Students Awareness of Vocational Education and Provision of Strategies to Promote it رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

This study aims to identify the attitudes of students, their guardians and decision-makers toward vocational education, and, consequently, propose strategies and activities to raise societal awareness on the significance of vocational education that shall lead to promoting enrollment in the vocational system. In order to achieve the objective of this study, the researcher has defined his research questions to answer the following: “What are the attitudes of Grade 10 students towards enrollment in vocational education, from the viewpoint of the students, their families and decision-makers?” Furthermore, an attempt was made to study the effect of a number of variables on students’ attitudes towards vocational education, including: The impact of the student’s gender, place of residence, number of family members, the educational level of the family, and the average monthly income of the family. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, answer its questions, develop strategies, and identify the activities emanating from it, the researcher used the SWOT analysis methodology, which is a strategic analysis plan that includes elements of strength, weaknesses, identification of opportunities, and threats. The researcher used the descriptive and analytical approach as study tools, to build his strategies that contain a number of activities to raise students' professional awareness. In addition, the researcher supported his quantitative data he collected, with a number of qualitative analysis that were based on analyzing policies, plans and documents related to this topic. The sample of the pilot study consisted of 784 students from grade 10 inthe Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate during the academic year 2019-2020, as well as 490 of their families. At the same time, there were 28 responses from decision-makers on the study tools to identify the trends towards vocational education from their viewpoint. The X survey results showed that attitudes were generally positive from the viewpoint of students and decision-makers, but the analysis revealed that the practice of enrollment in vocational education was not significant, for reasons related to awareness of the work details of the system. Moreover, the reality analysis revealed a great interest amongst officials in increasing enrollment in vocational education, because of the importance in providing learners with practical skills that help them in obtaining work and contribute to reducing unemployment among young people. Accordingly, the government has adopted a comprehensive plan to develop the vocational and technical education work system at the national level. One of the most important policies in this field is to raise career awareness, and thus the activities proposed by the researcher came within the national trends in this field.