Effect of an improvised furnance on students performance in foundry technology in technical colleges in Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to determine the effect of an improvised furnace on students' performance in foundry technology in technical colleges in Rivers State. The study adopted research and development incorporating quasiexperimental design. It involved the use of control group, pre-test - post test design. The population of 194 students from four technical colleges in Rivers State were used for the study. The instrument for data collection was made up of Foundry Technology Achievement Test (FTAT) developed by the researcher. The achievement test consists of 50-multiple choice items with four options of A-D. The test items were identified and selected from the content of (NABTEB) syllabus on metal work technology. Test re-test method was used to establish the reliability of the instrument; the tests yielded 0.70,073 and 0.72, 0.74 for the first and second tests respectively. Four experts in metal work technology were involved in both face and content validity of the improvised furnace and 200 multiple-choice test items. The results obtained from the test scores were compiled and analyzed using statistical tools such as; percentage, mean, and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) in answering the research question and testing the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. improvised furnace had positive effects on students' performance in foundry (15.32). The difference in performance between those taught using improvised furnace and those taught using conventional teaching aids was found to be significant at 0.05 levels of significance. Based on the findings of the study, the researcher recommended that government, technical college principals and the different agencies should provide fund to procure the materials and component for designing and constructing furnace by the teacher for teaching foundry in technical colleges in Rivers State. Also, constant power supply, generators, accumulators, anvil, steel vessel, pipes and electric blower should be provided and distributed by the ministry of education to the technical colleges for construction of furnace for effective teaching of foundry in Rivers State. The industries, government, non-governmental agencies and private enterprises and communities should provide components, consumable materials necessary for teaching foundry and supply the materials directly to the individual technical colleges in Rivers State.