Background:Job-related burnout and distress are adverse stress responses which affect individuals in their occupational environment. This study aimed at investigating the effect of a rational-emotive stress management program on job burnout and dysfunctional distress among special education teachers in Nigeria.Methods:A pretest–posttest randomized control group design was used. The participants in the study were 54 special education teachers. Data were collected using self-report questionnaires. Participants were allocated to either the treatment group (n = 28 [59.1%]) or the waitlist control group (n = 26 [48.1%]), respectively. A rational-emotive stress management manual was used to deliver the intervention. We statistically analyzed the data collected at three-time points with repeated-measures analysis of variance.Results:At baseline, the job-related burnout symptoms and distress scores of participants were high. However, an intention-to-treat analysis showed that the rational-emotive stress management intervention program was efficacious in reducing the levels of job-related burnout symptoms and dysfunctional distress among participants assigned to the treatment group, compared to a waitlisted group at post-treatment and follow-up meetings.Conclusion:Our study demonstrates the effectiveness of a rational-emotive stress management intervention in reducing the level of job-related burnout and distress in a sample of special education teachers in Nigeria. Occupational health counsellors and other clinicians with sufficient knowledge of rational-emotive behavior therapy framework are urged to employ this approach in assisting other employees in managing job burnout symptoms, and distress.

The socioeconomic status of a child parent impacts on the educational development and achievement of the child. This study evaluated the effect of socioeconomic status, specifically parents income and parents-child relationship on student's academic performance in Senior High School in Japan. Three hundred students of Senior High Schools in Osaka and Hyogo prefectures of Japan were randomly selected and used as the sample population. A well-structured questionnaire was used as an instrument for data collection to ascertain the effect of parent's income status and attitude on student's academic performance at school using a four point Likert scale methodology. Academics grade point of students in an examination was also used as the determinant of students' academic achievement. Results showed that greater academic achievement for a student is attained by those students from financially buoyant families (Mean ± SD = 2.97 ± 0.88, X 2 = 11.991, P = 0.007), however, 29.7% of students strongly disagree. More than half of respondents (>50%) disagree that financial constraint determines the number of children that goes to school in low income families. Average exam grade (Mean ± SD) points for students from parents with high, medium and low-income status was 77.29 ± 13.1, 77.9 ± 23.3 and 80.79 ± 10.13, respectively (P > 0.05). In conclusion, our finding show parents involvement in children school activities matter most than the parent's financial status in uplifting the children academic performance in school. Our recommendation is that parents should always encourage their children and provide moral support as well for the child to be emotionally stable and have confidence in their academic pursuit to achieve excellence.

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Social media/networks have proven to improve learning and overall students’ progress in their programs when properly used. However, social media have been strongly criticized for its strong negative impacts on students’ performance in their studies. This study, therefore, explored the regulatory policy options to effectively manage students’ use of social media/networks in Nigerian universities. The study used a mixed-method design for the collection of appropriate data to address the objectives. The population of the study include all the undergraduate students in Nigerian universities and seven top administrative staff of the universities who often get involved in policy dialogue, policy crafting and policy implementation. To collect both quantitative and qualitative data, both online and off-line open-ended interviews were conducted for undergraduate students of which 498 valid responses were retrieved. For the seven top university administrative staff, open-ended semi-structured interviews were conducted in their offices during fieldwork for data collection. The validity and trustworthiness of the instruments for quantitative and qualitative data collection respectively were determined by three experts. The reliability of the instrument measured using Cronbach’s alpha is 0.87. The collected qualitative data which had been recorded were transcribed and analyzed using text analysis and frequency query cloud with the help of Atlas.ti. Findings from analyzed data show the major challenges confronting students in the use of social media, abuses of social media, and was also found that there are no existing regulations or policies controlling the use of social media/networks in Nigerian universities. The study recommended the enactment of social media regulatory policies in Nigerian universities.