13. Ar-Ra’d/The Thunder
I/We begin by the Blessed Name of Allah
The Immensely Merciful to all, The Infinitely Compassionate to everyone.
13:01
Alif. Lam. Mim. Ra’.
These are the Messages of the Divine Book – The Qur’an.
What is revealed on to you – O The Prophet - from your Rabb - The Lord is the truth.
Yet most people do not believe it to be so.
13:02
It is Allah WHO raised up the celestial realm without any visible support as you can see.
Then, HE established HIMSELF upon the Throne of Almightiness.
And made the sun and the moon subservient to HIS laws, each running its predetermined course until the Last Hour.
Thus, HE directs all matters, distinctly explaining every sign of HIS Almightiness so that you may be convinced of the meeting with your Rabb - The Lord.
13:03
And it is HE WHO spread out the earth, and placed firm mountains upon it, and running
rivers,
and made two of a pair of every fruit/plant-vegetation,
and HE covers up the daytime with the nighttime.
Indeed, these are the wonders of HIS Unique Creative Power for a people who reflect.
13:04
And on the earth, there are tracts of land adjoining one another, and yet different from one another, and
vineyards, and
sown fields, and
date-palms,
growing in clusters from a shared root or not of a shared root,
yet they are all irrigated by the same one water stream.
And yet WE favor some of its fruit in flavor and taste over others.
Surely in that are wonders of HIS Unique Creative Power for a people of understanding.
13:05
And if you...
Computers are increasingly a part of pre-schoolers to professional lives. The use of multimedia in education has significantly changed people’s learning processes. Computer technology holds promise for improving student performance and quality of teaching education program at all levels. Today, development has been rapid and technology has been acknowledged as an additional teaching tool. Results from a number of research studies indicate that appropriately designed multimedia instruction enhances students’ learning performance in mathematics, and literacy. The purpose of the present paper was to discuss research avenues employing computers as a learning tool and to analyse the results obtained by this method at the pre-schoolers learning level.
This study was initiated to identify the daily stressors, coping strategies and adjustment of adolescents. It was a two phased study. In Phase I, a pilot study was conducted on thirty two adolescents who were between 14 to 18 years of age, to establish the applicability of the instruments to be used for the final study and also to have a preliminary sense of the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the research. In Phase II, two studies were conducted. In Study A, Situational COPE (Carver & Scheier, 1982), was used to identify daily stressors and coping strategies. Perceived Self Efficacy Scale (Jerusalem & Schwarzer, 1979) was used as an indicator of adjustment. 435 (249 females, 186 males) school/college students participated in this study. Their age ranged between 14 and 19 years (M= 16.84). Content analysis of reported stressors revealed four major stressful domains: Academics, Interpersonal, Intra personal and Socio-environmental. Religious Coping, Planning, Positive Reinterpretation and Growth, Focus on and Venting of Emotions emerged as the most dominant coping strategies. The less opted strategies were Substance Use and Humor. Problem-Focused coping dominated over Emotion-Focused or Dysfunctional coping types. Frequency of stressors demonstrates that females were more stressed in the domains of academics and interpersonal relations and males were more stressed in socio-environmental domain. Intrapersonal stressors were reported equally by both genders. Likewise, intrapersonal stressors were less in early adolescents and high in mid adolescents; interpersonal stressors were reported equally by all age groups. Similarly, academic stressors were more pronounced in early adolescents and less in older adolescents; socio-environmental stressors, however, increased with age. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted, to see the main effects of gender on different COPE scales. Significant gender differences were found on four sub-scales: Religious Coping [F(1,434)= 3.86, p< .05], Humor [F(1,434)= 6.45, p= .05], Behavior Disengagement [F(1,434)= 5.95, p< .05], and Substance Use [F(1,434)= 4.49, p< .05]. Females scored high on Religious Coping and Behavioral Disengagement and males scored high on Humor and Substance Use. ANOVA was also computed to see age effects and significant differences were found on three COPE sub-scales. On Focus on and Venting of Emotions, adolescents in their mid years vented off their emotions more [F(2,434)= 3.35, p< .05], Denial [F(2,434)=3.45, p< .05] was more among older adolescents and Acceptance [F(2,434)= 4.34, p< .05] increased with age. The perceived Self-efficacy among adolescents was also high and it was positively correlated with Problem-focused coping. In Study B, thirty participants (15 males, 15 females), 17 to 19 years of age were studied repeatedly for six weeks. Initially Dispositional COPE (Carver & Scheier, 1982) was given to them to see their usual coping pattern. Then, diary method was used to identify their daily stressors and Situational COPE was used to assess coping. A qualitative analysis was carried out, individual patterns emerged and each pattern did not match largely with the reported dispositional style coping of those individuals, hence preference for certain coping strategies did emerge. Gender comparison was also done and both males and females exhibited coping with stressful situations in a variety of ways. Active coping, Planning, Acceptance, Religious Coping, Mental or Behavioral Disengagement, Focus on and Venting of Emotions were the most dominant coping strategies for stressors related to academics, interpersonal, intrapersonal and socio-environmental domains.