School of Leadership and Education Sciences

Pakistan has been sporadically facing intimidating challenges since it became a part in the war on terror lead by United States of America. A report by South Asia Portal shows a figure of 55,878 Pakistanis died in various terror attacks from 2003 till 2014. Although, Pakistan has suffered the most rampant fatalities but the recent tragedy of Peshawar school massacre is unbearable to forget. On the very morning of 16th December, this tragedy befell upon children when their Army Public school was stormed by seven militants of TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban) group. To the worst of all, more then 130 students along with the school staff were ridiculously massacred by unceasing bullets in class rooms, auditoriums and corridors. There was no way to escape. The walls once prettified with colors, quotes and pictures turned red with splashing blood. Apparently, as widely reported the attack occurred in response to the ongoing Pakistan’s military operation ‘Zarb e Azab’ (sharp and cutting strike) on the strongholds of Taliban in Northern-west-frontier region. According to the statement issued by ISPR (army’s Public Relation Department) more then 910 militants have been killed since the beginning of this operation. Therefore in order to balance the equation, Taliban commander revealed as Umer Mansoor under supervision of Mullah Fazlullah masterminded the revenge attack in which their main target was to kill children of army personnel.

Radical ideology is the hallmark that ties most of the Arabs with Islamic Sate in an umbilical cord. The research intends to create a precise piece for all beginners who are willing to understand terrorist organizations like Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, their agenda and their actual perpetrators. It can be an eye opener for the disgruntled Muslim youth who fells prey to the ISIS propaganda. Study is done on unbiased bases and so believes to create a change in the traditional narrow-minded thinking of Muslims against each other in a hope that they (Shiites and Sunnis) will learn to end their inner conflicts, overcome the intellectual deficit created by inadequate contextual interpretation of religion and unite together against those who have indulged them in unpardonable strife since decades.

The epoch of modern-day crisis in Yemen contributes a new chapter in the chronicle of Middle Eastern conflicts. Proxy and conventional wars enmeshed in aggressive religious, political, and ethnic fault lines have transmuted the Arabian plate to become the most crisis-ridden region of the world surpassing the general crisis of 17 th century Europe. Impervious to exaggeration, the theory " no matter how bad the situation, it can always become worse " deems fit within the sphere of Middle East. Apparently, religiously inspired ideological revulsion has been the keystone of Arabian conflicts from antiquity. In contemplation of the sectarian nature of Middle East conflict, one can trace back to the focal point from where it all took momentum. The pre-colonial era impacted the start of the unification of Saudi Arabia in 1902 which fortified the Wahabi-Saudi nexus to dominate their extremist version of discriminatory (Takfiri) Islam against liberal Sunnis and Shiites across the region. As in defeating the Empire, colonialists needed anti-Ottoman forces, notwithstanding the proposition of how much hardliner they would become in the coming times. The situation deteriorated when the colonial trained Bedouin tribes aggravated clashes within themselves. The crude pencil lines of Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 not only demarcated the landscape but its people too by fueling the fire between already segregated religious-political entities. However, through the rise of Salafi movements the most rigorous attempt of radicalizing Islamic sentiments came into existence. With the growing radicalization, hatred for rivalry sects heightened up. The Iranian revolution of 1979 resuscitated the sluggish-preconceived threat of Shiite dominancy amongst Wahabi-Salafist regimes. This ultimately brought the whole Middle East under the scourge of sectarianism. With majority Arab states professing Saudi Arab's radical hallmark, incentivized the later to maintain its hierarchal hegemony to the utmost level. Undoubtedly, alliances made either by Saudi Arab or Iran was to maximize ones ideological dominance on another. It is now the Arab spring that galvanizes the decade long Shia-Wahabbi divide with proximity of leading a street fight into a regional war. However, debate isn't to find out the right or wrong between Saudi-Iranian tussle, but to determine which of them is not receptive to peace and stability. Comparatively, Saudi Arab has leapfrogged the ladder of state-sponsored terrorism in the region. It is highly involved in perpetrating the radical outfits along with the support of Gulf States to orchestrate a self-imposed war against its proclaimed enemies particularly Shiites. Continuing its engagement in toppling the pro-Iranian government in Syria, Saudi Arab reallocates towards Yemen. Its hard-hitting approach to curtail Iran-backed Houthi rebels and reinforce the status quo ante widens the intensity of imperishable sectarian diversity. For Saudi Arab, Yemen has been a strategic priority; therefore, an anti-Saudi government is unacceptable even if its airstrikes are counterproductive. In opinion of experts, the Yemeni turmoil unveils how impartial and prejudice standards overcame the decision-making ability of Arabs and their affiliates.

The paper explicitly unfolds the role of US diplomacy in Israel-Palestine issue that has been interconnected with much controversies and questions. Critics of international relations analyze the ongoing debate that whether US mended the fences between two arch-rivals or further
complicated the situation. Until now there are less achievements made in this regard. However, with the changing dynamics at international level and in the aftermath of Arab spring with emerging tensions of cross borders militancy and emerging refugee crisis, once again US has
sought to restart its diplomacy as an interventionist in the conflict. It is evident that despite of bilateral relations, the involvement of US would decide the future of both nations. US can provide it enormous incentives for peace by influencing Israel to halt its atrocities, while through
Arab countries it can persuade Palestine to back off from any act that destroys threatens Israeli security. Indeed there are multiple facts that can be underscored to nourish a true fraternal relation, yet it seems to be an insurmountable task in today’s arena. For those who hope for a
better future, only verbal statements are not enough unless they are interpreted practically. It requires time for dimensions, directions and sentiments to get shape, and for Israel-Palestine rapprochement the beginning is still far away.

It's hard to forget Donovon. He sat in the far right corner of his sixth grade math classroom facing the wall. He was quiet and listened to the teacher's class discussions and lectures, even though he could not actually see her or engage with her. He was deemed too far behind to work with the other kids and was assigned computation problems out of an old fourth-grade textbook. On occasion, I would sit next to him and encourage him work on the problems assigned to his classmates. Like the equation x+3= 7. I gave him a series of simpler problems, talking about all the ways one could arrive at 7 when adding, and I discussed for what seemed to be the entire class period why the letter x was in the problem in the first place. And then the light went on. He realized not only what x meant, but also why it must equal 4. Through mathematics instructional practices centered on student thinking and sense-making versus rule-giving and recall, Donovon was able to understand the equation. Donovon was not missing out on much. Though they worked from a sixth-grade textbook, his classmates often copied long columns of problems from the board solving them with predetermined steps. On this day they were told to subtract 3 from each side of the equation. No explanation was given for why the method worked and students spent the entire class session rotely completing nearly identical problems. We have all heard the arguments that repetition is essential to math success. Yet, only two percent of the sixth-graders at Donovon's school were scoring at or above proficiency on their state math exams. Less than three miles from Donovon's school, Douglass Middle School sat in the middle of a residential community in South East Los Angeles. Each morning when I drove there on the freeway, I could not help but notice that the majority of the cars were going in the opposite direction. As happy as I was to drive on a virtually empty freeway in Los Angeles, I understood that the scarcity of cars moving in my direction signaled something disturbing about the nature of life and opportunities in the Douglass community. On the route between my freeway exit and the school, the men (both young and aged) standing around on sidewalks, wandering the streets, and sometimes stretched out on bus stop benches told the story all too well. Unemployment in this community was among the highest in the nation, and the often resultant ills of poverty, incarceration, and drug abuse had now taken their places. Math class at Douglass left me dreaming for more.

The purpose of the San Diego County SB1095 program is to serve high-risk youth in education, job training, and community service as they transition from the San Diego County Juvenile Hall, Juvenile Ranch Facility, or the Juvenile Correction Center. The present article focuses on the attendance and recidivism indicators, which are both components of the ongoing multimeasure SB1095 program evaluation. The SB1095 evaluation components are conducted at various points during the student's entry, participation, and exit of the program. Evaluation components include measures of each youth's family, school, and community functioning. Program effectiveness will be evaluated based on the improvement the students demonstrate on these indicators. It would be easy to say that children who grow up in low socioeconomic areas, areas of high crime rates, or have a multigenerational delinquent background become delinquents later in life. It is just as easy to say that not every child who comes from a poor family grows up to commit crimes. Further, children who live in areas of high crime rates or have a family background of delinquency may not always be angry and want to retaliate, but rather be motivated by what might hold them back. While the conditions listed above elevate the potential risk of delinquent behavior, there are certainly delinquent youth of high socio-economic status with no family history of delinquency. To be sure, neglect and lack of supervision (both salient factors in the progenesis of delinquent behavior) occur to children irrespective of socio-economic status. It can also be argued with certainty that nearly all cases of delinquency could have been prevented, if the correct steps were taken early in their development to deter the youth from making the wrong choices. The juvenile justice system in the 1960's through the 1970's developed alternative forms of correction such as counseling, restitution programs, and social work, but unfortunately these alternatives became secondary to help prevent youth violent behavior. The services are typically ordered after the crime had been committed and usually after the child is referred to social services, which at this point it is too late since the youth might have developed a violent behavior pattern that is hard to change (Zigler, 1994). The approach in finding the individual youth that have the potential to just snap and act out is like finding a needle in a haystack, where the haystack is a group of at- risk youth and the needle signifies the youth who will actually commit the violent act (Sprague, 2000). Although the cases of juvenile delinquency are of a small percentage of the entire teenage population, their frequency of occurrence still warrants early intervention programs. Delinquency intervention can be defined as stepping in to making changes to better a situation or prevent what is currently happening or might happen. Early intervention is needed to recognize that there are many different ways to fixing a problem, and finding the way that will be a positive response to whatever those methods of change might be. While not all problems are fixable, and it has been claimed that community intervention research does suffer from specific methodological flaws, the most effective intervention programs are those that are frequent and lengthy (Davis & Baker, 1990). Community intervention planning should include development of personal, interpersonal, cognitive, and affective skills to help individuals to become more competent and effective in life (Davis & Baker, 1990). Accurate assessment is critical to identify and track participants in an intervention program. Callahan and Kodzic (2003) discussed the importance of ongoing analysis of educational assessment data in educational programs serving delinquent and at-risk youth for identification of student intervention needs as well as for overall program improvement and evaluation. Of course most will consider the generally accepted notion that past or present delinquent behavior is the best predictor of their future behavior. Sprague (2000) discusses three different models of delinquency assessment. First, assessing the frequency, variety, and intensity of those past or present violent behaviors may be a good method for identifying those at-risk. The second model entails examining psychopathology of clinically diagnosed conditions, which may also help identify those who have the potential for violent behavior. Sprague discusses examples of DSM-IV diagnoses such as antisocial personality disorder, conduct disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder (with associated violent behavior). The last model proposed is perhaps consistent with contemporary social psychological theory and focuses primarily on ecological factors. This model views socio-cultural factors such as poverty, abuse, neglect, lack of parental supervision, as well as the availability of drugs, alcohol, and access to ...

Recent research on Blacks or African-Americans in psychiatric settings suggests that Black-White MMPI differences are minimized or eliminated when researchers match or control for key moderator variables, including psychiatric diagnosis. This study attempted to determine whether Hispanic-White MMPI differences are either minimized or eliminated when Hispanics and Whites are matched on three key moderator variables--age, education, and psychiatric diagnosis. Results suggest that even after controlling for these variables, MMPI differences between Hispanics and Whites are evident. Recommendations for culturally sensitive Hispanic MMPI research are presented.