Experiences of Adult Educators in Selecting Appropriate Teaching Methods in Engineering Courses at TVET Colleges in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study’s sought to identify and fix problems with teaching strategies used in engineering courses at a TVET college in South Africa’s Mpumalanga area. A Phenomenological, explorative, and descriptive research approach was used to capture the experiences of educators in choosing effective teaching approaches. Convenience sampling was employed to select 10 educators who participated in two Focus Group Discussions in an endeavor to collect qualitative data. These discussions were conducted through the lenses of Albert Bandura’s social learning theory. Two audio recorders were used to capture the debates, thereafter verbatim transcribed. A computerized software called NVivo was used to do content analysis and theme analysis on the gathered data into manageable themes and sub-themes. Subsequently, the findings revealed the following five themes: preferred teaching methods, the effectiveness of teaching methods, the relationship between teaching methods and pass rate, assessing teaching and learning outcomes, and factors influencing adult learners’ performance: however, by the scope of this article only three were discussed in the forthcoming paragraphs. These themes demonstrated that some engineering educators struggle to choose the best teaching strategies which meet industrial skills requirement. Thus, the authors advise industry and TVET colleges to work together so that educators can teach adults the essential engineering skills.