Purpose This study aims to investigate students’ perceptions regarding the causes and effects of cyberbullying among university students. The study also establishes whether or not there would be statistically significant differences among cyberbullying victims, perpetrators, victim-perpetrators and bystanders in their thoughts on the causes and effects of cyberbullying on students’ social lives from a developing country perspective. Design/methodology/approach This study uses quantitative approach and cross-sectional survey design to collect primary data from 1,374 undergraduate students sampled from selected public universities in Ghana. Descriptive statistics and analysis of variance analyses were carried out using statistical package for the social sciences. Findings The study reports popularity among friends, extortion, retaliation, stress, trauma and low self-esteem as causes of cyberbullying. Also, cyberbullying resulted in difficulty trusting people, low self-esteem and increased stress. The study also found statistically significant differences among cyberbullying victims, perpetrators, victim-perpetrators and bystanders in their thoughts on the causes and effects of cyberbullying on students’ social lives. Practical implications The study’s findings imply that cyberbullying has some fairly significant negative effects on students’ lives in Ghana and must be taken more seriously. Conditions must be created to ensure that perpetrators and victims are given the support needed to curb this menace. Detailed remediating measures are provided in the study. Originality/value This paper contributes to the existing literature by studying cyberbullying perceptions among students from a relatively bully-tolerant culture.

In Ghana, student unionism has become integral to the leadership culture. Over time, this has witnessed successive national leaders emerging from the wings of student governance. Our study investigates the preferred leadership styles of students in Ghana. The study adopted a quantitative methodology. The population for the study consists of member-students of the Students Representative Council (SRC) of the University of Professional Studies-Accra. The sample comprised students offering various courses from levels 100–400. Ninety-five (95) students were selected using a simple random sampling technique for the study. Anchored on the contingency leadership theory, we found that students preferred to be led through a democratic leadership style (M = 3.52, SD = 0.45) than laissez-faire (M = 3.51, SD = 0.42) and autocratic styles (M = 2.3, SD = 0.72). We also found that senior students prefer autocratic leadership styles. We conclude that students’ preference for a democratic leadership style stems from the need to create a participatory environment. This gives followers a sense of ownership of the decision-making process. We also conclude that as students’ academic responsibilities increase, they may prefer autocratic leadership styles as it ensures that their needs are met quickly.

This study aims to determine the effectiveness of the Culturo-Techno-Contextual Ap- proach (CTCA) on students’ achievement and critical thinking skills in Computer Studies. The study was conducted in two phases. Phase one was a survey of difficult concepts in computer science/studies. While phase two explored the potency of the Culturo-Techno-Contextual Approach (CTCA) in breaking the barriers to meaningful learning of refractive indices. Results obtained from the survey in the first phase revealed 19 topics as a difficult topic among African secondary school students in computer studies. The second phase was guided by two research questions with two public junior secondary (JS) in Lagos State (Nigeria). About 38% of the respondents were males while about 62% were females. A critical thinking skills task (CTST), and an interview guide were used to collect data for the study. The data gathered was subjected to multivariate analysis of covariate (MANCOVA), and the results revealed a statistically significant difference in the methods used, multivariate F (Pillai’s Trace) was significant [F=17.67; p<.05], univariate ANOVA on achievement [F (2, 208) = 20.67; p<0.05]; and critical thinking skills [F (2, 208) = 15.14; p<0.05]. Within the scope of the study, it was tentatively recommended that CTCA should be adopted by computer studies teachers in the teaching of computer science/studies in secondary schools.