Difficulties Faced in Doing Research by Students of Vocational Teacher Education in Rivers State University

Abstract

This study was conducted to find out difficulties faced by students of vocational teacher education in the Department of Vocational and Technical Education, Rivers State University face in conducting research. Employing a parallel mixed method research design, the study recruited 64 participants including 7 lecturers, 9 postgraduate students and 48 undergraduates through purposive sampling technique, as research sample from lecturers, final year undergraduate students and postgraduate students conducting the dissertation and thesis for the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 academic sessions Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected through questionnaire and students’ research reports respectively. The questionnaire used for quantitative data was faced validated and with internal consistency reliability coefficients of .74, .93 and .90 respectively for the three components. This was obtained through Cronbach Alpha. Quantitative data was analysed using percentages while qualitative data was analysed using document analysis. The findings of the study revealed that undergraduate and postgraduate students had varying degrees of difficulties in different aspects of research activities including framing research problem, planning the research as well as conducting the research. Common difficulties found in these areas include difficulties in framing researchable topic, constructing instrument for data collection, carrying out interpretation and discussion of findings. It was therefore recommended that research mentorship programmes should be established for students to learn research craft through real experience. It was also recommended that active learning approaches should be employed in the teaching and learning of research related courses.