Browsing by Author "Khamsiah Ismail, Ph.D"

The purpose of the current study was to explore the personal and environment factors that influence career maturity of senior secondary students from low-income family environment. The main objective of the study was to determine whether personal factors including age, gender, self-concept, and environment factors such as socio-economic status, parental support and parents` level of education would significantly predict career maturity of senior secondary students from low-income environment. Furthermore, the study also examined the mediating role of career self-efficacy (CDMSEF) between parental support, self-concept and career maturity. Attaining Career Maturity is very vital for secondary school students because career choice made at this stage can have ever-lasting impact on an individual’s life. The study used quantitative survey method and collected data using survey questionnaires. The population for this study was all senior secondary students (form three and four) from Wajir County, Kenya. Simple random sampling was used to select respondents. A total of 525 senior students from five secondary schools completed the survey. The major analytical tools and procedure used were Multiple Regression Analysis and full-fledge SEM modeling. MRA analyses indicates father`s education level of the environmental factors accounting for significance variance of career maturity. Furthermore, all measurement models reported adequate goodness of fit. The Full-fledge SEM analysis on the proposed model reported fair fit indices with self-concept predicting strongly career maturity. Findings indicate mediating role of career self-efficacy. The study indicates that students’ career prospect and their knowledge about different occupations was minimal.

This qualitative study explored the experience and role of counsellors in handling premarital pregnancy cases among Malay girls in Klang Valley Area. Seven counsellors and four young unwed mothers have been interviewed in this study. Data have been triangulated from interviews, observations and field notes. The findings indicate that counsellors have a significant role in helping young mothers struggling with issues in their life. They are too young and need guidance from their parents and other individuals, where each individual in society can play his/her role as a responsible citizen to create an awareness of healthy sexual knowledge. A comprehensive education and religious approaches should be implemented in the school syllabus and also being guided by parents at home. Sexuality has been seen as a taboo subject which is unfortunately an important aspect for children to understand with respect for their self-knowledge and empowerment. Counsellors who are reported to have used conventional techniques, theories and therapies in their counselling session combined with the Islamic approach has demonstrated to have a positive impact on the young unwed mothers’ knowledge of sexuality, self-conduct and self-healing. Most participants agreed that the use of the REBT and the Islamic approach, based on Al-Quran and Sunah combined with the counsellors’ unconditional acceptance towards the clients have opened up more room for focusing on emotional condition and healing. The young unwed mothers reportedly made good progress after the counselling sessions with a combination of conventional techniques and Islamic approach. The findings are limited to certain themes which can be explored further for academic and theoretical purposes by other counsellors, policymakers and educators as well as NGO’s in helping this vulnerable group of young people who are part of our next generation.

Emotional intelligence abilities of university teachers are more likely to establish conducive emotional teaching and learning environments through their teaching practices, thus promote students’ learning motivation and engagement. Despite the emphasis on the importance of teachers’ emotional intelligence abilities in teaching, it continues to be under acknowledged and under developed. This is evidenced by few studies reported on the relationship between emotions and teaching approaches in higher education. This study therefore attempts to explore the roles of emotion and integration of emotional intelligence in teaching practices among university teachers in higher learning, guided by the Four-Branch Emotional Intelligence Ability Model of Mayer, Salovey and Caruso (2004). A descriptive case study was applied with a total of ten university teachers recruited based on inclusion criteria and semi structuredly interviewed. As case study requires multiple data sources, interviews were subsequently conducted with five university students and a Deputy Vice Chancellor. In addition, scores from Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS) of the university teachers were obtained and tabulated. The findings established an emergence of eleven themes and nine subthemes based on the interviews conducted with university teachers. The themes corresponded to the emotional intelligence abilities of perceiving, facilitating, understanding and managing emotion based on the Four Branch-Emotional Intelligence Ability Model. These were further triangulated with university teachers’ scores of the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale, which were found to achieve a median of 5 and above, based on a seven Likert scale on four major domains namely self-emotional appraisal, emotional appraisal of others, use of emotion and regulation of emotion. The study demonstrated the importance of developing emotional intelligence abilities as it directly influences teaching and learning processes. As a matter of fact, the abilities are subconsciously embedded and demonstrated through teaching practices. Having observed a considerable amount of emotional intelligence skills integrated in teaching practices and its equal impact on students, training on emotional intelligence needs to be developed. Perhaps it could be included as one of the competencies required for university teachers.

The present study was conducted with several objectives; to construct-validate the measurement model of marital satisfaction, to estimate the causal relations between negative affectivity, marital stress, religious coping and marital satisfaction in the postulated model and to explore the likelihood of moderation effect of gender as well as length of marriage in the model. A total of 585 dual-earner married Muslims in Selangor, Malaysia (293 females and 292 males) were drawn from a stratified sample randomly. A set of questionnaires were developed to collect data; the first part covered the demographic information of the respondents and the remaining consisted of questionnaires with 33 items, rated on 7-Likert type categories, adapted from four established scales which have been validated and used in previous studies. The instrument went through extant literature and content validation process which involved 15 experts in the areas of marriage and family counselling as well as scale development. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Principal Axis Factoring (PAF), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) procedures. The results indicated that the research instrument was reliable and psychometrically sound. It also confirmed the unidimensional structure of each constructs of interest and the adequacy of the model. The study found that religious coping and marital stress influenced the marital satisfaction of dual-earner Muslims. However, negative affectivity was not found to exhibit statistically significant relationship with marital satisfaction. The results also showed that religious coping mediated the relationship between negative affectivity and marital satisfaction. Although marital stress was found to exhibit a statistically significant effect on marital satisfaction, their relationship was neither significant nor important through the mediation path of religious coping. Finally, the test of moderation revealed that gender did not moderate the path coefficient between religious coping and marital satisfaction among dual-earner Muslims, while length of marriage was significant in moderating this relationship. The study has validated the marital satisfaction model of Muslim dual-earner marriages and offered new insights on the interrelationships between the studied variables, in light of the current challenges faced by married dual-earner Muslims living in the modern world. Last but not least, theoretical and practical implications of these findings and recommendations for authority bodies, pre and post marital education as well as helping professionals were discussed.

The number of international students in Malaysia has increased significantly today. Being away from their home country had exposed them to various challenges which lead to sense of belonging issue. The main purpose of this qualitative research is to understand sense of belonging towards the college for international students in a private Islamic College in Kuala Lumpur. The study also aim to explore i) international students definition on sense of belonging towards the college; ii) international students’ experiences in relation to sense of belonging towards the college; iii) coping strategies employed by international students to deal with the challenging experiences in a new environment; iv) the roles of sense of belonging in enhancing students’ performance and v) international students’ suggestions to enhance or develop sense of belonging towards their college. Twelve international students from various countries such as from Nigeria, Bangladesh, The Philippines, Maldives, China, Egypt, Iran, Tunisia and Ghana were involved in this study. All of the participants were interviewed using semi structured interview protocol. The interviews took place at different times and settings. Thematic analysis was used to interpret the data. The findings of this study showed that the participants define sense of belonging as being relationally valued and accepted, committed, comfortable, sociable and respected. The themes for international students’ experiences are classified to good experiences and challenges. The themes for good experiences are having good relationship with college community, knowledge imbibed with Islamic value experience, opportunity to study and working experience, dealing with calm Malaysians and having family members in Malaysia. While their challenges are language barriers, relationship and communication issue, racism and discrimination, college management system, pedagogical styles, financial struggle, food, family, being scammed by an agent, Malaysian government regulation and weather issue. In dealing with various challenges they adopted active coping strategies as well as avoidant coping strategies. Four themes were generated for research questions number four which are commitment, no effect, understanding and group work. Finally the participants voiced out suggestions to college management, international students, lecturers, local students, college community and Malaysians in general in order to help international students to enhance their sense of belonging.