SKILL NEEDS OF SECONDARY SCHOOL GRADUATES

 
This study was designed to determine the effect of mind mapping on students’ achievement in abstract contents of electrical and electronic trades in technical colleges. The study adopted the quasi-experimental research design, precisely, pretest, posttest non-equivalent control group design which involved groups of students in their intact classes. A sample of 193 electrical and electronic trade year II students drawn by multistage sampling technique from a population of 354 from eight technical colleges in Ogun state was used for the study. Four research questions and four null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. Electrical Electronics Achievement Test (EEAT) is the instrument used for data collection. The EEAT and lesson plans for both control and experimental were all subjected to face and content validation by three experts. The reliability coefficient of the instrument was computed using KR-20 and found to be 0.81. Mean was used to answer the research questions, while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was employed to test the hypotheses. The study revealed that mind mapping instructional strategy was superior to the conventional method in enhancing student achievement in abstract contents. It also discovered that gender grouping did not contribute significantly to variance in students achievement score, thus the effectiveness of mind mapping does not depend on gender. After pointing out some educational implications of the findings, it was thereafter recommended that mind mapping should be adopted in teaching abstract contents of electrical and electronic trades in technical colleges, among others.
 
Many farmers in Enugu State engage in rice production with the aim of enhancing their income and living standard. Rice is scientifically known as Oryza Sativa. Rice in the view of Tsado, (2000) is one of the world’s most important annual cereal crops, belonging to the family of Graminae, widely cultivated in almost every part of the world. The plant has fibrous roots, tillers, leaves with sheath base, well defined midrib and small flowers. The mature grain is elongated and enclosed in husk. Rice is the most important staple food for a large part of the world’s human population. There are many varieties of rice grown in Nigeria including Enugu State. Some of these varieties are considered local varieties, the local varieties of rice are named according to the places they are produced-Abakaliki rice, Uzouwani rice, Afikpo mass, while others were introduced from other countries like Asia. Rice is grown in paddies or on upland fields, depending on the requirements of the particular variety. Rice is the most important grain with regard to human nutrition and caloric intake, providing more than one fifth of the calories consumed by people worldwide. Fine and soft rice straw obtained after harvesting serves as one of the raw material for industries that produce shoes, hats and mattresses. Laundry starch is manufactured from the broken rice grains. Rice bran and chopped straw are equally use for feeding livestock. Rice is grown for home consumption and for sale. United States Development of Agriculture (USDA), (2008) explained that rice production is well-suited to countries and regions with low labour cost and high rainfall as it requires labour intensive to produce and requires ample rainfall.