An Analysis of the Need for Improvement of Nigeria Certificate in Education (Technical) Curriculum for Introductory Technology Teachers in Benue State

This study analyzed the need for improvement of Nigeria Certificate in Education (Technical) curriculum so as to enable easy and meaningful interpretation and understanding of the need by Introductory Technology subject's stakeholders and hopefully lead to the improvement of the curriculum for the preparation of Introductory Technology teachers in Benue state in particular and Nigeria in general. Considering the multidisciplinary nature of the curriculum, the study focused on determination of competency gaps that may exist between desired behaviour of NCE- background Introductory Technology teachers and behaviour that presently exist among the teachers in the technological education and related components only. A survey research design was used and based mostly on topics in the first two years of NCE (Tech) curriculum and literature reviewed; a 308 item survey instrument was raised. The instrument was pilot tested on 19 subjects. The reliability of the survey instrument was determined using the split half technique, Spearman Rank Order Correlation and Spearman-Brown Prophecy Formulae and found to be 0.99. The instrument was administered on the entire population of 266 persons made up of Intro-tech teachers and NCE (Tech) programme lecturers. The data collected was analyzed using the mean and t-test on the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) computer programme. Twelve findings were made among which was that all the 308 competencies were considered important towards teaching of Intro-tech but only 5 were considered "very" important. Based on findings of the study, nine conclusions were drawn among which was that the "moderate" mean performance ratings of NCE-background Intro-tech teachers on the 308 competencies used for the study indicated need for improvement. Eight recommendations were proffered and among them was the restructuring of NCE (Tech) curriculum by NCCE based on identified competencies with priority mean ratings