Effect of Non – Conventional Machining Principles Instruction on Craft Students’ Achievement and Retention in Machining Practice in Government Technical Colleges in Enugu State, Nigeria

This study empirically investigated the Effect of Non-Conventional Machining Principles Instruction Model (NMPIM) on students' achievement and retention in machining. The study was carried out with respect to the principles of arc length. The effect of NMPIM and the conventional method were studied. A research question and a null hypothesis guided the study. A non-equivalent pretest-posttest non randomized parallel group quasi experimental design was adopted for the study. The study was conducted in Government Technical Colleges in Enugu State, Nigeria. The population of the study was 1761-year two machining craft students. Intact classes of the only two technical colleges offering Machining Craft practice were used as subjects, with 85 and 36 students for experimental and control groups respectively. A structured instrument constructed by the researcher was validated by five experts, one from University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) and four from Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT). The validated instrument when subjected to item stability and internal consistency tests yielded 0.87 and 0.98, using Pearson product moment correlation coefficient formula, and Kuder Richardson (K-R 20) formulae respectively. The trial testing of the instrument by test retest was carried out in Government Technical College, Abakaliki, Ebonyi state, Nigeria. The research question was answered using Mean and Standard Deviation while the null hypothesis was analysed and tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at .05 level of significance. The results showed that year two machining students taught Machining with NMPIM achieved higher and retained higher in the principle learned when compared with those who were taught with the conventional method. There was no significant difference in the mean achievement and retention scores of Males over Females in the study. It was recommended that the TVET curriculum should be reviewed in line with the current technological realities with provision for 21st century equipment and training materials. The 21st century employers of labour (manufacturers) should be appointed as Technical colleges' board members so they could advice the management on the current emerging technologies and possibly donate the state-of-theart equipment to the colleges. Therefore, NMPIM should be adopted in teaching Machining to keep the students abreast of the 21st century technology which is ever evolving.