The Present Day Applications of Initial Muslim-Christian Interactions.

Throughout history, Interfaith Dialogue has been a continuous activity in Muslims and Christians alike. According to the historian, incident of Wafad-e-Najran[i] (Najran’s Delegation) was the first ever regular interaction between Muslims and Christians.  Therefore, this incident has an academic and historic importance in Muslim -Christian perspectives.  The Holy Quran describes this incident in detail. First 80 verses of Surah Ale-Imran were revealed in this context.  Further information is found in the books of Hadith, Seerah and Islamic History. This incident can become a base for modern Muslim- Christian Dialogue and we can derive from it some basic principles of Dialogue. This article elaborates the incident of Wafad-e-Najran, its importance and also derives some important rules from it. These principles are: interfaith tolerance, harmony, communication, understandings, peaceful co-existence, honour and respect, wisdom and beautiful reasoning, common basis for interfaith dialogue, Daw’ah and perfection of Hujjah. This article also describes its applications in the Present Dialogue.   [i] Wafad-e-Najran:   It is an Arabic word, used in Hadith History and other Islamic literature. It is meant by Najran’s Delegation and I shall use throughout the article as Wafad-e-Najran. 

An Exploration of Teachers Own Classroom Assessment With Reference to the Framework of Aku Eb Assessment and Students Perceptions of Teachers Assessment and Examination Board Assessment

This study aims to explore teachers' own classroom assessment with reference to the framework of AKU EB assessment and students' perceptions of teachers' assessment and examination board assessment. The teachers' and students' perceptions of classroom assessments and exam board annual assessment have been explored through questionnaire survey. Simultaneously, the document analysis of teachers' classroom assessment papers and the exam board annual assessment papers in English and Mathematics has also been carried out as these two subjects were the main focus of this research study. The samples were selected from three AKU-EB affiliated schools of district Hyderabad. The purposeful or purposive sampling method was used to gather meaningful data with the total of 160 research participants including 26 teachers and 134 students from all three schools. All research participants were requested to fill in the questionnaires, one for teachers and the other for students. Data were analysed by using SPSS to compute the percentages of the responses, the mean scores of all items and the pair t-tests for few items of teachers' and students' questionnaires. The results were later transformed into MS-Excel for further tabulations. The main findings of teachers' questionnaire are: their classroom assessment mainly focused on improving, enhancing, and monitoring students' learning. Teachers felt that their assessment motivated students by awarding them with grades and marks. There were differences between their perceptions of classroom assessment skills and the usage of the skills in their classroom practices, for example in designing essay type of questions, and in communicating students' results with parents and the school management. The main findings of students' questionnaire are: there were significant differences between students' perceptions of teachers' classroom assessments and the exam board annual assessment in terms of the levels of difficulty in the test items i.e. the types of MCQs, CRQs, and ERQs and the marks awarded from both assessments. Students felt that their school teachers mostly designed MCQs type of tests as compared to CRQs and ERQs.