EVALUATION OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION CURRICULUM IN POLYTECHNICS IN SOUTH EAST, NIGERIA
Abstract
It seems the curriculum of technological education is not adequate to provide self-reliant citizens that can contribute to nation building. Thus, the purpose of the study was to evaluate the implementation of technology curriculum for mechanical engineering national diploma in South East Nigerian polytechnics. Four research questions were raised for the study. Survey research design was considered for adoption for the study. The population for the study comprised 206 respondents, which is made up of 162 HND I Mechanical engineering students’ and 44 mechanical engineering lecturers/instructors in all the five federal polytechnics in South East, Nigeria. No sampling was done as the population was of manageable size. Questionnaire titled “Implementation of Technological Education Curriculum Questionnaire (ITECQ) was used for data collection. ITECQ was validated by three experts. The reliability of the ITECQ was established using Cronbach Alpha method, which yielded the scores of 0.76, 0.92, 0.88 and 0.84 for the four clusters of B1 to B4
respectively. Data collected were analyzed using Frequencies, percentages and mean. The findings of the study revealed that while adequate instructional materials are unavailable for the implementation of technological education curriculum, the available instructional materials are used to a low extent for the implementation of technological education curriculum for mechanical engineering students in Polytechnics. Furthermore, the
findings of the study indicated that while lecturers’ demonstration of activities for the students to learn and allowing them to practice the activities till they become competent is the instructional method that’s most often used by lecturers, administration of written examinations at the end of each semester is the most often used evaluation technique by lecturers for the implementation of technological education curriculum. Based on the
findings of the study, it was recommended among others that government should see to it that they provide adequate instructional materials for the implementation of technological education curriculum for mechanical engineering students in polytechnics.