrances to women teachers becoming secondary school principals in a County in Kenya. The study employed a quantitative survey approach and involved 18 female and 22 male principals who were purposively selected from forty secondary schools. Questionnaires were used to collect data. The resulting data was analysed using the SPSS (Software package for social science). The study findings indicate that while there was some degree of convergence among female and male principals, there also existed a wide range of divergence views among female and male principals in regarding factors that hinder women teachers from becoming secondary school principals, among the schools that took part in this study. The study concludes that barriers or hindrances to women advancement into educational leadership were differentially perceived between female and male secondary principals. One recommendation is that a large scale study was necessary in order to develop a full understanding of both male and female principals perceptions regarding factors that hindered women from advancing to leadership positions in secondary schools in Kenya.

Beichen Wang

Objective: This study aims to 1) examine the predictors of drug use at high school 2) build a predictive model for drug use using artificial neural network and compare its performance to logistic regression model.  Methods: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) 2015 data were used for this study. The YRBSS was developed in 1990 to monitor priority health risk behaviors that contribute markedly to the leading causes of death, disability, and social problems among youth and adults in the United States. All the participants who were eligible were randomly assigned into 2 groups: training sample and testing sample. Two models were built using training sample: artificial neural network and logistic regression. We used these two models to predict the risk of Drug Usein the testing sample. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) were calculated and compared for these two models for their discrimination capability and a curve using predicted probability versus observed probability were plotted to demonstrate the calibration measure for these two models.Results: About 18.1% of 8711 students were drug users, about 19.1% among the female and 17.1% among the male. According to the logistic regression, students who had rides in a car driven by someone who is drinking were more likely to have drug use. Students who never tried cigarette smoking were less likely to use drug. Students who drank often were more likely to use drug. Student who used marijuana often were more likely to use drug. Heterosexual students were less likely to use drug. Students who slept 4 hours or less daily were more likely to use drug. Students who did not speak English well were less likely to be a drug user. According to this neural network, the top 5 most important predictors were ‘being black’, Q99 (How well do you speak English), ‘being Asian’, Q68 (sexual orientation), Q88 (On an average school night, how many hours of sleep do you get?). For training sample, the ROC was 0.84 for the Logistic regression and 0.88 for the artificial neural network. Artificial neural network performed better clearly. In testing sample, the ROC was 0.83 for the Logistic regression and 0.80 for the artificial neural network. Artificial neural network had worse performance. As to calibration measure, predictions made by the neural network are (in general) less concentrated around the 45-degree line (a perfect alignment with the line would indicate an ideal perfect calibration) than those made by the Logistic model. Conclusions: In this study, we identified several important predictors for drug use e.g., cigarette smoking,drinking, sexual orientation. This provided important information for educators as well as parents provide timely intervention. We built a predictive model using artificial neural network as well as logistic regression to provide a tool for early detection. As to performance of these two models, logistic regression and neural network had a similar discriminating capability. 

Corneille Luboya Tshiunza1,2

 The purpose of this quantitative study is to explain the possible impact of practices of leadership and management actors on student’s outcomes. The survey was carried through a questionnaire to ascertain the school leadership and management practices of 100 members of school management of 27 primary pilot schools were linked to 1620 students’ outcomes. The findings pointed out 39 significant practices in students outcomes among 82 selected practices. All these practices relate directly to the daily, monthly, trimestral and yearly duties of school leadership and management actors in DRC context. These practices are grouped into 3 components with 16 variables. The range from effective leadership and supervision of pedagogy; effective operational and strategic management of human, material and financial, information, and time resources available for school operations as well as an appropriate school environment.