A Low-Cost Socio-Culturally Situated Mental Health Intervention for the Well-Being of Pakistani Young Women: A Reflective Narrative

The paper sets out to briefly discuss mental health challenges faced by Pakistani young women, and brings out an innovative solution through a multidisciplinary approach, i.e, socio-culturally situated low-cost digital intervention. The paper begins with an overview of mental health issues. It then sheds light on the scope of open education and innovation in Pakistan. Finally, through a reflective narrative approach, I have explored my personal journey of becoming a networked practitioner, and how an open educational website emerged to intersect the needs of Pakistani young women. Data is gathered from 137 reflective diary entries and analyzed through narrative analysis approach. Digital literacy and open networking practices have shaped my digital identity and allowed me to embrace open scholarship. Networking and collaboration have helped me filtering Open Educational Resources (OERs). Further, collaborative activities encouraged participants to become the co-producers of resource development. Overall, an adaptation of low-cost technology has potentially helped participants to reflect and embrace their personal identities.

A Comparative Study of Student Assessment Practices of Public and Private Sector at Elementary Level

The general purpose of the study was to examine the current student assessment practices in the private and public sector. Specifically, the aim of the study was to gain an understanding of the extent to which teachers use student assessment practices in their classroom. The study resulted in moderately through description of these teachers' assessment practices at elementary level in public and private sector (which are following Cambridge assessment practices. The study was based on student assessment practices at the elementary level in public and private sector. Objectives of the study are to (1) Explore the student assessment practices of public and private schools. (2) Find out strength and limitations of student assessment practices. (3) Compare student assessment practices of public and private schools at the elementary level. The Population of the study comprised all the public and private schools in Rawalpindi. The sample was taken from five schools from private sector and five schools from public sector. The respondents were 100 teachers, and 200 students which were selected randomly. Two questionnaires were designed by the researcher for data collection one for teachers and one for students. There were seven hypotheses formulated and tested by applying independent sample t- test at 0.05 level of confidence to find out, the significant difference between the mean scores of independent variables like sector. The findings of the study showed that the student assessment practices of private sector are better than public sector.