ESUT JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Social Conflict and Safety in Urban Areas

Ngozi Asadu — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 13:08:01 +0000

This article examines social conflict and safety in urban areas. Cities are productive systems through which most 21st-century challenges, such as poverty, inequality, unemployment, environmental degradation, and climate change, can be addressed. Cities are habitats for people, and urban design with nature at the centre. It is essential to resilience, sustainability, liveability, and justice. The nature of cities is perceived as ecosystems of people, green and blue nature, and biodiversity based on built infrastructure. Social conflict is the struggle for agency or power in society. Social conflict occurs when two or more people oppose each other in social interaction; each exerts social power with reciprocity to achieve incompatible goals whilst preventing the other from attaining their own. Conflict theory was adopted for this article. As conflict is an inevitable aspect of development and change in urban settings, cities are inherently sites of conflict. Still, as concluded in this paper, they can be generally managed through social, cultural, and political mechanisms.

Social media and academic performance of secondary school students in Enugu East Local Government Area, Enugu State, Nigeria.

Hyacinth N. Aniagolu — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 13:10:55 +0000

Social media has become the world’s fastest means of communication. It provides a variety of information to consumers such that hardly a day passes without recourse to social media by both the young and the old alike. However, the uncontrolled use of social media by young people in secondary school seems to have a devastating effect on their academics. This study therefore investigated the use of social media and its implication on the academic performance of secondary school students in Enugu East Local Government Area. The study was guided by three research questions and the corresponding research objectives. It was a cross-sectional survey. The population of the study was 13605 from which a sample size of 400 students was generated using the Taro Yameni formula for sample size determination. Data was analysed using mean. It was found that the use of social media affects the class participation of government secondary school students in Enugu East Local Government Area. It was equally found that the use of social media affects the study habits of government secondary school students. It was also found that the use of social media affects the behavioural patterns of government secondary school students. It was recommended that schools place an outright ban on the use of gadgets that distract students while in school, particularly those in secondary schools. Again, the Government should be stricter on the laws prohibiting the underaged from having subscriber identification modules (SIM cards) and or e-mail addresses. More so, teachers should be very watchful of the students while in the class to identify students using cell phones. This would reduce the problems of distractions that emanate from the use of social media.

Influence of Corporal Punishment on English Language Students in Enugu Education Zone

Hyacinth N. Aniagolu — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 13:11:15 +0000

There seems to be a belief that ‘if one spares the rod, a child gets spoilt’. This notion seems to negate effective learning. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the influence of corporal punishment on secondary school students in the English language in the Enugu Education Zone. Three purposes of the study and the corresponding research questions guided the study. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey design. Education Zone has 36 public secondary schools and a student population of 56,620. Out of this number, a sample size 397 was drawn using the Yaro Yamane formula for sample size determination. The instrument used for the collection of data was a questionnaire designed on a Likert scale of strongly agree (SA), agree (A), disagree (D), and strongly disagree (SD). The instrument was validated by lecturers from Enugu State College of Education (Technical), Enugu. The test-retest method was adopted for the reliability test. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient was the statistical tool for the computation. The result was 0.796, showing a positive correlation. The mean was used as a tool for data analysis. The decision rule is that it is accepted when the calculated mean in each cluster is 2.50 and above. The reverse prevails when the calculated mean is less than 2.50. Corporal punishment affects class participation in the English language in secondary schools in Enugu Educational Zone. Again, the government should organise workshops on alternative forms of corporal punishment. This is very expedient because there seems to be this inherent notion in Africa and perhaps other climes that if one ‘spares the rod, the child will be spoilt.’

Review of Teaching Staff Manpower Retention and Stock in Secondary Schools

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 10:19:48 +0000

For some decades, scholarly debate on manpower related issues have dominated discussions on the standard of education. This paper tried to match manpower retention and attrition with the philosophy of public secondary education in Ebonyi north senatorial zone of Ebonyi state, Nigeria. We x-rayed the manpower capacity of public secondary schools with the view to finding if the current stock would achieve the philosophy of secondary education as contained in the approved National Policy on Education in Nigeria. Specifically, our emphasis was on the manpower qualification, sufficiency, sex mix and subject specialty. Using the multi-stage sampling techniques, the study revealed significant cases of unqualified teachers in the zone, cases of insufficiency of teachers in some schools; lopsided deployment of teachers and imbalanced sex mix amongst others. Study implications in these schools were evidenced on the performances of students in external examinations and the prevailing decline in the standard of education in the zone.