SOURCE:

Faculty: Education
Department: Vocational Education

CONTRIBUTORS:

Oluka, S.N;
Eze T.I;

ABSTRACT:

Most of the skills possessed by electrical trade artisans have become irrelevant as a result of high technological development especially in the field of electrical/electronics technology. This poses a serious challenge to electrical trade artisans to remain relevant in this technological era. They therefore need relevant competencies through training or retraining with appropriate methods and facilities in an organized setting. Consequently, this study was conducted to determine the competencies required by trade artisans for domestic and industrial electrical installations in Enugu State. Five research questions guided the study and null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Review of related literature was carried out under appropriate sub-headings. Survey research design was adopted and a population of 677 (542 electrical trade artisans and 135 supervisors) was used without sampling. The instrument for data collection was a 5-point rating scale questionnaire with 91 items in 5 sections which was validated by three experts. The instrument was subjected to reliability test by administering the questionnaire to 20 trade artisans and 10 supervisors in Ebonyi State. Cronbach Alpha was used to analyze the data collected. This was carried out for the five clusters and the reliability coefficient values of 0.81, 0.66, 0.84, 0.82, 0.77 and an overall reliability coefficient of 0.74 were obtained. Data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions and ascertain the closeness of respondents’ views while z-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings of the study showed among others that 91 competencies identified in the five areas were highly required by electrical trade artisans to be effective and efficient in their vocation. The electrical trade artisans and supervisors did not differ significantly in their mean ratings in the five competency areas covered while experienced and inexperienced respondents differed significantly in their mean ratings only on technical competencies. Based on the findings of this study, it was concluded among others that the trade artisans highly required the theoretical knowledge, technical, entrepreneurial, management and work attitude competencies for domestic and industrial electrical installations. Therefore, the researcher recommended among others that curriculum planners should widen the contents for training and retraining of electrical trade artisans to incooperate modern skills and competencies in their trade areas while government at all levels should encourage artisans in the public and private sectors to upgrade themselves by undertaking in-service training to obtain additional modern skills and improve their socio-economic status.