Search results

The purpose of this exploratory case study was to investigate the role of School Leaders (SLs) in building Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in schools, as well as to expand a literature-driven PLC model within the Pakistani context.

The study involved the purposive selection of two schools affiliated with a university. The sample comprised one school leader, one academic coordinator and five teachers from each school, altogether 14 participants. The participants shared similar demographic characteristics. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data, which were analysed thematically.

The findings of the study revealed that both schools have created PLCs to some extent and that school goals and culture were contributing factors in building these communities. Additionally, the SLs played a key role in promoting PLCs by encouraging teacher collaboration. The study concludes that SLs have the potential to strategize their actions to foster positive professional relations among teachers and ensure their well-being.

The study contributes to the literature on professional communities in Pakistan by validating a literature-driven PLC model. The model emphasizes collaboration among teachers, which can be facilitated by SLs. As such, the study implicates SLs in prioritizing the professional development of teachers to enhance student learning and achieve school success.

This study is unique in expanding a literature-driven PLC model within the Pakistani context, with a focus on teacher collaboration as facilitated by SLs. The model has the potential for replication in other contexts and can serve as a useful tool for future research.

This proposed research study aims to focus on the development and implementation of a new safety and health educational management information system (hazard-free production operation [HAZ-PRO]) based on effective hazards controlling factors and mitigating measures for safe onshore and offshore oil and gas drilling operation in Saudi Arabian, Malaysian and Pakistani industries. According to previous studies, there is a sheer industrial need of an effective management information system for decision-making to prevent life-threatening accidents at oil and gas production sites based on innovative hazard controlling strategies from different production origins. Similarly, that safety and health management information system will also enhance the decision-making skills of oil and gas production crew through effective accident prevention strategies.

In this study, 100 drilling crew are randomly selected for quantitative research phase. Similarly, 3 safety experts are purposively selected for qualitative research from each drilling domain from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Pakistan, whereas for the identification of hazard controlling measures, what-if analysis and thematic analysis approaches are adopted. Furthermore, the educational management information system (HAZ-PRO) for safety and health has been developed by using ADDIE Model based. Whereas, Visual Studio (2017) and MySQL software are used for the database and user interface development of the safety and health management information system for the safety and health of production crew.

This study proposes the research framework for the development and implementation of a new safety and health educational management information system (HAZ-PRO) based on identified effective hazard controls and mitigating measures in support of accident prevention and effective decision-making in hazardous events at Saudi Arabian and Pakistani onshore and offshore production domains. Whereas, this proposed safety and health management information system will assist and facilitate the safety professionals and production crew to prevent the injuries in hazardous work environments of onshore and offshore oil and gas industries according to international safety standards.

This safety and health management information system can be utilized by oil and gas industries (oil and gas production crew) in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Pakistan for accident prevention and suitable decision-making prior to the actual onshore and offshore operations. Also, the proposed system development framework will be useful as an effective source for the elimination of life-threatening drilling hazards associated with its activities in oil and gas industries. Similarly, the proposed framework can also be implemented in other oil and gas work-based accident prevention and effective decision-making designs.

This proposed safety and health management information system will be the first system for oil and gas production operation that covers all onshore and offshore operations for Saudi Arabian, Malaysian and Pakistani oil and gas industrial settings. Also, the system development methodology and design framework, which will be used, is novel and unique based on their characteristics and functionalities.

Annually, hundreds of drilling crew suffer from major injuries during performing oil and gas drilling operation because of the deficiency of an adequate hazard safety management system for real-time decision-making in hazardous conditions. According to previous studies, there is a sheer industrial need for an effective industrial safety management decision support system for accident prevention at oil and gas drilling sites at both drilling domains. Therefore, this paper aims to focus on the design and development of knowledge base decision support system (KBDSS) for the prevention of hazardous activities at Middle Eastern and South Asian origins’ onshore and offshore oil and gas industries during drilling operations.

In this study, data were gathered from safety and health professionals from targeted oil and gas industries in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan through quantitative and qualitative approaches. Based on identified data, KBDSSs (HAZFO Expert 1.0) were systematically developed and designed by adopting Database Development Life Cycle and Waterfall Software Development Life Cycle models. MySQL and Visual Studio 2015 software were used for developing and designing knowledge base and graphical user interface of the system.

KBDSS (HAZFO Expert 1.0) for accident prevention at onshore and offshore oil and gas drilling industries based on identified potential hazards and their suitable controlling measures aligned with international safety standards and regulations. HAZFO Expert 1.0 is a novel KBDSS that covers all onshore and offshore drilling operations with three and nine outputs, respectively, to achieve the current trend of Industry Revolution 4.0 and Industrial IoTs for workforce safety.

This industrial safety management system (HAZFO Expert 1.0) will be efficiently used for the identification and elimination of potential hazards associated with drilling activities at onshore and offshore drilling sites with an appropriate hazard controlling strategy.

Moreover, the developed KBDS system is unique in terms of its architecture and is dynamic in nature because it provides HAZFO Expert 1.0 data management and insertion application for authorized users. This is the first KBDSS which covers both drilling domains in Malaysian, Saudi Arabian and Pakistani industries.

Every year, hundreds of people have died and thousands have been injured because of insufficient management of well control at oil and gas drilling and production sites. Major causes which have been reported in previous studies included uncontrollable blowouts and failure of blowout preventers because of insufficient safety practices. These onshore and offshore blowout disasters not only harm the work force but also critically affect the environment and marine life. In this research paper, a detailed quantitative survey and qualitative risk assessments (RA) have been carried out for assessing the potentially hazardous activities associated with well control along with their appropriate controls and risk reduction factors and mitigating measures in Middle East and south East Asian countries.

The sequential explanatory research design has been adopted in this study. Whereas, descriptive statistical approach has been used for the quantitative data analysis of this study. While, in-depth interview approach has been used for qualitative data collection. Similarly, what-if analysis method has been adopted in this study for the identification of effective safety and health risk mitigating factors because it provides in-depth information from health and safety environment experts.

The cumulative quantitative results based on the response from Saudi Arabian drilling industry have indicated that the well control operation is highly hazardous then Malaysian and Pakistani oil and gas industries. Likewise, findings from what-if analysis approach demonstrate that the drilling crewmembers have repetitively faced life threatening hazards which occur (safety and chemical) during well control onshore and offshore operation because of oil base mud, confined space at site, pinch points and falling during working on blow out preventers. According to the overall result, respondents have highly recommended engineering and administrative hazard controlling factors as most suitable for the elimination of safety and chemical hazards during well control activities.

Besides, the developed methodological framework for the identification of suitable hazard controls can also be effectively used for potential hazards reorganization and identification of suitable hazard controls for other drilling and production industries and regions for accident prevention and safety and health management.

This is a first comparative research study which has been carried out in Malaysian, Saudi Arabian and Pakistani onshore and offshore oil and gas industries for well control health and safety management and reorganization of most effective hazards mitigating factors at drilling sites.

Drawing on knowledge-based view, social exchange theory and leader-member exchange, this study examines how exploitative leadership (EL) influences knowledge management (KM), its processes, and further investigates the moderating role of organisational citizenship behaviours (OCB) on the relationship between EL and KM.

Using a quantitative approach, survey data were collected from 356 faculty members in Iraqi public universities, and the direct and moderating relationships were assessed through Hierarchical regression by PROCESS v.3.3 macros in SPSS.

The study found a significant negative impact of EL on KM, including its processes, especially on knowledge utilisation. The assessment also revealed that OCB has a significant moderating impact on EL, particularly its effect on knowledge creation.

The empirical insights of the study are valuable and precious for policymakers, managers and academics in education sectors of developing countries, to enrich their managerial and scientific performance through addressing EL behaviours while considering the moderating effect of OCB.

The relevance of the study stems from the scarcity of research on EL, while studies on the negative behaviours of leaders as a predictor of KM process failures are significantly limited. Additionally, studies on the moderating impact of OCB on the linkage between EL and KM processes remain limited. This study is one of the earliest studies that investigate these inter-relationships amongst EL, OCB and KM processes.

Oil and gas industries play a major role for the growth of world economy, and drilling operation is considered as most important and hazardous procedure at the same time for oil and gas drilling crew because of the lack of effectual and user-friendly safety and health teaching and learning aids with updated knowledge and training capability. According to the previous studies, there is an urgent industrial need for user interactive technological aid for enhancing the teaching and learning of oil and gas drilling crew and safety officials at onshore and offshore drilling domains to fulfill the requirements of fourth industrial and educational revolutions. Therefore, this proposed virtual reality (VR)-based Hazard Free Operation (HAZFO Expert 2.0) teaching and learning aid to reduce the workplace risk and hazards to enhance the vestibule and experiential learning performance of oil and gas drilling process at Pakistani drilling industries.

In this proposed product based study for interactive teaching and learning application for industry, sequential explanatory research design will be adopted to prevent the accidents according to the modern technologies in this era of IR 4.0. Whereas, for the development of VR-based educational aid for Pakistani oil and gas industries, Autodesk 3ds Max, visual studio and MySQL software’s will be used.

This new concept of VR-based interactive educational aid (HAZFO Expert 2.0) for accident prevention at oil and gas drilling industries will be based on potential hazards and their suitable controlling measures for onshore and offshore drilling sites.

VR-based interactive educational aid for oil and gas workforce will facilitate the health and safety professionals for the elimination of potential hazards associated with oil and gas drilling activities to the next level of identification of hazards which has been identified in HAZFO Expert 1.0 at onshore and offshore drilling sites.

This proposed VR-based interactive educational aid for safe drilling process will be the first visual teaching and e-learning technology which covers all onshore and offshore drilling operations in Pakistani oil and gas industries and provides effective hazard controlling strategies to overcome challenging industrial hazards.

The purpose of the study is to classify the radiographic images into three categories such as fillings, cavity and implant to identify dental diseases because dental disease is a very common dental health problem for all people. The detection of dental issues and the selection of the most suitable method of treatment are both determined by the results of a radiological examination. Dental x-rays provide important information about the insides of teeth and their surrounding cells, which helps dentists detect dental issues that are not immediately visible. The analysis of dental x-rays, which is typically done by dentists, is a time-consuming process that can become an error-prone technique due to the wide variations in the structure of teeth and the dentist's lack of expertise. The workload of a dental professional and the chance of misinterpretation can be decreased by the availability of such a system, which can interpret the result of an x-ray automatically.

This study uses deep learning (DL) models to identify dental diseases in order to tackle this issue. Four different DL models, such as ResNet-101, Xception, DenseNet-201 and EfficientNet-B0, were evaluated in order to determine which one would be the most useful for the detection of dental diseases (such as fillings, cavity and implant).

Loss and accuracy curves have been used to analyze the model. However, the EfficientNet-B0 model performed better compared to Xception, DenseNet-201 and ResNet-101. The accuracy, recall, F1-score and AUC values for this model were 98.91, 98.91, 98.74 and 99.98%, respectively. The accuracy rates for the Xception, ResNet-101 and DenseNet-201 are 96.74, 93.48 and 95.65%, respectively.

The present study can benefit dentists from using the DL model to more accurately diagnose dental problems.

This study is conducted to evaluate dental diseases using Convolutional neural network (CNN) techniques to assist dentists in selecting the most effective technique for a particular clinical condition.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the impact of Introduction of Smart Teaching and Learning (INSTAL) project on students' academic achievements in terms of students' science scores. Information and communication technologies (ICT)-based initiative was introduced in Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) schools at District Khairpur, Sindh, Pakistan. The aim of the study was to identify whether science test scores of students have been improved with the use of INSTAL facility at schools or remained the same at SEF-supported schools.

The quantitative research approach has been used in the current study, and within it a quasi-experimental research design was employed. The descriptive (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (independent sample t-test and paired sample t-test) were computed to find the pre- and post-difference in science scores of students. Both primary and secondary data were used. The primary data were gathered through questionnaire from 48 science teachers. Whereas, secondary data of 382 students who used ICT-based facility under INSATL project for two academic years were taken from quality assessment test (QAT) scores conducted by third party in SEF-assisted schools in District Khairpur.

The findings of the study revealed that the students' science scores improved by 10% in one year and 23% in two years with the use of ICT-based facilities under INSTAL project. Also, it can be concluded from the results that ICT has a positive as well as statistically significant impact on students' science learning by using INSTAL facility in schools. Results of the study show that students' level of interest toward learning science has been enhanced by the use of ICT.

As the world is rapidly moving toward digitalization, the modes of teaching and learning have been changing. ICT plays a very significant role in the betterment of education. ICT helps to achieve socio-economic development of a country. However, Pakistan, being a developing country, has not that much resources, and ICT-based learning is not common in Pakistan. Therefore, it is very important to be aware people about the usage of technology in teaching and learning. The present study is an attempt to create such type of awareness. Moreover, the current study may be the first kind of study in the context of Pakistan which used TPACK as theoretical framework, and this study may contribute to the body of knowledge in the context of ICT.

Implementing ICT-based software for teaching and learning in rural context of Pakistan was a challenging task, but it has brought positive results in terms of student's achievement. This may be the first study that has been conducted in the context of adopted schools of SEF.

The purpose of the current study is to explore the influence of knowledge management (KM) in education management organizations (EMOs) Schools of Pakistan. Knowledge plays a pivotal role in the development of an organization due to sharing and managing of knowledge within an organization. In an era of competitiveness, KM has become a significant factor for the sustainable development of educational organizations. Knowledge and KM has become a key element in various fields of knowledge including health, technologies, engineering, social sciences, natural science, business and education. Organizations can adopt KM to improve effectiveness and gain advantage over other organizations. Also, it helps them to make well calculated decisions for the benefit of the organization. KM leads to increase in efficacy, more work, better performance, enhancing staff’s competency through quality decisions.

The research study is descriptive type research by nature, and a qualitative approach was adopted for gathering data and within it the desk review was conducted. The data was analyzed through content analysis techniques. The secondary data was collected in this study. Therefore, the unit of analysis includes the government documents, published research articles and international agencies reports, journal articles, websites, e-books and internet resources, conference papers, case studies and the statistics available on KM in development of organizations in educational settings.

The findings of the study show that through KM the EMOs school can perform better and give outstanding results in terms of student’s achievements. Further, organizations can develop a system which helps them to take timely decisions for enhancing the image of school among all stakeholders including parents, community, teachers and society.

The present study can benefit educational organizations, stakeholders, policymakers, provincial and federal governments and society. This will contribute to the new body of knowledge in the domain of education for knowledge creation and sharing.

This study is conducted in the context of EMOs schools. So, this may be the first research study in this area. In this connection, the study has originality in the context of KM in educational organization in Pakistan.

This study aims to examine the relationship between the different aspects of transformational leadership behaviours of school principals on school culture in the context of Pakistan. The findings from this study can provide an opportunity to understand the relationship between transformational leadership and school culture factors and the way these factors influence the school culture.

The quantitative research approach has been adopted to assess teachers’ perceptions of transformational leadership behaviours at government secondary schools of District Khairpur, Pakistan. The targeted sample size of this study was 300 teachers from five government secondary schools of district Khairpur. Data has been collected by using two survey instruments to assess the degree of transformational leadership style adopted by school principals as perceived by teachers to measure the effectiveness of school culture, whereas descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential (Pearson correlation coefficient) statistical tests have been used through SPSS 23.0 software.

The findings revealed that there is a moderate positive relationship between transformational leadership behaviours and school culture whilst the Pearson correlation coefficient was (r = 0.624), which indicates that it is statistically significant. The demographic data explored that serving teachers were trained and highly qualified in such schools.

The study contributes to explain the transformational leadership practices in the context of secondary schools of Pakistan for a better understanding of educational organization culture. This study also contributes to the field of educational leadership by highlighting the organization culture through the perceptions of teachers. The Education and Literacy Department, policymakers, educational leaders and schoolteachers may be benefited from the findings of the current study for a better understanding of school culture in secondary schools. This study has also laid the foundation for future research studies in leadership practices in Pakistan and internationally.

Finally, this study contributed to the leadership literature in the context of Pakistan because there are very few studies that have examined the impact of transformational leadership behaviours in education organizations. In addition, this study suggests that the school principals should revisit their school vision and involve teachers in vision formation.