Introduction. Personal hygiene is essential to the current paradigm shift towards predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine, which enables the prediction and prevention of infectious disease outbreaks. Objective. The aim of this paper was to evaluate the personal hygiene practices among university students aiming at providing a basis for preventive and predictive medical interventions and to make future efforts improve target interventions for young people. Methods. The study was conducted using a cross-sectional study. Validated instruments that related personal hygiene practices were used to obtain quantitative data from 412 tertiary students from seven universities in Accra, Ghana. The resulting data were analyzed with IBM-SPSS, version 23. Results. There were more female respondents (54.4%) in the study than male respondents (45.6%). Respondents between the age group of 19-24 years constituted majority (59.7%) of the respondents in the study. Respondents from urban areas exhibited good hygiene practice compared to those from urban residences. There was a significant association between residence and hygiene practice (χ2=17.8, P≤0.001). We also observed that those respondents within the upper class in society had a poor hygiene practice, compared to the Lower Class and Middle Class respondents. Lack of education (63.1%) was observed as the main barrier to personal hygiene among the respondents. Future of the society depends on the health of its youth. Conclusion. A significant number of students are not actively practicing good hygiene. There is a need for deployment of preventive medicine interventions targeted at young people. It calls for improvement in methods of hygiene education for young people in tertiary institutions and the inclusion of hygiene in school curricula.
CitationGhanaian classroom teachers face consistent challenges asking children to relate classroom interactions with the development of connected thinking in areas such as mathematical proficiency and reading comprehension. Inculcating inference-making ability in children places a cognitive burden on the executive control of the working memory capacity (WMC). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between WMC and executive function, with specific reference to how inhibition as executive control influenced active retrieval and goal maintenance in the context of analogy distraction making. Method: Two hundred and eighty-nine kindergarten and primary school children aged between 3-11 years participated in this study. Subjects were tested on four variables on binary and ternary analogy making with distractions. Results: Even younger children were capable of attending to and making mapping relations. However, they were less likely to overcome misleading object surface similarity and to maintain relational structure especially when an additional level of complexity was imposed. Conclusion: This was attributed to insufficiently develop executive function constraints, especially inhibition, which was identified as the predicting cause of children's difficulty in binary and ternary analogies.
The attention of mathematics educators has been focused on the role self-concept plays in students' achievement for some time now. A great number of studies shows evidence of a relationship between self-concept and mathematics achievement. Some other studies considered gender differences in self-concept and mathematics achievement. This study was designed to extend the discussions on self-concept and mathematics achievement to include the interaction effect of school type and gender on self-concept and mathematics achievement. The study involved 119 students selected from three different types of school within a district. The schools were selected using stratified random sampling whiles the students were conveniently sampled. A self-concept questionnaire and mathematics achievement test were the two instruments used to gather data for the study. The instruments had reliabilities of 0.72 and 0.68 respectively. The result of the study revealed that both gender and school type have a significant effect on students' self-concept and mathematics achievement, however, the effect of school type was found to be greater than that of gender. The study found no significant interaction effect of school type and gender on self-concept and mathematics achievement. The findings of the study were discussed in relation to previous findings. It was recommended that the characteristics of the schools need to be studied in order to determine the school variables that impact mathematics self-concept and achievement.
This study investigated analogical errors made by children aged between 3-4, 5-7 and 9-11 years in analogical reasoning in two administrative regions of Ghana. Analyzing patterns of errors of these children in analogy formation, data in all three age groups, 3-4 years, 5-7 years and 9-11 years suggest children were more likely to make relational errors in analogies that contained more load and distraction than one-relation analogy without distraction-an indication that an additional levels of relational complexity imposes extra mental load making analogical processing more cumbersome for younger children. This finding was interpreted as corroborating what has been established in other studies that the fundamental cause of children's errors in analogy has to do with managing mental load. Children can attend to any analogy provided it is within their knowledge base and working memory capacity and not so much on age per se. Pedagogical implications of working memory resource deficits are drawn for student-centered and constructivist approaches to teaching and learning.
The study investigated senior high school mathematics teachers’ perception and practices of classroom assessment since assessment is considered a critical tool for assessing the achievement of learning objectives in particular and educational goals in general. The study adopted a mixed-methods design. Sixty-two mathematics teachers were sampled from the selected schools to participate in the study. The instrument used in the data collection was a questionnaire. The internal consistency of the instrument designed had a calculated Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of 0.74. The quantitative data gathered were analysed using descriptive statistics. The results from the study revealed that mathematics teachers had a positive perception about classroom assessment as most of them indicated that assessment is a tool to inform teaching and learning. There were, however, few teachers who still had a negative perception about assessment. Their reasons being that assessment had always been a tool for assigning grades and also used to promote students, hence had little benefit to teaching and learning process. The study also showed that the mathematics teachers’ practices of classroom assessment did not match up to the views they held about classroom assessment. Retraining of teachers through seminars and workshops were therefore recommended.
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