The concept of democracy is a set of contestable yet elastic notions about human interaction in a diverse and ever changing socio-political set up. Like many other socio-political concepts democracy has also been used ambiguously by political as well as non-political elements to serve their own vested interest. However, there is a general agreement that the democratic practices of deliberation and participation by the people can be strengthened through education. In this study, I focus on the school as an institution that has been used as an instrument to promote certain ideologies and forms of regimes ranging from democratic ideals and participatory norms to orthodox military and religious ethos. The basic purpose of this study is a critical examination of teachers' conceptualisation of democracy and its enactment in secondary schools in the context of Pakistan. In other words the study attempts to unpack and explain the teachers' theoretical and practical positioning' about democracy and how such positioning is mediated by curriculum directions and pedagogical trends in government and private sector schools. The study involved a multi-method design of data collection and analysis, starting with a survey method and then to deepening understanding by using critical ethnographic methods. For the purpose of the survey a questionnaire was developed using a 5-point-Likert scale ranging from 'strongly disagree' through 'neutral' to 'strongly-agree' along with five open-ended questions. The survey study spread over a period of two months covering 80 secondary schools from government and private sector in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. The overall response rate was 80% as 320 teachers out of targeted 400 completed the questionnaire. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to extract 'factors', which were interpreted by computing factor loadings, mean score, and standard deviation values. In addition, responses to the open ended questions were analysed using frequency distribution and percentage scores to identify major trends. During the second phase of the study, critical ethnographic methods of semi-structured interviewing, observations, and document analysis were applied to generate data with the participation of four teachers from selected government and private sector schools. The study was completed in three stages; first compiling the primary records for preliminary reconstructive analysis and second a dialogical data generation and reconstruction of theories. At a third stage, results obtained from the survey and the ethnographic interviews and observation were synthesised to elicit findings and conclusions. The study demonstrates that the teachers' conceptualisation of democracy
Customs and traditions have a significant role in the social set up of every society. These customs project a picture of its culture, manners, beliefs, mental inclinations and life style. For social advancement, it is necessary for a nation to take reformative steps with respect to changing situations. They should adopt the customs that are productive and avoid the harmful ones. It has been a ground reality that the progressive nations have got the leading position having modifying their customs and traditions, while those who have been conservative are backward in the global race restricting on their outdated norms and so called customs. In the prestigious age of the Holy Prophet (BPUH) and his followers, various laws and principles were formulated for the uplift of society, which provided a broad based concept of “custom”. The Islamic jurists have taken the custom as a source of Islamic legislation. In the article under reference, custom has been highlighted with respect to Islamic thoughts in various ages of Islamic history in a number of recommendations have been presented in order to uplift the society and to aware the Muslim theologians and Muftees accordingly.
This study highlights the role of job crafting and work family conflict on job satisfaction of lecturers. Further, it
analyses how sense of wellbeing acts as a mediator between job crafting, work family conflict and job
satisfaction. Data was collected through a questionnaire based on adopted scales from a sample of 280 lecturers
of private and public sector universities of Multan district, Pakistan. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory
factor analysis, and multi-group moderation was conducted to provide statistical evidence for hypotheses. Job
crafting and work family conflict were found significant in predicting job satisfaction.
This study is the only one of its kind and helps to demystify the level of job satisfaction of lecturers of public
and private sector universities in developing country like Pakistan.