Infusing Competencies and Skills of Vocational Instructors: Innovations to Boost Science and Technology for National Development

The study explored how teacher-training institutions could infuse the Community Development Vocational and Technical Institutes’ instructors with educational competencies and skills as innovations to boost science and technology to accelerate national development. Even though the restructuring transformed the then Women Vocational Training Institutes into Community Development Vocational and Technical Institutes, and subsequently introduced Core Mathematics, it was still not clear whether the instructors had the required competencies and skills to implement the curriculum. This exploratory survey purposively sampled fifty instructors in three districts of Upper East Region and issued with questionnaires to explore the instructors’ educational and Mathematics backgrounds. Having coded and analysed the data with SPSS software, the findings showed that the educational and mathematical backgrounds of the instructors still require further education and training in the competencies and skills. This would build skilled manpower, create jobs, reduce north-south migration and accelerate national development. We therefore, recommended continuous inter-tertiary collaborations, scholarships and realignment of the CDVTI institutes to the Ghana Education Service to achieve these goals.