Journal of Education, Society and Behavioural Science

The present paper is an attempt to delve into issues related to refugees’ presence in Greece. A variety of political perspectives are interconnected with refugee male and female students’ inclusion in the Greek society. Educational and theoretical patterns are being explored, as being directly correlated with implemented policies in formal education. The construction of educational theoretical discourse on refugee education is being illustrated, as it directly refers to corresponding adaptive educational choices. Political intentions are critically being explored, as they are correlated with legislative symbolic constructions and the implementation framework. Our conceptualization also includes the institutional framework of refugee education within the operational democratic prerequisites that bring the discussion back to refugee needs as well as their expressive, emotional orientations based on intercultural and inter-historical circumscriptions. Refugee education is being approached with reference to refugee policy. In this respect, democratic political codes are described, while conflicting discourse, reinforced within a conservative framework full of negative nationalistic narrations, racist behaviors and populist patterns is illustrated. Therefore, system needs, refugee interests and symbolic constructions of natives and refugees’ understanding, communication and interaction will contribute to reconstructing all education forms, beyond a piecemeal refugee education plan.

This article briefly looks at the practice of appropriating Western teaching methodologies into the Arab world. It accounts for recent and historical attempts to do so and evaluates the success or otherwise of such practice. The paper adopts Adrian Holliday's (1994) distinction between British, Australian and North American (BANA) context and Tertiary, Secondary, and Primary English language education (TESEP) where the context of the current study fits. The paper argues that appropriating Western methodologies risks alienating the culture from which these teaching approaches come. Since one reason for learning a language is to become familiar with its  culture, one may question the need for adapting its teaching methodologies by simply separating it from its cultural values in the first place. The question is that shall one protect his or her cultural identity by dismissing the cultures of other dominant languages? This is a conundrum that cannot be easily saved but one that needs looking at nonetheless. The paper looks at a widely used series of textbooks in a TESEP context and attempts to see if adapting  ow local contexts can shape BANA methodologies.

Public behaviour is a critical in determining factors influencing technology adoption and use. This study employs the Decomposed theory of planned behaviour to ascertain the factors influencing public behaviour, attitude and perception toward genetically modified crops in Ghana. This paper employs the views of 563 respondents from the media, agricultural extension and farmer groups in various regions of Ghana. The results of the study suggest there are significantly positive correlations between constructs of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and subjective norms leading to possible intention to accept GM technologies in the country. The study revealed that while the public holds a positive view of the technology, some important concerns that could limit the acceptance rate were listed. These include perceived high costs of GM seeds, monopoly of technological rights, health and other environmental risks. In many cases it was found that the understanding of the technology among the respondents was not encouraging. Many perceive the biologically oriented technology to be chemically oriented because the initial development of the product is laboratory oriented. The result, therefore begs for an immediate education and awareness creation on the merits and demerits of the technology in order to allay the fears of the pessimists. 

Over the past two decades, the higher education sector in Ghana has undergone many reforms ranging from deregulation and financial sustainability to massive investments in infrastructure. These reforms are aimed at addressing diversity in schools, promoting inclusive learning and increasing access to quality tertiary education. The reforms required changes in job skills, job conversions, modes of teaching and learning, self-consciousness and staff re-locations with probable consequent effect on the well-being of employees. However, these reforms failed to adequately account for employee well-being issues. Hence personal changes and support schemes to help employees keep pace with the changes have received little attention. We investigated these phenomena in public universities to understand the well-being shifts during the reforms from the storylines of higher education academic employees.

The study adopted a qualitative research design using laddering interview technique grounded in the personal change theory to solicit stories from 19 academic employees who have lived across the reforms. Interpretative Phenomenology Approach (IPA) of data analyses was used to analyse the experiences of academic employees. The study provides personal stories reflected in real-life experiences and hinged on the eudemonic theory within a developing country context.

The study discovered that leadership, personal mindset shifts and political interference constitute a Change-Effect Model that shapes the well-being of academic employees during the period of organisational reforms. The findings provide a new dimension to organisational reforms and employee well-being and consider from a critical viewpoint how a change-effect model can be applied in change management process to support employee well-being in locally appropriate and effective ways.

The effectiveness of counselling patients on antibacterial rational use by pharmacists depends on their knowledge and attitude to counselling.This study evaluated the effect of intervention training on pharmacists’ antibacterial therapy knowledge and attitude to counselling.

It was a cross-sectional questionnaire-based study among all the pharmacists (n=45) responsible for patients’ antibacterial counselling in seventeen government secondary health care institutions in Ogun state of Nigeria between November 2017 and May 2018. Identified deficits were addressed through intervention and re-assessment was carried out after a month.

Twenty four (53.3%) were females. Twenty one (46.7%) had hospital pharmacy experience of over 10 years and mean year of experience was 10.7±6.7. Sixteen (35.6%) and 36 (80.0%) believed that antibacterial resistance may be prevented by taking antibacterial medication at regular intervals at the baseline and post intervention phases respectively. Thirty three (73.3%) and 44 (97.8%) had the opinion that pharmacists and patients are active participants in effective antibacterial counselling at the two phases respectively. Twenty eight (62.2%) and 44 (97.8%) had scores ≥ 70.0% signifying good knowledge pre and post intervention respectively.

Disclosure of antibacterial identity to patients was believed to be necessary by thirty six (80.0%) and 43 (95.6%) while 27 (60.0%) and 43 (95.6%) exhibited positive attitude to antibacterial counselling at the two phases respectively. There was significant improvement in antibacterial knowledge and attitude to counselling (p < 0.001) post intervention. Regular antibacterial therapy and counselling training is hereby recommended for pharmacists.

Background: The wellbeing process model formed the basis of questionnaires that can demonstrate which factors predict negative and positive wellbeing outcomes. The Student Wellbeing Process Questionnaire (Student WPQ) uses stressor, negative coping, psychological capital and social support scales to predict positive and negative wellbeing outcomes.

Aims: The usual method of scoring the WPQ has been to sum relevant questions in each scale. The aim of the present analyses was to investigate the microstructure of the WPQ and examine the profile of individual predictor and outcome items.

Methodology: The research was approved by the ethics committee, School of Psychology, Cardiff University, and carried out with the informed consent of the volunteers (1481 psychology undergraduates; 89.4% female; 49.7% year 1; mean age 19.5 years). An online survey was carried out, and a MANOVA was conducted to examine associations between the wellbeing process predictor variables and the wellbeing outcomes.

Results: A multivariate analysis of variance showed that the majority of individual predictors had significant overall effects. Some of the predictors (optimism; self-esteem, developmental challenges; time pressure; avoidance coping) had significant effects on all outcomes, which explains the global effects of the positive personality and stressor composite variables. Negative coping variables had significant effects on all negative outcomes. Other variables had selective effects on specific outcome measures.

Conclusion: The independent variables from the student wellbeing questionnaire are good predictors of both positive and negative wellbeing outcomes. This is observed when either individual items or composite scores are used in the analysis.

The main objective of this literature review is to provide empirical and conceptual insight into SNS addiction by exploring potential SNS addiction, examining the personalities of SNS addicted users, and exploring SNS addiction’s negative consequences on well-being, social and academic life. The results revealed that there was no concordance among previous studies on which gender is the most likely to be addicted to SNS. Moreover, the addiction symptoms linked with SNS addiction were cognitive and behavioral salience, conflict with other activities, euphoria, loss of control, withdrawal, and relapse/reinstatement. Previous SNS’s studies determined a high prevalence rate of addiction to SNS among university students. The review revealed that 18.4% of the reviewed studies agreed that SNS addiction is significantly and positively related to depression and Neuroticism. Although 78% of the reviewed previous studies have highlighted several potential negative correlations of extensive SNS usage and addiction on university student well-being, social, and academic life, however, these studies gave more attention to the negative impact on students’ academic performance.