Practical Skill Improvement Needs of Mechanical Craft Teachers in Teaching Grindingand Boring Practices in Technical Colleges in South-East Nigeria

Abstract

The study determined practical skill improvement needs of mechanical craft teachers in teaching grinding and boring skills in technical colleges in south-east Nigeria. Two research questions were raised and two null hypotheses were tested for the study. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The entire population for the study was 134 which comprised 80 teachers and 54 instructors in technical colleges in South-East Nigeria. A structured and validated questionnaire containing 14 items with two response columns of required and performance was used for data collection. Cronbach alpha formula was used to determine the internal consistency of the questionnaire items which yielded an overall reliability coefficient of 0.83. The researchers administered the instrument with the help of five research assistants to the respondents. Data collected were analysed using weighted mean and improvement need index for both required and performance categories of the instrument in order to answer the research questions. The t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study found that mechanical craft teachers and instructors in technical colleges in South-East Nigerianeed practical skill improvement in teachinggrinding and boring skills. In addition, the study revealed that there was no significant difference between the mean responses of mechanical craft teachers and instructors on practical skills improvement needs in teaching grinding and boring skills in technical colleges in South-East, Nigeria. The study concluded that mechanical craft teachers and instructors in technical colleges in South-East Nigeria need practical skills improvement in grinding and boring practices in order to adequately prepare students to start their own workshop upon graduation. It was recommended by others that technical colleges in South-East Nigeria should foster closer ties with industries to enable students acquire practical grinding and boring skills since technical schools may not have all the needed facilities and machines for learning these skills.