Constraints on Acquisition of Electrical Installation and Maintenance Work Skills among Students in Technical colleges in Akwa-Ibom State (Published)
The study sought to find out Constraints on Acquisition of Electrical Installation and Maintenance Work Skills Among Students in Technical colleges in Akwa-Ibom State,. Descriptive survey design was used in the design of the study. The population of the study consisted of a total of 332 respondents comprising 286 final year vocational III students and 46 teachers of VOCIII students from the five (5) government technical colleges in Akwa Ibom State. Simple random sampling technique was employed in the selections. For the teachers, all the 46 of the VOCIII teachers were used. A structured questionnaire titled ‘Constraints on Acquisition of Electrical Installation and Maintenance Work Skills Questionnaire was developed to elicit responses from the respondents after being validated by the supervisor and three other experts and reliability tested through the use of Pearson Product Moment Correlation Method to obtain an average reliability coefficient of 0.86. Mean was adopted for answering the research questions. The hypotheses were tested using z-test statistics. The result revealed that some of the factors that constitute as constraints on acquisition of electrical installation and maintenance work skills among students in technical colleges in Akwa Ibom State include: teaching methodology, and students’ associated factors. Based on the findings, it was recommended that special agency should be established for training and retraining of technical teachers and government should establish Agency for Attitudinal Change for technical colleges to take charge of students’ performance award, motivation, discipline and encouragement of in all the technical colleges.
Keywords: Akwa Ibom State, Electrical Installation, Maintenance, Students, Technical Colleges, work skills
Attitudes of Teachers Towards Application of Item Response Theory in Technical Colleges in Rivers State (Published)
This study investigated attitudes of teachers towards the application of item response theory (IRT) in the technical colleges in Rivers State. It is intended to ascertain the influence of these teacher-related factors on testing processes using IRT in these institutions. Five research questions were asked to guide this study and five null hypotheses were formulated and tested. Cross-sectional survey research design was adopted in this study. The population of this study comprised all the 424 technical teachers in the 15 technical colleges in Rivers State. The study used stratified random sampling technique to draw the sample of size of 212 out of the population. The instrument for data collection was a self-designed Likert type (five response level) questionnaire titled,“Survey of Teacher’s Attitudes Towards Application of Item Response Theory (STATA-IRT), with a reliability coefficient of .86. Correlation analysis was used to answer the research questions and multiple regressions, R, was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level. It was found from the overall result, that strong linear relationship exists between attitudes of teachers and the application of Item Response Theory in Technical colleges Rivers State. It was also found from the multiple regression results that the attitudes of teachers are predictors of effective application of item response theory in the technical colleges in Rivers state.
Keywords: Application of Item, Attitudes, Response Theory, Rivers State, Teachers, Technical Colleges
Assessment of the Adequacy of Material Resources for Effective Teaching of Building Technology: A Panacea for Promoting Entrepreneurial Skills in Rivers State Technical Colleges. (Published)
The global economic pressure to compete on cost, service and quality has resulted in the agenda of the Government to re-focus the economic development processes to increase and nurture intellectual capital and entrepreneurship for economic transformation in Nigeria. This study was designed to assess the adequacy of building material resources for effective teaching of building technology: a panacea for promoting entrepreneurial skills in building technology in Rivers State technical colleges. The population for the study was 90,made up of 26 technical teachers, four technical instructors and 60 building technology students in the four technical colleges in Rivers State .A questionnaire based on five point Likert- scale was used as the data collection instrument .mean was used to analyze research results. The findings of the study are (1) workshops are not well equipped with sufficient tools and equipment. (2) lack of in-training of teaching personnel (3) inadequate power supply to the workshops. The study recommended the following: there should be adequate supply and proper maintenance of tools, equipment, and workshops. Government should ensure steady power supply to the workshops for practical and there should be in-service training for teaching personnel through seminars and workshops.
Keywords: Building Technology, Entrepreneurial Skills, Material Resources., Technical Colleges