The Communications

Directorate of Distance Education

University of Kashmir

ISSN: 0975-6558

This study was undertaken to study the social intelligence, scientific temper and the academic achievement of children of working and non-working mothers of Kashmir. The sample for the study was 400 including 200 children of working mothers and 200 children of non-working mothers by using random sampling technique. N. K. Chadha and Usha Ganesan Social Intelligence Scale (1986) N.A Nadeem’s and Showket Rashid’s scientific temper scale were administered for the collection of data. The result of the study highlighted that there exists no significant difference between children of working and non-working mothers of Kashmir on social intelligence and scientific temper. On the other hand it has been found that children of non-working mothers were having similar academic achievement.

Quality of school textbooks have become important aspect for effective students learning particularly at elementary level. The study aims at knowing the perception of elementary school students of government schools of district Srinagar regarding content, and coverage, of elementary school textbooks. The data was collected from all the students of class 5th and 8th reading in 32 schools of eight educational zones of district Srinagar at an average of 4 schools from each educational zone. The data was collected through self constructed interview schedule. Data was statistically analyzed by using percentages. The result shows that out of 230 elementary school students, majority of elementary school students agreed that the sequence of text is systematic, length of each unit is appropriate and textbooks contain exercises for reflection, knowledge provided in textbooks is linked to environmental issues, health related values, peace related values, and work related attitudes and values and sensitize them to social issues-gender equality, caste equality, child labour and illiteracy.

Higher education is that stage of education that plays a key role in making the relationship between education and society stronger. In the national development it is one of the essential means. Higher education institutions should function with the true spirit of proliferating knowledge, changing society and bringing peace and harmony in the country. Therefore higher education in the country should be quality based, enhancing the pursuits of truth through knowledge and opening the new ways of development and humanism. Such quality higher education institutions will ignite the minds of younger generation and will help in building a healthy nation. For quality education various constituents work together. Teacher, School administration, Government, students and various educational managements together play a vital role in quality enhancement of higher education. Providing quality education is the only solution to the current problems emerging in this dynamic society and it’s the teacher who play main role in providing the quality education to students. This paper aims to discuss the role of teacher in improving the quality of education in higher system of education. Exploratory method of research has been adopted by exploring the existing literature related to the theme of the study.

This paper attempts to examine the impact of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices of sample banking organisations on the Job Satisfaction of their respective employees. On basis of the literature review, it is hypothesized that a positive perception among employees regarding the HRM practices helps in developing a sense of satisfaction among employees regarding their jobs. The hypothesised relationship is tested though regression analysis by using data from two Indian banking organizations and a sample of 373 banking employees. The findings suggest that perception of employees regarding the HRM practices positively impacts their job satisfaction.

Every individual has its own natural or habitual pattern of acquiring and processing information in learning situations. The individual learning differences that have been much explored relate to differences in personality, learning styles, strategies and concepts of learning. In this study, we aim to identify the learning styles of distance and regular education students of Kashmir Division. It was found that, maximum number of students prefer to learn by auditory learning style; highest preferred learning style by regular students is Kinaesthetic, while distance education students preferred to learn by Auditory learning styles. It was further found that highest preferred learning style by both male and female students is Auditory. These facts reveal that learning styles varies among regular and distance education students.

The present study was an attempt to observe the attitude of married Muslim Women towards family planning in Kashmir irrespective of their dwelling, work status and age. The sample was selected through multi stage sampling technique. For the sample 1800 married Muslim women were selected from urban and rural areas of Kashmir. The sample was collected with the help of self-constructed questionnaire. The study shows that the majority of married Muslim women in the age group of 41 -50 years strongly agree that first issue must be born immediately after marriage. It is also found that women who don’t earn cash for their work strongly disagree that too many children becomes burden to parents.

In the present investigation, an attempt has been made to study and compare the Professional Commitment of secondary school teachers, to study and compare the Self-efficacy of secondary school teachers and to find out the relationship between Professional Commitment and Self-efficacy of secondary school teachers. A sample of 100 teacher educators working in government schools of district Ganderbal was selected through Purposive sampling technique. Professional Commitment Scale for teacher educators by Sood (2011) and Teacher Self-efficacy scale by Ralf Schwarzer, Gerdamarie S.Schmitz and Gary T. Dayter (1999) were used for data collection. Mean, SD and t-test were used to compare the professional commitment of male and female secondary school teachers and to compare self-efficacy of male and female secondary school teachers. Pearson’s correlation was applied to find out the relationship between Professional Commitment and Self-efficacy of secondary school teachers. The findings of the study revealed that female secondary school teachers have higher professional commitment as compared as to male secondary school teachers. No significant difference was found in the Self-efficacy of secondary school teachers and significant positive correlation was found between Professional Commitment and Self-efficacy of secondary school teachers.

To build own personality, society and the nation one always endeavor by giving his best to achieve more and more. The present research study was conducted to find out the Effect of Cognitive Difficulty of students on their Academic Achievement of different Higher Secondary students of district Jammu of J&K state with reference to their locality and type of school. Cognitive difficulty is among the fundamental factors which may affect the academic achievement of students through different angles. To accomplish the study researcher employed descriptive research design and collected the data from a sample of 300 Government and Private school students selected from 8 Higher Secondary schools by applying simple random sampling technique. In this research study ANOVA as a statistical technique was used to analyze the data. The result of the study reveals that Cognitive difficulty plays a very gigantic role in determining the Academic Achievement of students

The present study was undertaken to study and compare the values of rural orthopedically challenged and urban orthopedically challenged college going students in Kashmir valley. A sample of 280 college going students were selected randomly from various college of Kashmir. The investigator used the Indian Adaptation Value Scale constructed by N.Y.Reddy for the collection of data. The collected data was subjected to various statistical treatments. Some of the interesting findings have been drawn from the present study such there is significant difference between rural orthopedically challenged and urban orthopedically challenged students on three dimensions and no significant difference was found on other three dimensions.

The paper is about the status of mental health of private and Dar ul uloom secondary school students of Kashmir division. The researcher selected a sample of 600 secondary school students (300 private & 300 Dar ul uloom secondary school students) for the purpose. The sample was selected randomly. Percentage statistics was used to assess the mental health status of the selected sample.

Honey since time immemorial has been accepted as food and medicine by all generations, is a sweet, flavorful liquid containing sugars, small quantities of proteins, enzymes, amino acids, minerals, trace elements, vitamins, aroma compounds, and polyphones heavily used by Asian countries such as India, Srilanka, Nepal and Pakistan in their traditional medicinal systems. Honey is referred nearly in all major religions of the world. Honey bees are an important part of both our agricultural economy and the overall ecosystem as they provide free ecosystem services in the form of pollination. Apiculture (Beekeeping) is at fast rate becoming an income generating activity. It is reported that honey is used as a remedy for wounds, burns, cataracts, ulcers, diabetes, diarrhea, inflammation, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular diseases, etc. The health benefits of honey were traced back to ancient herbal physicians more than a thousand years ago, while, present scientists have also realized its importance with regard to various health issues. The Medical journals cite more than 600 cases in which honey was employed to treat wounds. In this study, a sample of 400 people were selected randomly from Central Kashmir using stratified random sampling technique to get the participants perception towards the use of honey. The data collected from the study population using a validated questionnaire revealed that majority of the respondents were well aware of the health benefits of honey but showed poor attitude towards honey use. The researchers conclude the study by exposing the benefits, precautions and traditional usage of the honey, especially in the light of Unani Medicinal system and Islam.

The most prominent part of the information collection conduct is that what other people think. With the growth of opinion-rich resources like social media, blogs, review sites, various challenges and opportunities arise. People can now use this information to find out and understand the opinions and beliefs of others. Sentiment analysis and text classification is one of the fastest growing research areas in the field of machine learning. The vector representations are the real-valued representations of the words, able to capture the semantic meanings of the words, usually trained on large corpora. These vector representation of words are very helpful in solving many Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. So in this context, Word2Vec and GloVe are the two best known representation models so far. In this paper, these two models will be used to evaluate in order to know their effect on the performance metrics of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model for sentiment analysis of publicly available IMDB dataset.

The study was undertaken to study the attitude of mainstream primary school teachers’ towards inclusive education. 100 primary school teachers both male and female, from both government and private schools were selected as sample by using multistage-cum-simple random sampling technique. For assessing their attitude towards inclusive education, Peng Yan’s Questionnaire of Mainstream Primary School Teachers’ Attitude Towards Inclusive Education was used to collect data. Mean, S.D & t-test were used as statistical techniques to analyze the data to get results. It was found that male and female primary school teachers don’t differ significantly in their attitude towards inclusive education. Teachers from both genders believe that inclusive education provide students with opportunities for mutual communication which makes them to understand and accept individual diversity. Study also reveals that government and private school teachers differ in their attitude towards inclusive education. Private school teachers believe that children with special needs should be taught in special/separate settings while government teachers believe them to be taught in togetherness with normal children.

Teaching is a way and means for sharing of knowledge and experiences, which always promoted and organized in a very appropriate and disciplined manner. More over we can explain it as the provision of stimulus to psychological, behavioral and intellectual growth of a person or an expert to the other. Teaching is a way and a prominent professional art and science which help others to grow in their knowledge and better understanding. Motivation in teaching is a boost in bringing effectiveness in classroom and teaching learning process. A motivated teacher is vital to a successful classroom and better learning outcome. Motivation stimulates to energies, concentrate and sustain positive behavior over a long period of time. It works for the achievement of goal also provides a platform for making the future of a student. To motivate a student it is important for a teacher that they should reward their students for good work and for other achievements too.

Islam has emphasized on numerous principles that organize relationships among members of the society. One of the most important principles is social justice with all important values that it involves like peace, love, brotherhood, and prosperity. Justice in Islam is not only practiced on Muslims. Rather, it is practiced on every human being regardless to his/her beliefs or religion. Justice as a concept refers to equality in giving rights and in abiding by obligations without discriminations for any reason, either for religion, race, color, etc. social justice in Islam comprises three elements i.e., equitable distribution of wealth, provision of social security and protection of the weak against the strong. The first thing that we find in Islam in this connection is that it lays down some rights for man as a human being. In other words, it means that every man whether he belongs to this country or that, whether he is a believer or unbeliever, whether he lives in some forest or is found in some desert, whatever be the case, he has some basic human rights simply because he is a human being, which should be recognized by every Muslim. In fact, it will be his duty to fulfill these obligations. The aim of this paper is also to focus on Basic Human Rights such as the Right to life, the Right to safety of life, Respect for the chastity of women, Individual’s right to freedom, Equality of human beings, and the Right to cooperate and not to cooperate.

In this paper we introduce UDL principles and implementation guidelines for teachers, and argue that UDL can have a useful application for inclusive education. There is a dire need to adopt an inclusive education policy in order to address barriers to learning in the education system. However, the implementation of this policy is hampered by the lack of teachers’ skills and knowledge in differentiating the curriculum to address a wide range of learning needs. In this paper we provided a background to inclusive education policy through universal Design for Learning (UDL) and it addresses a wide range of learning needs in a single classroom. Knowledge of the UDL framework facilitates both teachers and learners [with or without disability] and provides a relatively simple and comprehensive approach for curriculum differentiation. Furthermore, teachers need to find ways to plan and work jointly, for the greatest benefit to their learners. UDL is, as its name suggests, an attempt to maximize learning in a universal manner. As such, it aims to apply the same principles to all learning rather than proposing specific learning programmes for different forms of diversity or disability. We therefore conclude that there is potential place of UDL in the implementation of inclusive education

The emergence of armed conflict in Kashmir from 1989 has created a new challenge in society in the form of vulnerability among children. Among the vulnerable children the number of orphans has considerably increased. The orphans face problems of multifarious nature to which society has not been able to respond effectively. The response of society towards the problems has not uphold the philosophy of rights based approach as a result of which orphans confronted the challenges among which their education came into the radar of vulnerability. Their academic growth and psychological stability are totally compromised at the cost of their basic needs. The orphanages being the last resort to orphans are still lacking the basic facilities that should be provided to them. The Orphanages in Kashmir have poor infrastructure particularly related to education. There is no mainstream curriculum followed by different educational institutions for these orphanages. The states of affairs demand comprehensive policy and response from state and society. There seems a hope through Juvenile Justice Care and Protection System which is yet to respond the issues in full scale. The present study is review based wherein the explicit research question reviewed was challenges faced in educational sector by Orphans living in Orphanages of Kashmir. In the process of reviewing the secondary sources in the form of subject related books, journals, newspapers and working reports of NGOs working in the field were thoroughly reviewed. The conclusions are drawn on the basis of analysis of all the relevant secondary sources.

Education is the backbone of any enlightened society. No society can dare to exist without making apt and ample preparations for imparting quality, standard education to its members. The rejuvenation in education is leading to an enormous advancement in our society. The national literacy rate is on the rise and enthralling everyone, be it in terms of caste, sex or status etc. The educational institutions are increasing in number and toting up the knowledge and intellectual strength of our society. The govt. led institutions for an adequate time have been the main source of education and now the privatization has a lot changed the scenario of life. The govt. schools have always remained fundamental means of education for the children of huge poor masses of India who cannot afford heavy expanses of privately led institutes. Even though the modernization and the privatization is a major contributor to education but on the other side our govt. schools are also play an increasingly active role in imparting the quality education in the State. Since the State of Jammu and Kashmir is only the state in the country which has a distinction of formulating its own policies for the system of education as such the present paper attempts to give a detailed picture of the journey of education in the State of Jammu and Kashmir in the light of its special status. An attempt has also been made to highlight the special features of the RTE Act of the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

Guidance and counseling plays an role of in schools for the child future success of the child. The study recognizes the fact that counseling is a transformative process of helping people to learn all that are to be learnt both in and outside the School. Design / Methodology / Approach: The study adopted the use of review research techniques because is an opinion paper. Findings: The paper acknowledge the fact that it is necessary for counselors to build confidence of the child to trust him / her to be able to give him/her the rightful information needed in helping the child (students). Practical implications: The guidance counselors should encourage students to under the therapy session to be able to help the child in their future success .Originality / Value: This paper deals with the role of guidance and counseling in effective teaching and learning in schools for the child future success.

E-learning is learning to utilize electronic technologies to access educational curriculum outside of a traditional classroom. In most cases, it refers to a course, program or degree delivered completely online. We define e-learning as courses that are specifically delivered via the internet to somewhere other than the classroom where the professor is teaching. The growth and development of distance education have been through several stages-from pure correspondence education towards multimedia distance education and maturing into open and distance learning and today moving towards online programmes of study through the internet and computers. In view of the current dominance of e-learning in general and particularly in the area of open and distance learning(ODL), the present study focuses on the concept of e-learning in the current environment, the growth of ODL in India, e-learning from the prism of ODL followed by conclusion and recommendations.

Islam provides us the full fledged ethics of business if once implemented transparently; it can bring the revolution in the field of business and economy. Ethics is considered the moral standards by which people judge behaviour. Islam places the highest emphasis on ethical values in all aspects of human life. In Islam, ethics governs all aspects of life. Ethical norms and moral codes discernible from the Qur’anic verses and Hadith are numerous, far reaching and comprehensive. In an Islamic system, ethics and business are not only compatible but they are also inseparable. Islam stresses the link between business and religion. It projects a perfect way of life. A human manner and behavior in small and medium enterprises cannot be effectively clarified without references to the Islamic business ethics which can manage it. Thus, this research paper will explore the concepts like Islamic ethics, business, business ethics on one hand and Islamic business ethics on the other hand. This very research paper also focuses on the Islamic philosophy of business ethics keeping in view the descriptive as well as analytical methodology.

Career choice is an exploratory course in every student’s life which introduces students to a broad range of career opportunities. Students have to consider various factors before arriving at a decision. Some students know exactly what course to pursue while others do not know which one will get them there. As a matter of fact, due to the availability of large number of courses offered to students, most of them find themselves switching majors. The importance of choosing and selecting a particular degree as well as courses available is a vital and crucial part for every student as it is the building block of future success. Students need to be having extensive information about the path they will be taking to help them prepare for their career path. However there are some factors that draw their influence on children at the time of making choice for opting career. An inappropriate career choice directs all individual efforts and resources into a wrong direction. A model for career choice should be proposed through which teachers, advisers, counselors and parents use in determining career. This paper shed light on various factors that influence the career selection choice of the student at secondary school level and create a possible alignment between their preferences and the institution's curriculum and offerings.

Prisons have always been a source of writing ordeals, sufferings and traumatic experiences. Anjum Zamrud Habib, the political activist from Kashmir wrote her diary during her incarceration in an Indian prison Tihar Ashram or jail. The diary is regarded as one of the important pieces of Indian Prison Writing. The following paper unravels the ordeal, miseries, humiliation and trauma of the writer and her other women inmates. The paper also studies it as a testimonial of prison literature emerging from India.

Medicinal History has been increasingly attracting the attention of historians over the past few decades. It is through this academic exercise that the knowledge gained by our ancestors over centuries of experiences, interactions and inheritance is preserved and made easily accessible to a broader readership. Health being fundamental priority among the hierarchy of human priorities, and pre-requisite for smooth and prosperous life, its status impinges on every structure of the society. Health and medicinal culture of a society is reflective of its, interactions with the outside world, intellectual status, receptions to exogenous influences, continuities in change and differences in the society, as medicinal culture varies among different sections of society as per their variegated economic conditions and levels of exposure. It helps us in understanding the changes in demographic history-stable population in pre-modern period and population explosion after scientific and technological revolution. This paper, though mainly aims to offer a holistic overview of health status of Kashmir during nineteenth century, also deals with how English Medical Missionaries penetrated in the valley of Kashmir and radically changed the scenario of health and medicine.

Creation of humanity sans a grand purpose would be tantamount to declare the purposelessness of the whole creation. Human beings at the micro level serve and fulfill the aim of the creation at the macro level. The balance and order which the cosmos exhibits is governed by the laws set in place by God Himself. It is human beings, however, who on and off set asunder this balance and order by spreading corruption on earth by misusing the freedom of will which too has been bestowed on humanity by God. The Qur’an, as the guidebook of God for humanity, sets forth such principles the observance of which would make the humans responsible as well as reasonable beings meant for the amelioration of the whole existence. This process of making human beings wholesome and responsible is profusely explained by the Qur’an. Since human personality emerges early and continues to change in meaningful ways throughout the lifespan, the Qur’an provides not only lessons for its development but also gives instructions for the amelioration of each stage so as to make it useful not only for itself but also for the whole humanity. However, the Qur’an considers the whole human life as an integral whole which together with the creation which is made subservient to humanity marks the unity of whole existence. It is amidst this existence that human personality emerges, unfolds and develops and Qur’an provides guidelines thereto. Such a developed and embellished human being lives a harmonious life and reaches the threshold of the next life with peace. This paper endeavours to present this holistic view of the development of human personality in light of the Qur’an.

Our society once said to be the essence of culture, morality, and character, is today continuously degenerating and deteriorating in terms of ethics, morals and values. The result is that we are seeing an increasing change in the behavior of individuals especially among youth. The influences of mass media, science and technology, modernization, globalization etc. are the prime factors for the degeneration of the youth in our society and corrupting the mind of a large number of youngsters. The present research is an endeavor to underline and confer the concern of decline of ethical and moral values among young generation. Moral values are certainly decreasing and everything now has become materialistic and we are observing a situation where morals are nil and ethics have been sent off to the bottom of the ocean. The research also tries to highlight the different factors which are considered responsible for the deterioration and decline of moral and ethical values among youth. There is an urgent need to focus and develop ethical values among youth in the society, as materialism is affecting and covering every sphere, attention should shifted towards enhancing and developing ethical values among youth who identify the prospect of a society.

Shaikh-ul Aalam (R.A) is a remarkable Kashmiri saint who belonged to the Rishi order was born at a period of great social and religious crisis in Kashmir i,e. 1377 C.E in Kaimoh village. He was one of those eminent personalities who had a special concern with reforming society. He revolted against the political and social uncertainty which was prevalent in his era. For this purpose he used his poetry as a tool to spread the true knowledge of islam, that is message of love, simplicity, tolerance, harmony, fraternaity between all human beings irrespective of religion, colour, race which ultimately led to a struggle against social injustice and discrimination prevailing during his time. Shaikh-ul Aalam (R.A) condemns caste system and highlights in his poetry that Adam is the progenitor of human race and differentiating people on the basis of caste and colour is superficial. He clearly emphasized in his poetry that anyone who believes in caste system is not true follower of God. Shaikh-ul Aalam (R.A) played a significant role by emphasizing the exploitative machinations of caste-conscious Brahmans. The main desire of Shaikh-ul Aalam (R.A) was to transmit the real message of social reformation and its social dynamic which stood for classless and casteless society free of exploitation and religious discord.

In 1753, Afghans established their political authority in Kashmir. Afhan rule has been painted with dark colours by a section of Pandit chroniclers. These Pandit chroniclers wrote in the beginning of Sikh rule and projected Afghans as religious fanatics and ruthless masters who persecuted Hindu community by subjecting them to heavy taxation and other humiliating practices. Sikh rule on the other hand was hailed as rule of deliverance by these chroniclers. This was done for the purpose of gaining sympathy of new establishment. True, Afghans were tough masters who ruthlessly exploited the people of Kashmir but we argue that Afghan governors in Kashmir were more guided by lust for power and tribal codes than their religion. Besides, Afghan state was not different than medieval imperial states which aimed at ruthless exploitation of peripheries and awarded exemplary punishments to rebels. The sufferings during the period under reference should be viewed as inclusive experience of all sections of society instead of a particular community.

An interactive whiteboard (IWB) is a touch-sensitive screen that works in conjunction with a computer and a projector. The first interactive whiteboard was manufactured by SMART Technologies in 1991. Web 2.0 tools enable users to contribute content easily to the Internet and communicate with others. Blogs and wiki are frequently mentioned tools with educational applications in the Read/Write Web, though many other tools and platforms fall into this category. The purpose of this study is to aware the educant, educators as well as the administrators about the use of innovations of educational technology in general and of Interactive White boards and Web 2.0 tools in particular in teaching learning process. Interactive whiteboard is used a tool for collaboration, improving student learning outcomes and streamlining lesson planning. Interactive whiteboards are an effective way to interact with digital content and multimedia in a multi-person learning environment. Blogs provide teachers an excellent tool for communicating with students. Blogs are highly motivating to students, especially those who otherwise might not become participants in classrooms. Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has simple text syntax for creating new pages and cross links between internal pages on the fly.

This paper is aimed at highlighting the main features of Islāmic education and curricular perspective in the Qur’ān. Curriculum as the methodology, the Qur’ān uses to transmit and teach its themes and topics. Here, curriculum in the Qur’ān is introduced with an emphasis on the techniques the Qur’ān chooses to teach its followers. The curriculum in reference to the development and redirection of students’ thought processes to help them find more meaning and significance in their lives. The focus of this paper is on giving the learner freedom of choice while developing thinking abilities and at the same time addressing human relations among learners and the world. Mainly, educational curriculum in the Qur’ān calls for teaching the person as a whole, connecting all aspects of life including the social, intellectual and spiritual. It describes how the curriculum was implemented by the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w) as the teacher, and practiced by his followers as the students.

This study tried to explore the challenging disasters which affect the crops production of Bangladesh. Bangladesh is vulnerable to the consequences of sea level rise, drought, flood, flash flood, cyclones, water logging, saline water intrusion into the main land etc. may directly affects the food security of the population of this country. This paper did clearly explores the crop calendar, crop production and the disasters which affects the agricultural productions and makes the country susceptible to food insecurity. This paper did also explores the disaster management in agricultural sector through Preparedness, Prevention, Response and Rehabilitation (PPRR) framework to reduce the losses of agricultural productions.