The rate of unemployment among youths in Nigeria has assumed a worrisome dimension. More importantly that those affected are specialized graduates from tertiary institutions. The youth unemployment rate has been of persitent increase since 2014 from from 11.7% to 36.5% in 2018. It has been established that the vacancies exists, but the graduates lack the skills to match the jobs. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to identify the constructs and sub-constructs of employability skills that are needed to match Electrical Technology students with the labour market. The resaerch design is a qualitative metthod involving document analysis and interview protocol of stakeholders in electrical technology. The stakehoders were the academics and the employers. The documents were analysed using frequency matrix table. While the interview of the stakeholders (experts) were done thematically. To ensure the reliability of the constructs and sub-constructs, an item pool was constructed to determine the agreement and content reliability index for the constructs. From the item pool, 5 constructs and 193 sub-constructs were generated. These were constructed into instrument for expert review. Three experts in electrical technology rated the instrument for determining the aggreement level, using the Fleiss kappa approach. The percent agreement for the raters are 89.63%, 86.01%, and 81.86% respectively with a mean agreement of 85.83%. The 85.83% indicate an almost perfect agreement by the experts for each of the constructs in the instrument. This is very good for producing a functional framework of employability skills.
The study investigated the rise in the rate of unemployment among Electrical Technology graduates from Colleges of Education in Nigeria despite the huge government investment in power and education sectors. The study is a qualitative study which involve a survey of literature and interview protocol. This study is designed to determine the employability skills needed by electrical technology students in Colleges of Education qualitatively with the aimed of suggesting a departure from the general framework available to all disciplines. A review of journal articles and policy documents on Employability skills and Electrical Technology was conducted, leading to the interview data that was conducted among 6 employers of labour and 4 Senior Academic staff in the four Colleges of Education that have Electrical Technology programme in South Western Nigeria. The study revealed that there is a skill mismatch between Colleges of Education in Nigeria and the labour market. Thus, the students lack the skills for 21st-Century jobs. The two results were integrated to come up with a Framework of employability for Electrical Technology students in Colleges of Education in Nigeria. The study observed that the framework developed was still broad and therefore recommends a valid discipline-difference employability skill framework using Rasch Analysis Model to determine the competencies and its hierarchy.
This study considers the procedures for conducting item classification employing Raech Analysis Model. The knowledge of the hierarchy enables lecturers to organize their learning objective and also permits the students to measure their employability. The survey study employs exploratory sequential mixed methods. It was conducted to identify and give the hierarchy of the skills required by Electrical Technology students in Colleges of Education in Nigeria to be employable. The first phase involved 10 electrical experts from Industry and Colleges of Education who were purposely selected. The analysis of the findings obtained using Nvivo 12 led to the second phase which comprised of 104 respondents. The sample also consists of Electrical Technology expert in both Industry and Academics. In order to ensure that all items fit the Rasch Analysis Model, the fit statistics were performed to refine and remove all misfits item. Because, the item was ordinal and ranked, Partial Credit (Rasch) Model was involved in the treatment. A separation index of 3.28 and 5.28 was obtained for the technical and non-technical skills with a reliability of .91 and .97 respectively. The implication is that each group is unique and therefore, the most basic item at the bottom of the hierarchy must be learned before the next higher-order item.
Purpose. The existence of the workshop attendants in technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is aimed at complementing the job of the lecturers to ensure that well-grounded and employable graduates are produced. Over the years, the complaints about the poor quality of the output have been shifted to the lecturers teaching methods and techniques, workshops and facilities without recourse to the competencies of the workshop attendants. The focus of this study is to develop a model that will boost the technical proficiency of the personnel that is employed to work in the technical workshops and laboratories. Results. The study succeeded in developing a model suitable for reskilling technical and science workshop managers in higher institutions. The model consists of five major constructs and nine sub-constructs. The major constructs are: innovation, automation, professionalism, management and leadership. These are suitable for meeting the complaints of the workshop managers about neglect and equipping them adequately for the job overall performance of the jobs they were employed to perform. Scientific novelty. The sequential exploratory mixed method used increases the depth of the study and makes generalization possible, unlike using a single research method. Practical value. The study has theoretical and practical implications for the body of knowledge in competency studies. Above all, the model identified will help to shape and fit workshop managers adequately for the job they were employed to perform and prevent human capital losses.
The study was guided by three research questions. The two results from the document analysis and interview were triangulated to generate the Interim framework of employability skills. To narrow the framework to meet the specific needs of electrical technology students in Colleges of Education, an item pool was designed to be able to survey the agreement index level of Electrical Technology experts. The Fleiss Kappa agreement ratio conducted gave 89.63%, 86.01%, and 81.86% respectively with a mean agreement of 85.83%. The 85.83% represents an ‘almost perfect agreement’ which is very good for producing a functional and narrow framework of employability skills (Jollands, 2015). The Winstep analysis gave the following results: item separation = 2.18, reliability = .83. the person separation = 3.85, and the person reliability = .94. Cronbach Alpha = .95. The result indicates three levels of the item. The most difficult items moderate, and the less difficult items.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.