Effects of Guided Discovery Method On Students’ Attitude to and Achievement in Social Studies in Nigerian Schools (Published)
This study was carried out on the effects of guided discovery method on student’s attitude to and achievement in social studies in College of Education (Pre-service) students in Nigeria. Three research questions were raised and three null hypotheses were formulated. The research design was quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group. The study was carried out in four randomly selected Colleges of Education in Ekiti, Edo, Ondo and Ogun State in Nigeria. The sample size was 240 students from four randomly selected intact classes in the sampled school were used. The instruments for data collection were Social studies Achievement Test (SSAT) and Social studies Attitude Questionnaire SSAQ. Descriptive statistics were used to answer the research questions while T-test was used to test the null hypotheses. The results of the analysis showed that these was significant difference between the mean achievement scores of experimental group and control group. The study also revealed that there was no significant difference between the mean achievement scores of males and females’ students in the experimental group. There was a significant difference between the mean attitude scores of males and females students in the experimental group. Based on this study it was concluded that guided discovery method has positive effects on student’s achievement as well as improving their attitude towards Social studies and it is gender friendly. Based on the findings, it was recommended that among others seminars, workshops and conferences should be held for Social studies teachers to acquaint them with the knowledge of guided discovery method and should be encouraged to use it in the classroom always.
Keywords: Achievement, Social Studies, attitude, guided discovery
A Relevance of the Implementation of Vocational School (VS) Towards the Needs of Industry and Workforce (Published)
This study explores the relevance of vocational school (VS) and industries to meet the needs of industries in order to get quality workers from VS. Therefore, the government of Indonesia stresses to strengthen vocational school (VS) through training both in school, company, or in technopark in order that the graduate of VS may have better competence and skill. Quantitative and qualitative of the secondary data, the in-depth interview during the focus group discussion (FGD), and survey data was collected from 536 respondents from 36 VS in eight provinces. Analysis was the combination of qualitative and quantitative from both survey and document triangulated with interview of other related resource persons. The findings reveal that the relevance of training in school and the needs of the industries is 91,67% relevant, the relevance of knowledge and the needs of industries taught in school is 93.34% relevant, skill 93.34%, and attitude 97.5%. Teachers perceptions for the three aspects is 90.83%. Most of the VS school programs are in accordance to meet the needs of industries, which have been working collabotively with schools. Training in both industries and technopark has improved VS students and teachers’ competence and skill. However, it is different with the reality that most of vocational school graduates have not been accepted by private sector or industries to work at their company due to the lack of several aspects, such as the skills which does not occur to the work of industries.
Keywords: Knowledge, Relevance, Skill, attitude, kompetence, technopark, vocational school