South Asian Orient: Colonial Epistemological Inquiry and its Modern Connections

As analysts assume that the South Asian regional political environment is difficult to comprehend due to its ethnic divisions and lingual bifurcations as the region hosts more than one and half billion inhabitants divided into India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, and Sri Lanka. Geographic diversity makes this region unique from all other regions in the world as it is bordered off the Persian Gulf and Arab world through the Indian ocean and opened up from Central Asia to the northern hemisphere. Such a racial, geographic, cultural, lingual and religious diversification had undergone epistemological inquiry during the colonial period in order to devise a central administrative system of regulating Raj’s affairs for the upcoming global world. Therefore, there emerged a unique sense of exploring the unfathomability and multiplicity of the scattering communalities. Through employing Edward W. Said’s critical framework, the present study exposes main theoretical Orientalist formulations by deconstructing major Western theories on South Asian cultures, geography and societies along with its connectivity to the overlapping of global power interests in the present world.

Effect of Co-Operative Learning Techniques on Students Academic Achievement at Secondary Level

Cooperative learning has been well acknowledged in the educational research as a successful pedagogy to improve students’ academic achievement. Cooperative learning denotes to instructional approach in which small groups or pairs of students with different levels of ability work together to complete a common goal. The study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of cooperative learning method in the subject of English. This study focused to find the effect of cooperative learning and traditional learning on the academic achievement of the students of class X. It was an experimental study in which cooperative learning method was compared with traditional method. The aim of this study is for learners to maximize their own and each other’s’ learning. Pretest, posttest equivalent group design was used the objectives of the study comprised; i. To identify the effect of co-operative learning techniques and traditional method on student s’ achievement in the subject of English at secondary level .ii .To determine whether co-operative learning techniques are more effective than traditional techniques of leaning .iii .To examine the effect of cooperative learning techniques on the academic achievement of high achievers and low achievers. iv. To examine the effect of cooperative learning techniques in the retention of students who studied using the cooperative learning method (experimental group), and those who studied using the traditional method (control group). Alternative and null hypotheses were tested in order to test the effect of cooperative learning techniques on students’ academic achievement. Hundred students of 10th class of Government Centennial Model School for Girls Bannu, were taken as the sample of the study and were equally divided into experimental and controls groups on the basis of teacher-made pretest scores. High achievers, low achievers, and average students were divided in both the groups equally. Treatment of planned cooperative learning technique (STAD) was provided to experimental group while control group was taught by with traditional learning method for a period of four weeks. At the completion of the treatment, a teacher made posttest was administered to measure the achievement of the students. Same teacher taught to the groups, one with cooperative learning method and to the other, with the traditional learning method. Four lessons from the English textbook were selected for instruction. The quantitative approach was used to compare the test scores of two groups. Mean and standard deviation were used for descriptive statistics. To determine the effect of cooperative learning method on students’ academic achievement in English and the significance of difference between the scores of groups’ at0.05 level was tested by applying t-test. Data analysis exposed that both the experimental and control groups were almost equal at the start of the experiment. The experimental groups outscored significantly than the control group on posttest showing the supremacy of cooperative learning method over traditional learning method. The findings of this study have revealed a great improvement in students’ academic achievement towards English. In future, the final result of the study revealed that cooperative learning method was more effective for teaching English as paralleled to the traditional learning method. Furthermore, cooperative learning appeared to be more advantageous for overcrowded classes.