Feminist Perspective on Conflict: A Case Study of Kashmir; Post 1989

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‘Her-story’ and not ‘His-story’ is what I have portrayed in this paper.

We have an enormous amount of work done on the feminist perspective of conflict; from essentialist to post modern feminism, we have a plethora of literature dealing with the entire spectrum of the feminist thought, but here, I did not go into those theoretical nuances, rather, I put forward in the simplest form, how Kashmiri woman look at the conflict in their backyard. 1989 was a watershed in the recent history of Kashmir, when people took to streets and youth to arms, against the state, resulting in a violent conflict which affected all the shades of her people.  Generally, the entire narrative is seen from a male eye, and, even if women are included, they are simply used as a tool and a weapon in the larger male narrative. Her sufferings, her struggle and her misery are not hers; rather, they belong to the collective honor of an entire community, fed into an already existing patriarchal outlook of the world. Here in, I have made an attempt to see the conflict from a feminine prism, from the eyes of a woman, not as a miserable cog in a patriarchal wheel of honor, rather, an individual who is complete in herself. In this project I have used both feminist literature as well as the literature available on Kashmir and Kashmiri women. Besides, I have conducted interviews with many women from Kashmir, who have seen the rise of militancy and how it affected their lives.

Effects of Laboratory Learning Environment on Students’ Academic Achievement in Chemistry in Senior Secondary Schools

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Chemistry is often regarded as a difficult subject by the students. Learning environment is the diverse physical locations, contexts and cultures in which students learn. This study looked at the effect of chemistry laboratory learning environment on student Academic Achievement in chemistry. A satisfied random sampling technique was used to select students from the six (6) educational zones in Anambra State. A total of 300 chemistry students from the six (6) educational zones in Anambra State were sampled. Quasi-experimental design was adopted for the study. Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) with reliability coefficient of 0.82 using Kuder Richardon – 21 and Chemistry Laboratory Learning Environment Inventory (CLLEI) with a reliability coefficient of 0.85 using Cronch alpha were used for data gathering Mean, Standard Deviation. t-test was used to analyze the data. The results showed that the chemistry laboratory learning environment has a significant effect on students’ academic achievement in chemistry. An environment has an effect on the academic achievement of the students. Also there is a significant difference between students’ preferred and actual chemistry laboratory learning environments in terms of students’ open-endedness, cohesiveness, material, integration, rule clarity. The results also indicated that there is no significance difference or male and female students in the way they perceived the same laboratory learning environment. It is recommended that students should be given the opportunity to work cooperatively, provided with frequent laboratory activities. Better conducive laboratory learning environment will yield better academic achievement in chemistry.