4.5 Academic Factors Influencing Participation and Success in the TVET College
4.5.4 The influence of educational resources on Participation and Success
On the question, which required participants to outline the nature of resources provided by the college, the majority of the responses were in the affirmative, that is, participants were happy with the level of support they received from the college leadership and management.
One of the participants in this study was of the opinion that,
We are provided with textbooks, calculators, dictionaries and computers.
Access to the internet should be improved since at the moment we do not have full access to the internet to do research in subjects such as Economics, New Venture Creation and Financial Management (Ian).
Another participant, Robert, also corroborated the above observations by saying, In Accounting and Financial Management, lecturers were given Overhead Projectors (OHPs) so that it will be easy for them to explain accounting principles clearly to students. The students can see all the calculations projected on the board and we can also ask questions where we do not understand. Computers for Life Orientation help us to access the internet and calculators are useful for Accounting, Maths and Maths literacy.
Textbooks and dictionaries are useful in all subjects including English First Additional Language (EFAL) (Robert).
A participant in the research sample for this study also weighed in by saying,
The resources provided by the college are calculators, computers and books. Of late, the college also free WI-FI, which helps us to access information from the internet without buying data bundles. These resources are important because most of us come from poor families so we do not have the financial resources to buy the resources (Ngosazana).
The provision of the necessary and sufficient resources by the leadership and management of the TVET College under study showed a commitment to ensuring that college programmes are not stalled because of a lack of resources. While the provision of learning materials such as books, and ancillary tools such as calculators, computers and dictionaries was satisfactory some of the students decried a dire under-provision of internet facilities in the college. It can be argued that the non-provision of internet facilities can have ripple effects on students’
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participant and success in their training and education programmes. The fact that the college leadership is providing students with the necessary resources is quite an encouraging scenario, which has the potential to increase levels of participation and success in the college.
Resources such as books, calculators, computers and dictionaries are very important in ensuring that technical vocational education and training programmes in the college are accomplished. However, my experience as an educator in the TVET has shown that the provision of resources in the college is inadequate because sometimes some students spend the whole academic year without textbooks, which compromise the quality of learning in their academic programmes. Access to the internet is one other aspect of resource allocation, which is a challenge to the majority of the students. Although the college has installed WIFI around the college, access to the internet remains one of the greatest challenges in the college under study because students need to download information from a computer and print it out.
However, when they access information from their cell phones it is very difficult to print the information from their cell phones because these cell phones are not connected to printers.
One of the resources that has been highlighted by participants in this research is the provision of a library. The absence of a library creates a situation where students find it extremely difficult to research their assignments and ISAT projects, and this scenario leads to students performing poorly in their technical, vocational, education and training programmes. The only library that students in the TVET college can use is one that is provided by the municipality; however, the reading materials in this municipality library are not tailor-made to meet the academic needs of students pursuing their studies in the TVET college in Northern KwaZulu-Natal.
On the question, which expected participants to outline how they used these resources the majority of the participants, expressed satisfaction on how these resources helped them to do their work without facing challenges, which would militate against successful completion of assessment tasks. One of the participants said,
Yes, we have used the resources available in the college but I think the college should provide us with Ipads so that we are able to practice some of the work we are given during lectures, for example, Pastel Accounting (Prumel).
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The other participant also expressed satisfaction in the resources offered by the college but decried the quality and quantity of information in textbooks as well as from the internet. She said,
Yes, I have used textbooks and computers to do research for my assignments, calculators for solving Maths problems. But sometimes the information in the textbooks is not enough. You find that you are doing an assignment but the information in the textbook does not help you at all.
With the internet from the computers sometimes the information is too much and confusing (Zuzi).
The other participant answered the above question in more or less the same fashion but this participant was not happy about the absence of a library in the college. He had this to say,
Yes, I have used the textbooks and computers to research on my assignments and ISAT, dictionaries to find meanings of new words, especially in English improvement, but there need for the college to build a library to help us do extra research because sometimes the information in the textbooks is not enough (Dinesh).
The above responses from the participants confirm that they are issues which the college leadership and management is doing very well especially in terms of providing the necessary resources, but they are also areas where the leadership should evaluate with a view to establish the importance of such areas so that issues of student participation and success are enhanced effectively. In this vein, the college leadership should put in place processes and structures, which help students to make sense of the huge volumes of information from the internet. Encouraging lecturers to help students to summarise such huge volumes of information can do this. On the issue of sufficient information in textbooks, the leadership of the college should encourage lecturers to use a variety of textbooks because from the researcher’s experience at the college, most of the lecturers use just one prescribed textbook per subject. This does not bode well in situations where students are required to go through assessments, which cater for different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (1953), that is, from the knowledge, level, through to comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis to evaluation.
To explain educational outcomes Bourdieu (1973) specifies four generic types of capital:
cultural capital, social capital, economic capital and symbolic capital. Bourdieu (1973) coined
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the term cultural capital to describe the different tastes and habits of specific social classes, demonstrating how those characteristics reinforce power relationships between those who possess desirable cultural attributes and the institutions that reinforce them (Bourdieu, 1973;
1977; 1983). Bourdieu (1973) defined cultural capital as instruments for the appropriation of symbolic wealth socially designated as worthy of being sought and possessed. This wealth appears to belong to the whole society, accessible to all based on individual ability and effort, but social origins determine its appropriation. Thus, in this study participants who took part in this research might find it very challenging to access the different forms of capital due their socio-cultural and economic circumstances. Jones et al (2008) has consistently argued that viewing disadvantaged students as being under-prepared for tertiary education in certain respects is elitist and unhelpful, and that preparedness for tertiary education institutions should be considered. A study by Freeth and Ngidi (2006) found that although the institution had certain mechanisms and programmes in place to assist disadvantaged students, the more fundamental institutional transformation was necessary in order to meet the needs of these students. This implies that the college should transform itself, move away from a traditional way of doing things and move towards a model that help students to learn as well as developing critical thinking in students. The probable reason why students complain that textbooks do not sufficient information could be that these students have not been equipped with critical thinking skills and problem solving approaches which are capable of going beyond the textbook knowledge. The college leadership should wake up to this reality, if graduates from the TVET college system can contribute meaningfully to the socio-economic development of South Africa. The college leadership can also transform the way curriculum is implemented in the TVET College by providing library services because currently there is no functioning library in the college under study. Library services are important because they help students to study independently, and therefore, develop critical and problem-solving skills, which are essential to operate in a competitive global economy.