Scipedia: Collection of Articles on Social Sciences

School Leadership Challenges in Using Media Sites in selected High schools in the Khomas Region

David Nkengbeza — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 10:26:08 +0200

The ability of media sites to quicken uptake into everyday life is affecting the way people interact as they learn, particularly in schools. Social networking sites provide numerous possibilities for richer online instruction, instant message communication, and education-community interaction but also pose difficult problems for school leaders. The paper was guided by the following research question: What challenges do school leaders face when using media websites in selected high schools in the Khomas Region? It also analyzed how school leaders weigh advantages of media websites against difficulties it presents. Lastly, the paper states that school leaderships need to be able to use media websites effectively in senior schools. Five secondary schools were included in this study. The sample included five principals and ten HODs. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews with the five principals, and ten department heads. Data was analyzed using descriptive content analysis. The main findings indicated the difficulties associated with the use of media websites by the school leaders. School leadership misuse media websites by writing negative comments regarding the issues raised in these websites, and others use abusive language towards others when communicating on the media websites and forward non-academic emails to others. Most of the beneficiaries of information uploaded on media platforms by the school leadership lack technological devices upon which they can access the information and messages uploaded. The study also put forward a series of solutions that specifically that it is imperative the fact that all schools ought to be endowed with the required technological infrastructure, including a WI-FI network connection, improved internet connectivity and sufficient technological devices like laptops. Schools need to establish individual social networking accounts where students, teachers, caregivers, and school leadership can converse, exchange resources, and debate education-related matters. The social networking policies that provide easy guidelines for appropriate use, content sharing, and personal data protection need to be formulated and mandatory to implement. These policies also provide school leadership with how they can utilize more effectively media sites to improve their leadership approaches.

The Role of Emotional Intelligence in High School Students' Ethical Decision-Making

Derek Z Qu — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 03:09:06 +0200

Navigating the complex landscape of adolescence in the digital age presents unique challenges, with social media, technological divides, and academic pressures intensifying the already demanding expectations placed on teenagers. This study explores the role of Emotional Intelligence (EI) in ethical decision-making among high school students. Emotional Intelligence, encompassing abilities such as self-awareness, empathy, and emotional regulation, plays a crucial role in understanding and managing emotions, which is essential for ethical reasoning.

A survey was conducted among 68 students from an ethnically and academically diverse suburban high school, assessing their EI levels and ethical decision-making capabilities through a series of dilemmas. The results indicate a significant correlation between higher EI scores and better ethical decision-making abilities. Respondents with higher EI were more adept at navigating moral dilemmas, suggesting that EI serves as a valuable predictor of ethical behavior.

Additionally, a secondary survey compared students' theoretical ethical choices with their anticipated real-life actions, highlighting the influence of peer pressure and social norms on decision-making. The findings underscore the importance of fostering EI skills in educational settings to better equip students for the ethical challenges they will face.

This study contributes to the growing body of literature on the intersection of EI and ethics, emphasizing the need for holistic educational approaches that prioritize emotional and ethical development. Future research should expand to diverse populations and employ longitudinal methods to further elucidate the causal relationships between EI and ethical decision-making.

Dangers of Catcalling: Exploring the Lived Experiences of Women Catcalled in Quezon City

Kyle Patrick De Guzman — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 18:56:04 +0200

Despite being a women's problem for a long time, catcalling has recently attracted lawmakers' attention. In 2019, the Philippine government enacted Republic Act 11313, or the Safe Spaces Act, which prohibits and punishes gender-based sexual harassment. However, despite the existence of the law, catcalling continues to be rampant. This study aims to explore the experiences of women in Quezon City who have been subjected to catcalling and to provide answers regarding the effects of catcalling on the victims, the locations where catcalling is most prevalent, the most common perpetrators, and the victim's views on the Safe Spaces Act. This research uses a qualitative descriptive approach. Purposive sampling was used to select respondents, and respondents were interviewed using an interview guide to gather information. The findings indicate that women are most vulnerable to catcalling in public spaces, and the perpetrators are strangers or bystanders. Victims went through mental, emotional, and behavioral changes after the incident. Moreover, not all victims think that the law effectively addresses the problem because catcalling is still prevalent, and public awareness campaigns are lacking.

Scipedia: Your Digital Publishing Platform for Open Science

Julio García-Espinosa — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 20:04:44 +0200

Some of the most relevant facts that are affecting the scientific publication and its impact are the transformations that have begun to happen in relation to what has been called Open Science. This represents a new approach to the scientific process, which is based on cooperative work and is inevitably linked to Open Access publishing. And although the latter term is linked to immediate and free access to research articles, it has evolved towards a much more complete concept involving the transformation of scientific practice to "share knowledge as soon as possible". The transformation towards Open Science has been assumed by the European Commission, which carrying out different measures in this regard.

But, despite the obvious advantages of Open Access publishing, it will not be an easy task to make search results universally accessible without restriction. This objective faces the inertia of custom practices and a market dominated by a few large publishers.

The idea of developing a platform to answer many of the questions raised about the future of scientific publication is the outcome of many reflections and discussions on the presented scenario.

Scipedia (see http://www.scipedia.com) is essentially a web platform that integrates a digital scientific publishing platform with the concept of social network. Scipedia aims to improve communication between researchers and professionals in science and technology, facilitating the exchange of knowledge and dissemination of their work.

The ambition of this project is to be able to offer free publication services in Open Access to the entire scientific community. To this end, Scipedia integrates tools that allow the publication of journals and the management of their publication cycle, including support for blind and collaborative peer review.

But probably one of the most innovative aspects of this initiative is that it uses wikitext, a standard format for web pages, as a native format of publications. This definitely allows going beyond the paper support and its digital versions (such as the PDF format); the scientific communication can take full advantage of the publication on the Internet. This way, scientific journals and books, conference proceedings and any other document published in Scipedia can integrate text, multimedia information, data files, models, etc. in a natural way.

In addition, Scipedia has an advanced online editor that allows for collaborative work and facilitates self-publishing. The capacity of self-publishing is not a trivial matter, since it virtually reduces production and publication costs to zero, and is basic to fulfilling the project's main ambition: to offer free publishing services for the author and open access without restrictions.

The online editing tool is completed with utilities for importing files in LaTeX and Word formats, and exporting to PDF and ePub.

Another relevant aspect of the initiative is that various strategies have been designed that allow articles to reach the maximum impact. For this, it is not enough to comply with certain standards and procedures that facilitate their indexation in the main search engines and aggregators. Here, the integration of the platform into a social network can play a fundamental role.

Scipedia social network offers the standard tools of this type of platforms, creation of a user profile, creation of a network of contacts, presentation of the register of personal activities and of the contacts, creation and management of groups, etc. The basic information of the profile can be imported and synchronized with the data available in Google Scholar, which provides a first reference of the impact of the scientific activity of the user. This information is enriched with that generated by the personal activity in the network, which is dynamized using gamification techniques. This way, the actions of the user are rewarded and allow to evaluate the activity that generates in the network. In addition, records of visits and ratings of readers of an article are kept, which together with more traditional techniques such as citation counting, allows you to evaluate the impact of any document. In addition, each published document has a discussion page attached, and a history of all its revisions is maintained, even beyond the date of its publication.

Scipedia.com: Your Open Science Digital Publisher

Julio García-Espinosa — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 09:49:01 +0200

The idea of developing a platform to answer many of the questions raised about the future of scientific publication is the outcome of many reflections and discussions on the presented scenario.

The online editing tool is completed with utilities for importing files in LaTeX and Word formats, and exporting to PDF and ePub.