FWU Journal of Social Sciences

The The Effectiveness of Technology-Project-based Learning (TPBL) Module in Fostering Children’s Creative Thinking Skills Through Science Education

Azam Ghazali, Associate Prof. , Prof. — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Early science learning has the potential to enhance children's creative thinking skills through quality learning, but this requires well-structured activities and a supportive learning environment. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Technological-Project-based Learning (TPBL) Module in early childhood education to enhance the creative thinking skills of children. This study employed a mixed-methods design, where qualitative data was collected using interview instruments and quantitative data was gathered using pre and post-tests. The study involved 2 preschool teachers and 50 preschool children. After an 8-week intervention, the findings revealed a significant positive change in the mean score of children's thinking skills in the treatment group, with the average pre-test score of M = 32.60 and a post-test score of M = 55.16. Additionally, the results indicated a significant difference between the treatment and control groups based on the post-test, with p < 0.05 = 0.001. A p-value below 0.001 signifies that this outcome is exceedingly improbable to have arisen by chance. Furthermore, interview data indicated that participants found the TPBL module to be a highly impactful initiative in enhancing their creative thinking skills, as it involved engaging projects and allowed them to make decisions collaboratively with peers. These implications encourage schools to provide technological learning materials to ensure quality science education, in line with 21st-century education standards.

Democratic Disconnect in E-government Policy Initiatives of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Muhammad Ayub Jan — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has initiated several reform measures that have been extensively discussed in the media, policy-making circles, political arenas, and academia. Some of the policy initiatives are published in the form of policy documents, e.g. KP Youth Policy (2016), KP Industrial Policy (2016) and KP ICT policy (2015-2016), etc. These published documents give us a good idea of the government’s vision, strategy framework, and understanding of relevant concepts and terminologies. This paper explores policy documents related to the e-government initiatives of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, i.e., ‘Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ICT Policy 2015-2016’ and ‘The Integrated Development Strategy (2014-2018)’. Through an examination of policy design, this paper investigates the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s vision for e-government as articulated in its policy documents. It elucidates how this understanding addresses the issue of citizens’ participation in governance through information and communication technologies (ICTs). The policy documents are analysed through the e-government models, i.e. managerial, consultative and participatory (Bellamy, 2000; Chadwick & May 2003). This paper argues that the way the concept of e-governance is interpreted, goals set, claims made, and strategies devised in these policy documents, the government appears to be unequivocally restricting e-governance to managing citizens through Information provision and service delivery. In this managerial tradition, the government eschews public consultation and citizen input through ICTs, which creates a democratic deficit.

Undergraduate English Majors' Views on ChatGPT in Academic Writing: Perceived Vocabulary and Grammar Improvement

Cao Tuong Dinh — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study investigates undergraduate English majors' perceptions of ChatGPT in enhancing vocabulary and grammar in academic writing. Utilizing a mixed-methods convergent design, data were collected from 31 students via pre- and post-survey questionnaires, 20 participants’ reflective journals, and semi-structured interviews with 10 volunteers. Quantitative findings revealed significant improvements in students’ perceptions of vocabulary accuracy, relevance, and depth. Thematic analysis of qualitative data identified benefits such as enriched vocabulary, improved grammatical accuracy, and increased confidence in academic writing. Challenges included overdependence, difficulty interpreting feedback, and a lack of originality in AI-generated suggestions. Students employed strategies to optimize ChatGPT use, such as asking specific questions, selectively applying feedback, and balancing AI input with personal judgment. The study highlights ChatGPT's ability to provide tailored feedback, foster confidence, and support vocabulary development while underscoring the importance of responsible use to mitigate overreliance and maintain originality. The findings underscore ChatGPT's potential to enhance academic writing skills when integrated thoughtfully into curricula. However, overuse risks shallow learning, suggesting a need for instructional strategies that can promote rigorous analysis with AI tools. Future research should explore long-term impacts, comparisons with other AI tools, and strategies for ethical and effective integration of ChatGPT in higher education.

The The Hidden Drivers of Social Transfers: Understanding How Risk Perception Influences Social Transfer Decisions in Turkey

Hasan Vergil, Asad Ul Islam Khan — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Targeted transfer programs have gained significant attention as effective tools for poverty alleviation. While the targeting mechanisms in social transfer programs have been successful in identifying individuals in need, their implementation often encounters challenges and failures. This study seeks to examine the differences in risk perception among poor households regarding their participation in social transfer programs. A theoretical model was developed to explore the relationship between risk aversion and financial transfers, and the analysis was further supported by statistical and econometric methods using the Income and Living Conditions Survey of Türkiye. The findings indicate that, under varying levels of risk aversion, while the impact of economy-wide risks on the uptake of social transfers remains consistent, idiosyncratic shocks and changes in utility have differential effects on participation. Specifically, households with higher levels of risk aversion tend to participate more actively in social transfer programs. These results underscore the importance of households’ risk perceptions in shaping policies related to social transfers and poverty reduction. Programs should incorporate behavioral factors alongside economic indicators to improve efficiency and fairness. This study's validity is limited by the assumption of a constant risk aversion coefficient for all households, as individual risk preferences were not measurable.

Exploring the N-Shaped Nexus between Financial Inclusion and Environmental Management in Nigeria: Evidence from the STIRPAT and DARDL Framework

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study assesses the interplay between digital financial inclusion (DFI) and environmental sustainability (ENV) in Nigeria, considering the role of industrialization (IND), urbanization (URB), and energy consumption (EC). While DFI enhances financial access and green investments, its environmental impact remains uncertain. Extant studies predominately use indirect proxies, ignoring the direct indicators that capture its breadth and depth. Adopting the direct DFI indicators: mobile money accounts per capita (NMM), mobile money transactions (MMT), active digital accounts (ADA), and volume of mobile transactions (VMM). The study investigates whether DFI fosters ENV through renewable energy (REN) adoption or contributes to ENV degradation through increased energy consumption (EC). Using the Dynamic Autoregressive Distributed Lag model within the extended STIRPAT framework. Results confirm an N-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), where inclusive economic growth (IEG) initially degrades ENV (0.362 to 0.843), improves at higher income levels (-0.559 to -0.912) but rebounds again at very high incomes (0.341 to 0.592). IND reduces emissions (-0.518 to -0.682) except for VMM (0.112), indicating the environmental costs of DFI infrastructure. Trade openness (TOP) initially increases emissions (0.230) but lowers them in the long term (-0.536 to -0.741). Foreign direct investment (FDI) reduces emissions (-0.210 to -0.619), while REN initially decreases ENV (0.820) but improves ENV in the long term (-0.901). Error correction terms (-0.833 to -0.922) confirm rapid convergence to equilibrium. Policy recommendations include strengthening green financial regulations, promoting energy-efficient digital infrastructure, balancing TOP with ENV protection, and accelerating clean energy transitions to ensure sustainable IEG.

Political Inertia Leads to Fascism: A Critical Analysis of Israel-Palestine Conflict

Marriyam Siddique, Ehsan Ahmed Khan — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study reconnoitres the deep-rooted nature of Israeli aggression towards Palestinians from the lens of systemic and structural international factors. Since October 2023, over 46,000 Gaza inhabitants have been killed amid ever-increasing violence uncovering a grievous humanitarian crisis comprising widespread disease(s), famine, and the collapse of basic health and social services. The international society regardless of ample evidence of genocide, has failed to act conclusively, manipulated by international power dynamics and ‘false equivalencies’ that abstruse the disproportionate suffering wreaked on Palestinians as compared to ventures taken by Hamas. The study critiques – the inaction of global society and particularly, the systemic and structural provision Israel obtains from international power stakeholders, underpinning how this patronage perpetuates Israel’s aggressive policies towards Palestinians. To examine this patronage relationship, the study employs the concept of ‘political inertia’ of Francis Fukuyama from holistic optics. The research contends that the international society’s failure to address Israel’s genocide - symbolises a suggestive political failure that inherits in ‘systemic-structural’ power dynamics which underpins Israel’s fascist behaviour.

Text and Context in Understanding and Interpreting a State's Preferences through Text-mining of the UN General Assembly Speeches

Fasih Ahmed, Sabahat Khan, Sohail Ahmad — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This research paper explores India's speeches in United Nations General Debate (UNGD) sessions to investigate the nation's priority settings and challenges faced during the last five decades. The study adopted Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a computational linguistics technique to uncover hidden topics in a selected corpus. The data were accessed from the United Nations General Debate Corpus. The research underpins Computational Grounded Theory, which relies on the computational exploration of the text. The results reveal that world peace, nation-building, poverty eradication, economic development, women empowerment, dialogue to resolve issues, and terrorism as the global threat are the main issues and challenges faced by India. Through topic modeling and word clustering, it becomes clear that India wants to eradicate poverty and terrorism through the joint effort of the whole world.

Fostering Sound Skill Development: An Examination of Staff Training Methods as Means of Knowledge Transfer

Hazel Lizzy Ndelu Hazel Lizzy Ndelu, Reward Utete — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Estimating The Socioeconomic Factors Associated With Carbon Emissions at The Household Level For a Sustainable Future In Pakistan. A Case Study of Urban And Peri-Urban Areas of Faisalabad

Muhammad Usman, Professor, Ms., Ms. — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ever-accelerated urbanization and climate change pose significant challenges for sustainability especially in Pakistan. This study examines the social and economic features associated with the emission of CO2 from the household sector in Pakistan. This research concept constructed on the questionnaire and interview-based survey of 280 household respondents from seven major urban and peri-urban areas to estimate carbon emission from residential consumption from Faisalabad city of Pakistan in 2024 through conducting a survey and for carbon metric tons calculation, the web-leading calculator for carbon emission has been used. Carbon emissions in urban areas from the primary sources of household are 0.99 metric tons in urban areas and 0.23 metric tons in peri urban from electricity, Gas, and oil burning, 3.29 and 3.10 from transport carbon emissions respectively in urban and peri-urban areas. Secondary Carbon emission sources contribute 2.520 metric tons in urban areas and 2.02 in other areas. These results indicate that socio-economic features (Income, house size, family size, and electricity bills) are the main contributors as Overall carbon emission is 3.98 metric tons from urban areas and 3.28 in peri urban area that represents 2/3 of carbon emission in the atmosphere, showing the scarcity of low carbon emission policies in the city. These verdicts highlight emission of carbon due to household’s activties poses serious challenges in achieving the SDGs goals for the green economy and society. Formulating custom-made strategies for areas and household usage is compulsory to minimize the issue and accomplish towards sustainable future for Pakistan.

The New Great Game in Central Asia: Pakistan's Interests in the Regional Power Play

Hashmat Ullah Khan, Asif Iqbal Dawar, Yan Wei — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The New Great Game is a power struggle for dominance and geopolitical supremacy in Central Asia, to control energy reserves, establish monopoly over supply routes and capture lucrative high-stakes energy projects. The huge energy reserves of Central Asia have paradoxically become a bone of contention, fostering an uncooperative environment, fuelling political differences, and exacerbating high-stakes power politics, thereby jeopardizing the collaborative relationships among the regional and global stakeholders. The primary objective of this research article is to undertake a comprehensive comparative analysis of the competing interests of Pakistan alongside with those of regional players including China, Russia, and India through examining the intricacies of convergence and divergence of their engagement in the region. The theoretical framework of Geopolitics provides a nuanced lens to contextualize regional dynamics, explain and analyse the patterns of cooperation and competition of different players in Central Asia. This article aims to empower Pakistan’s policymakers and diplomats with a nuanced understanding of the competing interests enabling them to take informed decisions in achieving strategic and political goals.

Spring 2025, volume 19 no.1

fwu-journal — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Spring 2025, volume 19, no.1