STRATEGIES CONSIDERED EFFECTIVE FOR TEACHING JOB SKILLS IN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS BY BUSINESS EDUCATORS IN ADAMAWA AND TARABA STATES, NIGERIA

Abstract

Exposing business education students to the practical requirements of the dynamic
business world motivated this study, which sought to determine instructional
strategies considered effective by business educators for teaching job skills in tertiary
institutions in Adamawa and Taraba States. Two research questions guided the study
and four null hypotheses were tested. Descriptive survey research design was adopted
for the study. The entire population of 68 business educators in the area was studied
without sampling. A structured questionnaire validated by experts was used for data
collection. Cronbach Alpha reliability method was used to establish the internal
consistency of the items which yielded coefficients of 0.69 and 0.76 for the two
clusters with an overall coefficient of 0.73. Data collected were analyzed using mean
and standard deviation to answer the research questions while t-test was used to test
the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that the business
educators rated reflective practice and scaffolding instructional strategies as highly
effective for the teaching of job skills and their opinions were not significantly
influenced by type of institution and experience. It was concluded that the adoption of
these instructional strategies will facilitate the acquisition of job skills among
business education students in order to be efficient in meeting workplace needs. The
study recommended among others that, the Ministry of Education in partnership with
National Universities Commission, Tertiary Education Trust Fund, and the National
Commission for Colleges of Education should provide consistent training and retraining programmes for capacity building for business educators to enable them keep
abreast with trends in the changing demands of the society.