Psychological Attributes Mentoring, and Self Employment of Vocational Graduates of Kano State Tertiary Institutions, Nigeria

ABSTRACT 

This study investigated and identified the role counselling play in mentoring vocational graduates towards self employment. The objectives of the study were; to determine the availability of the counselling services, to evaluate the vocational training graduates’ attitudes on the skills and training acquired; to investigate the uptake of self employment by the vocational training graduates of the tertiary institutions; to offer counselling services to vocational graduates who are ready and available to participate, using appropriate counselling strategies; to determine the most preferred counselling strategy among the graduates; and to establish the effectiveness of counselling strategies in raising their self awareness, self efficacy, and self motivation; which could lead to vocational practice among the vocational graduates. The design is a comparative study and also a mixture of positivists and interpretative paradigms.354 samples were randomly selected from the target population of 4,559 using simple random sampling. Frequency and percentages as well as T-test were used to analyze the quantitative data, while qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. The findings of the study indicated that the vocational graduates were fully aware of counselling services in their schools, but due to inadequacy of counsellors, they do not patronize the centers adequately.62. 1% of them indicated availability of the services. They also confirmed that they have acquired the necessary knowledge and skills during their training and 84.1% were satisfied with it. In terms of vocational uptake after graduation, out of the 354 samples 63.6% males and 36.4% females, only 101 (28.5%) have started practicing their vocations and the remaining 253 (71.4 %) were yet to start practicing their vocations instead. After giving to the experimental group counselling intervention, a t test was run and the result shows that counselling strategies significantly raises the self efficacy, self motivation, and self awareness of the vocational graduates. This i5 so because the experimental group has higher self efficacy, self motivation, and self awareness over the control group. The researcher also found out that among the four strategies empIoyed  group counselling was the most preferred among the sample with 53% and psycho education was the least preferred with 7% preference. The researcher recommends that adequate and professional school counsellors and facilities should be provided to every school, Resource mobilization to assist the vocational graduates, and also group counselling should be adopted by school counsellors to raise the self efficacy, self motivation, and self awareness of their student which are personality attributes which could help in making them become self employed instead of waiting for white collar jobs which is not readily available for them. Keywords; Counselling, strategies, vocational practice, vocational graduates, self employment

TABLE OF CONTENT

DECLARATION A

DECLARATION B ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iii

TABLE OF CONTENT vi

LIST OF TABLES xi

LIST OF FIGURES xii

ABSTRACT xiii

CHAPTER ONE I

1.0 INTRODUCTION I

1.1 Introduction 1

1.1.1 Historical perspective 1

1.1.2 Theoretical Perspective 8

1.1.3 Conceptual Perspective 9

1.1.4 Contextual perspective 13

1.2 Statement of the probI~rn 16

1.3 Research Objectives 17

1.3.1 General 17

1.3.2 Specific Objectives 17

1.4 Research questions 17

1.5 Null hypothesis 18

1.6 Scope of the study 18

1.6.1 Geographical scope 18

1.6.2 Theoretical scope 18

1.6.3 Content scope 19

1.6.4 significance of the study 19

CHAPTER TWO 23

LITERATURE REVIEW~23

2.0 Introduction 23

2.1 Economic theories of self employment 23

2.2 Psychological theories 23

2.2.1 Career choice 23

2.3 Rational Emotive theory 24

2.4 Cognitive and behavior theory 24

2.5 Personality and intelligence 25

2.6 Mentoring 26

2.7 Psychological capital 26

2.8 Cognitive styles 26

2.9 Cultural orientation 27

2.10 Attitude of students to self employment 27

2.11 Coping strategies 28

2.12 Counseling awareness 28

2.13 Attitudes of the students to vocational knowledge and skills acquired 30

2.l4Self employment I iptake I Vocational practice 32

2.15 Psychological attributes mentoring using counseling strategies 34

2.15.1 Group Counseling 34

2.15.2 Individual counseling 35

2.15.3 Peer education 36

2.15.4 Psycho education 37

2.16 Effectiveness of psychological attributes mentoring 38

2.16.1 Self efficacy 38

2.1 6.2 Self motivation 41

2.16.3 Self awareness 42

2.17 Recent studies 42

2.18 Gaps identified 43

CHAPTER THREE ..........................................~.46

METHODOLOGY ......................,.............................,~.46

3.0 Introduction 46

3.1 Philosophical underpinning 46

3.2 Research design 47

3.3 Location of the stuc~.’, 47

3.4 Research population 48

3.5 Sample size 48

3.6 Sampling procedure 48

3.7 selection criteria 49

3.8 Sampling Technique (Qualitative) 49

3.9 Research instruments 49

3.10 Data collection method 50

3.11 Pilotstudy 51

3.12 Validity of the instruments (Quantitative) 51

3.12.1 Validity of the interview guide 52

3.13 Reliability 53

3.13.1 Reliability ~f the questionnaires 53

3.13.2 Reliability of the interview guide 53

3.14 Data ~gathering procedure 53

3.14.1 Pre- administration of the questionnaire 53

3.14.2 Administration of the questionnaire 54

3.15 Post administration of the questionnaire 54

3.15.1 Data management 54

3.15.2 Data editing 54

3.15.3Data coding 55

3.15.4 Data entry 55

3.16 Multivariate normality 55

3.17 Data analysis (quantitative) 55

3.18 Data analysis (qualitative) 56

3.19 Ethical consideration 56

CHAPTER FOUR

DATA PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION ..........................58

4.0: Introduction 58

4.1 Test of normality 58

4.2: Socio-demographic data of the Respondents of the first questionnaire 59

4.3 Availability of counseling among the vocationally tr?ined graduates 61

4.4 Self employment uptake among the vocational training graduates 65

4.5 Effect of Psychological attributes mentoring in raising the self efficacy, self motivation, and self awareness of vocational graduates 66

4.5.1 Hypothesis testing 69

4.6 The preferred counseling strategy among the experimental group 70

4.7 Summary of findings 72

4.8 Qualitative data analysis 74

4.9 Interview analysis of counselors on students’ uptake 87

4.10 Interview analysis 89

4.11 Follow up study 93

CHAPTER FIVE 96

DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 96

5.0 Introduction 96

5.1 Discussions 96

5.1.1 Background Information 96

5.1 .1.1 Gender of the respondents 96

5.1 .1.2 Age of the respondents 97

5.1 .1.3 Area of specialization 97

5.1.1.4 Residential location 97

5.1 .1.5 Parents’ Highest level of education 98

5.1 .1.6 Institution graduated 98

5.1.2 Availability/awareness of counseling services 98

5 1 .3 Attitude of the Vocational the graduates towards knowledge and skills acquired 100

5.1.4 Self employment uptake among the vocational trained graduates 101

5.1.5 Effect of psychological attributes mentoring using counseling strategies in raising self efficacy, self motivation, and self awareness 102

5.1.6 The preferred and most effective counseling strategy among the graduates 104

5.2 Conclusion 105

5.3 Recommendations 106

5.4 Area of future research 107

References 108

APPENDICES~ 123

APPENDIXI Attitude Up-take Questionnaire 123

APPENDIX2: Counselling Up-take Questionnaire 126

APPENDIX 3:Demographic characteristics of the respondents 130

APPENDIX 4:lnterview transcript (Counselor 1) 131

APPENDIX 5: Interview (Employer of Vocational graduates 1) 139

APPENDIX 6: Interview transcript (Staff ministry for higher education, (1) Kano) 142

APPENDIX 7: Interview (Vocational graduates 1st) 146

APPENDIX 8:lnterview 2 (Vocational graduate) 160

APPENDIX 9:Informed consent form 167

APPENDIX 10: Kano State Map, Nigeria 168