Disparity in Political Participation on Social Media Public Sphere among Male and Female Students

Social media has become a key term in new participatory political discourse. Previous studies argued that youth is least interested in democracies and politics; hence, this study aims to explore the role of social media in increasing political participation among male and female university students. Data was collected from a sample of 340 students, chosen from equal gender proportion of five universities with purposive sampling technique to conduct quantitative survey research. The findings of study revealed a positive relationship between political participation and social media usage of students. It also confirms that majority respondents were using social media for political information but the trend is more popular among the male students as compared to females. Male participants were more involved in discussing politics and posting political content on social media, while females were more active in actionable politics like casting vote. The study concludes that social media is playing a significant role in enhancing political participation among university students and predicts a better future of democracies in social media world as new technology provides the language that young voters understand. It also realized that measures are required to attract female students towards participatory politics in Pakistan. ______

Exploring Views of Teachers and Students of Shishket School About Their Post Disaster Teaching and Learning Experiences

The world in the recent years has experienced different types of disasters due to changes in the global climatic patterns and human activities. Pakistan has faced many natural disasters in the last couple of years. Attabad Lake Disaster is one of those disasters which occurred on 4th January 2010 and left thousands of people as Internally Displaced People (IDPs). The international agencies working for humanitarian assistance consider Education as the fourth pillar of humanitarian aid in emergency situations. Attabad Lake disaster destroyed schools and disrupted the teaching and learning process in the particulararea. Therefore, this particular study was carried out to get an insight of post disaster teaching and learning experiences of teachers and students in SD school Shishkat which was hit by Hunza lake disaster. The study was conducted in a private school in Shishket Gojal, Hunza. This particular school building was submerged in the Attabad Lake during the disaster. A qualitative research study was conducted to get an in-depth knowledge of teachers' and students' teaching and learning experiences in the post-disaster situation. A Focus Group Discussion (FGD) was carried out with six teachers and twice with the students. Interviews were taken from the head teacher and an administrator of Sunshine ED (pseudonym). Three classroom observations and some important analyses of documents were done for getting appropriate data. The major findings of the study revealed that due to changed landscape of the area and changed academic year such as long vacations, students' dropout and turnover of teachers, change in school timings and change in the examination system have greatly influenced teaching and learning activities in the school. The study further found that teachers did not get any PD training for dealing with teaching and learning in an emergency situation and that the curriculum needed to be reviewed according to the needs of the students. Moreover, teaching and learning activities have changed after the disaster due to lack of resources, changed behaviour of the students and teachers and changed daily activities of the students and teachers. The findings of this study recommend some guidelines for the teachers and teacher education institutions to overcome the issues of teaching and learning during emergency situations.