Analytic Approach for ICT Embedded in Technical Education

Analytic Approach for ICT Embedded in Technical Education

Olojuolawe Rufus Sunday

Vocational and Industrial Technology Education Department, Bamidele Olumilua University of Education, Science and Technology, Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria

DOI: https://doi.org/10.51244/IJRSI.2025.12010073

Received: 07 January 2025; Accepted: 11 January 2025; Published: 22 February 2025

ABSTRACT

The importance of Information and Communication Technology in driving the overall development of the global space is undeniable. Developed economies have been able to accelerate their growth and progress in this century through their advanced usage of technology. The integration of Information and Communication Technology tools has greatly enhanced research and educational development in these countries. However, Nigeria’s Technical Education programme seems to be facing challenges in this aspect. Despite the nation’s quest for technological advancement, it is evident that there is a need for improvement in this field to fully utilize the potential of Information and Communication Technology. The meta-analysis conducted on the journal articles regarding Information and Communication Technology adoption in technical education between 2012 and 2024 reveals that Nigeria and Africa are facing significant challenges in adopting this technology. The study, which was conducted using Google Scholar as the database, included 26 publications after applying the specified inclusion and exclusion criteria. The findings of the study suggest that most researchers tend to focus on review studies without providing any specific recommendations for improving the adoption of Information and Communication Technology tool in Technical Education. This highlights the need for further research and efforts to fully integrate this technology into technical education in Nigeria and Africa.

Keywords: ICT, Technical Education, Meta-analysis, Adoption, Employment.

BACKGROUND

The relevance of Information Communication Technology adoption in the programme of technical education has broadly been canvassed (Ramadan & Chen, 2018; Saripudin, Juanda, Abdullah, & Ana, 2020; Yaakob et al., 2020)(Hassan et al., 2021). It seems no particular study has focused on the ICT model for the sustenance of technical education especially, in Nigeria. The majority are either reviews or perceptions about its relevance to Vocational and Technical Education.  Similarly, it seems most studies conducted on Information Telecommunication Technology are very broad and lack the specificity of the aspects that require adoption in a specific educational programme.

Consequently, this paper examines some of the methodological challenges faced in ICT adoption into Technical Education with a focus on its acceptance, and implementation strategies.  A meta-analysis of the methods used in the published journal articles in the field of technical education was conducted to bring out the strengths, country of origin, and region of publication.

The Search String consisted of a peer-reviewed journal article published between 2012 and 2024. This gave an insight into the existing methods used in conducting research in ICT in Technical Education and the frequency by nations and regions to establish the need for the study on the ICT Competence Model for Sustainable Development of Technical Education in Higher Institutions in Nigeria. The consistency in the search and collection of sources for the review was achieved using the Google Scholar citation index services. The database allows for explicit search strings for selecting relevant publications from across large collections of subject areas as shown in the framework.

 Keywords on the subject were carefully composed into search strings as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Search strings

METHODOLOGY

The purpose of this study is to assess the level of ICT tool adoption in technical education by countries and the methodology employed for the overall objective of conducting a general study in that captures the subject. This initial study involves a meta-analysis of the publications on relevant articles on ICT in Technical Education was conducted and analysed to bring out their strengths, weaknesses, methods, country of publication, and region. The process is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1:  ICT Competence Model in Technical Education Search Framework.

Source: Author.

A total of Nine Hundred and Fifty-one (951) articles were retrieved from the database based on the search conducted. The Google Scholar citation analytical tool was used for the analysis of the results of the search to reflect the publication by author, methodology, country of publication, and region of the world.

Inclusion and Exclusion

To reduce and and ensure that only the relevant review papers are available for the study, publications that met the following criteria were selected;  (i) papers published between 2018 and 2024, (ii) papers on technical education, vocational and technical education, (iii) documents that are either journal articles or textbooks, (iv) papers that discusses ICT in Technical Education. Excluded from the list are articles in the press, publications not written in English, and those articles that have been published before the year 2018. The manual selection was critically done to filter those articles that did not align with the scope of the study based on their relevance to the topic, contents, and abstract. 26 publications were finally selected for the full-scale study. During the study, a meta-analysis table was formulated to capture the data on the principal author, year of publication, county, region, name of the journal, the title of publication, and the method used for analysis. The Meta-Analysis conducted on ICT embedded in Technical Education is shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Meta-Analysis for ICT Embedded in Technical Education.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

The main aim of the study is to establish the need for ICT adoption in the teaching and learning of Technical Education in Nigeria. Consequently, the study objective is to identify the ICT adoption gaps in Nigeria, especially concerning the teaching of Technical Education compared to other climes. Therefore, the systematic review was constructed into pictorial drawings/charts as the representation of the study relying on the Excel tool. Emphases were placed on methods, Origin of publication, and the Region of publication to draw the inferences. The results of these constructs are shown in Figures 2 to 5.

Figure 2: Continental Publication Rate.

Findings show that most publications on the use of ICT in teaching and learning Technical Education are prevalent in the Asian continent with a percentage of 55 percent to her closest rival of the African continent shares 30 percent as shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3.  No wonder Asia is regarded as the technological hub of the world. Africa needed to do more by strengthening its technological base to be able to match what is going on around the world. The adoption of ICT skills in Nigeria would no doubt promote the employability skills of the students.(Olojuolawe & Adeoluwa, 2022; Olojuolawe et al., 2019; World Economic Forum, 2016). The ICT skills are important to ensure that the students are adequate for the industry. It is of note that today’s jobs are driven by technology and no continent should claim ignorance of this.

Figure 3: Percent Continental Publication.

Figure 4: Country Publication Rate.

Malaysia and India have the highest number of publication among the 13 countries of the world whose journal articles matches the need of the study as revealed in Figure 4. Although it could be said that Nigeria made a very good stride in this regard, it is yet to be seen whether the feat is good enough to justify its technological know-how. A deeper analysis of the 5 publications though, quantitative and experimental failed to identify any ICT tool that is good for teaching Technical Education. Thus, the outcome seems to be broad and theoretical. The global trend today is that employers lay more emphasis on what an employee can achieve with skills such as technological skills, management, analytical and the rest. The basic skills that a technical student must possess to be job-ready were clearly stated in the structural classification of employability skills (Olojuolawe, Bt, Amin, Latif, et al., 2019; Olojuolawe & Amin, 2019).

Figure 5: Authors’ Research Methods Adoption.

Figure 5 indicates that varying research techniques were used by the researchers in this study. A greater number of the articles were review papers with a 56% adoption. This is more than the average of the total. The question now is, do we have to agree that “review” is better when conducting studies into ICT and Technical Education or that it is much simpler and easier?

These questions beg for answers. However, research has shown that the adoption of a single research method such as qualitative makes a study lack sensitivity to context and limits the ability to capture process and change (Blenker et al., 2014; Creswell, 2013a; Legg-Jack, 2014; Noble & Smith, 2015; Shukla et al., 2014). It is on record that the integration of both qualitative and quantitative research methods would produce a better research outcome in terms of depth, undisputable source of data, and validation of best practices (Creswell, 2006, 2013b; Creswell & Creswell, 2013; Creswell John. w, 2014; Harrison & Reilly, 2011; Ivankova, 2014; Morgan, 2017; Wetzel & Carstensen, 2014).

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

The study revealed that much has to be done in identifying the ICT tools essential for teaching and learning Technical Education in Nigeria. Similarly, the majority of the studies were review studies. This has taken out the benefits of mixed methods research that guarantees depth and validation. Therefore, Nigerian and African researchers are enjoined to vary their methods and ensure that a more holistic study is conducted regarding the Information and Communication Technology adoption in Technical Education. This stands to serve the interest of the learners in employment generation, the parents, and the society in crime control and Gross Domestic Product growth (GDP).

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