Gifted and talented children are those who are identified by professionally qualified persons who by virtue of outstanding abilities are capable of high performance. These are children who require differentiated educational programs and services beyond those that are normally provided by the regular school program in order to realize their contribution to self and society (Marland, 1972). A gifted child in the regular classroom may be the only child in the room; hence, he or she will not have the opportunity to learn with others of like ability. ICT can provide opportunities for students to develop and practice higher level thinking skills. The gifted students are spread around the world and ICT makes it possible that gifted students communicate with other gifted students all around the world. ICT can be used to acquire that type of knowledge which can satisfy the needs of the gifted children. So, the purpose of this paper is to determine the use of technology in education for the learning of gifted and talented students.

‘Empowering women’ has become a buzzword in our socioeconomic parlor. Several initiatives in line with empowering and emboldening women have been on the roll. Provision of education in general and higher education in particular has been seen as a potent tool in mainstreaming women everywhere. India is not an exception in this regard. Among the Indian States, Kerala has exhibited a unique model based on education and health. Despite the bold attempt of the State in mainstreaming women through Democratic Decentralisation and provision of higher education, the fact remains that women in Kerala are not proportionately represented in the decision making bodies of Universities like Senate, Syndicate, Academic Councils, Board of Studies and so on. As regards women representation in responsible positions like Registrars, Pro-Vice Chancellors, Vice Chancellors, Faculty Deans etc., their presence is conspicuous by their absence. For example, out of the 12 Universities in Kerala, we have only one women Vice-Chancellor and a ProVice Chancellor. This is the case with other dignified positions in the field of higher education. The paper underlines the need for enhanced women participation in decision making bodies of higher education like Universities for their empowerment.

Today, education faces the rising challenges of standardized testing, strained budgets, teacher retention, and global workforce competition. Businesses have begun to take a more targeted approach in their corporate social responsibility programs and are seeking to impact areas that have a correlation with their own business goals. For many businesses, education is an important part of their plans, since the needs exist in all geographic areas, across all subject areas, and for all kinds of people. The bottom line is that educational outreach efforts have the capability to make a real and lasting difference for all players involved

The paper describes the changes taking place in the external environment of education institutions and their effects on the functioning of institutions. It highlights various management philosophies being used by industries and companies providing employment to graduates. All the stakeholders expects the excellence in all respects from educational institutions. It is very dificult to translate and satisfy the expectations of different stakeholders. So in this paper deinition of excellence, its dimensions, and characteristics in context of education institutions are described. At the end formats are suggested to assess the effectiveness of the institution on dimensions and characteristics of excellence. The paper is based on literature review, experiences of the authors and views of experts.

The topic “Social media: an innovative education tool†was undertaken to study the relevance and importance of social media which is an in-thing among the educational sector. In an era, where the glocal is the word to deine common platform for the people around the world to share and exchange their beliefs, culture, traditions, knowledge, views, etc. The study concludes that our education system needs change and social media should be widely utilized for the educational purposes. It is mainly used for the purpose of making presentations followed by assignment updates, better research and connectivity.

The objectives of the study were to study the differences between Low & High SelfEsteem and Non Congenial & Congenial Family Environment groups of Pre Service Teachers at the Secondary Stage on the dimensions of Spiritual Intelligence, and to study the double interaction effects of the variables of Self-Esteem and Family Environment on the dimensions of Spiritual Intelligence in respect of the Pre Service Teachers at the Secondary Stage. The results of ANOVA showed that Low and High Self-Esteem groups exhibited no significant differences on the variables of Transcendence, Interconnectedness, Expansion of Self, Extrasensory Perception and Existential Enquiry. In case of Family Environment groups- Non Congenial and Congenial, the differences were found significant on the variables of Transcendence and Interconnectedness in favour of Congenial Family Environment and no significant differences were found on the variables of Expansion of Self, Extrasensory Perception and Existential Enquiry. The double interaction effects of the variables of Self-Esteem and Family Environment were not significant on all the dimensions of Spiritual Intelligence.

The study was planned to determine the effect of job satisfaction, work motivation and type of schools on organizational commitment of secondary school teachers. Descriptive survey method was employed for the investigation. The organizational commitment has been treated as the dependent variable, whereas job satisfaction, work motivation and type of schools comprised the independent variables for the study. Multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select the sample of 480 secondary school teachers working in Rohtak, Jhajjar and Sonepat cities of Rohtak Division of Haryana. The investigators used Organizational Commitment Scale (OCS) by Hyde and Roy (2006), Job Satisfaction Scale (JSS) by Dixit (1993) and Employees Motivation Schedule (EMS) by Srivastava (1988) to measure organizational commitment, job satisfaction and work motivation of teachers respectively. Means, SD’s and t-test were used for analyzing the collected data. Findings of the study reported significant effect of type of schools and job satisfaction on the organizational commitment of the teachers. No significant difference was found in organizational commitment of private school teachers with high and low level of work motivation and the government school teachers with high level of work motivation were reported to be better than their counterparts with respect to their organizational commitment. The study also revealed certain educational implications for the teachers, principals and the administrators for enhancing the organizational commitment among the teachers.

International consensus on education priorities accords an important place to achieving gender justice in the educational sphere. Both the Dakar Education for All’s 5th goal and the Millennium Development goal emphasise goal that are distinguished as gender parity goal [achieving equal participation of girls and boys in all forms of education based on their proportion in the relevant age-groups in the population] and gender equality goal [ensuring educational equality between boys and girls]. In turn these have been characterised as quantitative/numerical and qualitative goal respectively. There is thus need to understand the reports of UNGEI, EFA’S global monitoring report and MDG framework so that the meaning of the term gender parity and gender equality with reference to education can be connoted, linkages between them can be explored, and the best mechanisms to measure progress towards these goal can be identified and also take a stock of the progress made with respect to some of these questions in various countries and sub-regions especially in reference to the fifth goal of EFA Act (Education For All’s act). The paper concludes with need recognizing that bringing all girl children to school is not merely an educational action but requires transformation of attitudes and behavioural dynamics of society, so that gender equality is seen as a value in itself worth pursuing.

Engineering education in the globalized perspective undergoing metamorphic changes in changing paradigms. In the context, as a developing nation, India has an opportunity to share the experience of the advanced nations and thereby, through juxtaposition, can adopt appropriate policies for strengthening the existing system of engineering education, best suits for national situations. Perception about the profession and problem context of engineering education needs ramification. Shortcomings in engineering practice need to be identified in the areas of innovation, research and development, design and technical improvisation. System related and profession oriented issues need to be addressed through the global experiences. Contrasting values of employer organizations and profession for an engineer need a clear synthesis for the development in different perception-context. The paper present a snap views on the stated issues which believed to be contributing factors for strengthening the Indian engineering education.