Foundry Skills Required of Mechanical Craft Practice Students for Entrepreneurship Development in Technical Colleges in Rivers State

Abstract

The study examined the foundry skills required of mechanical craft practice students for entrepreneurship development in Technical College in Rivers State. Specifically, the study sorts to ascertain the intellectual and psychomotor foundry skills required by mechanical craft practice students for entrepreneurship development in Technical Colleges in Rivers State. The population of the study comprised 42 mechanical crafts practice teachers and 22 mechanical craft instructors in the 4 Technical Colleges in Rivers State. To undertake this study, two research questions were posed, and two hypotheses were tested. The study was a census. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire. The reliability of the instrument was tested using test-retest which gave a reliability coefficient of 0.72. Data were analyzed using Mean and Standard deviation. t-Test analysis at 0.05 level of significance was used to test the hypothesis. The findings revealed that intellectual foundry skills and psychomotor foundry skills are required of mechanical crafts students for entrepreneurship development in Technical College in Rivers State. The study therefore recommends provision of human and materials needs to enhance foundry skills development, provision of the enabling environment in technical colleges for foundry skills practice, massive awareness and sensitization on the youths about the potentials of foundry and more allocation of time to foundry practice in the time table of technical colleges in Rivers State.