Vulnerability of Women in Disasters: A Case Study of District Badin

The climate change is universal phenomenon, its severe impact can be clearly observed in poor countries having mainly dependence on natural resources and having limited coping strategies for extreme climate change. Given the role of women in society, they tend to face more damages in terms of reduction in their income level, saving pattern and the level of education in disaster prone areas. This article examines the impact of disaster on women. The data for study is collected through questionnaire from district Badin of Sindh province. The findings of study revealed that income level of household is affected after disaster, and households who were low at saving pattern are affected more than households with high savings. To combat the impact of disaster on women the government should initiate awareness drive to respond the disaster related vulnerabilities.

Creating Professional Learning Community Through Appreciative Inquiry Approach

Schools always strive to improve the quality of education by strengthening, and making the teaching and learning process more effective. For this aspect, school provides opportunities to the teachers to bring effectiveness in their performance by arranging professional development sessions or workshops. However, teachers require continuous support on regular basis for their capacity building. Thus it requires developing a culture of professional learning community (PLC) that not only provides support to teachers on regular basis for their development, but also builds a collaborative learning environment for the teachers. With this objective, this study explored the factors that were required for creating the environment based on PLC in the school particularly in the ECD context. Further, this study also identified the processes that helped to build PLC using appreciative inquiry approach. In addition, the support of appreciative inquiry as an approach for building PLC was also measured. In this regard, eight research participants were selected who were involved in four stages of appreciative inquiry i.e. discovery, dream, design and destiny. The data revealed that trust, collaborative learning and reflective dialogue were some of the factors that are required for creating a PLC environment. However, three processes for initiating PLC culture were included which are classroom teaching and observation, constructive feedbacks and reflective dialogue sessions. At the end, this research found that appreciative inquiry approach was significant as a value-added tool that helped to build the collaborative environment in the school and provided participants an opportunity to share their skills and expertise as well as their dreams and imaginations with each other.