An examination of the teaching of motor vehicle technology in colleges in the north east of England

Abstract

The main purpose behind this work was to try and establish why so many motor vehicle students in the North East of England, having embarked on a course of study, fail to successfully complete it. Briefly, the correlated information indicates:-(a) Students who found their way into the motor industry as apprentices had not, in general, been given sufficient careers advice, either at home or from outside agencies.(b) It was also apparent that many of the students taking part in this work had obtained their apprenticeships by what can only be described as 'chance factors'. There is little evidence to support the view that 'constructive selection' is practised in the motor industry.(c) It was discovered that those students who had been selected for technician courses, primarily because of their superior mathematical ability over their craft counterparts, were far less likely to have had previous employment, and were less likely to leave their college course prematurely.(d) The majority of students taking part showed a willingness to participate in college administration, had very definite opinions on their lecturers and on the way courses should be organised and presented to them, and were far more constructive about these matters than lecturers anticipated,(e) Lecturers, even when given clear definitions of intellectual levels, found it difficult to place specific objectives within these levels, particularly at the higher grades. Nevertheless even accepting a certain amount of confusion concerning the correct intellectual levels of objectives, the results obtained from student evaluation tests were encouraging. The indicants were that specific objectives when used for lesson presentation and/or revision purposes enabled the students to score significantly higher than those students who had been taught and had revised in the traditional way.