Language-of-Instruction for Sustainable Development in Selected Vocational Education Centres; Facilitators’ and Participants’ Perspectives

Abstract

The appropriateness of the language of instruction to the particularities of the participants in a vocational education programme is crucial to its success as a means of achieving sustainable development at the individual and community levels. This descriptive survey was thus carried out to investigate facilitators’ and participants’ assessments of the appropriateness of the language of instruction practices in two vocational education centres, one in each of Ibadan and Ile-Ife of the southwestern part of Nigeria. The whole population of the facilitators and learners was used for the study, making a total of 174 learners and 5 facilitators from the two centres. Two researcher-designed questionnaires were used for data collection, one for the facilitators and the other for the participants. A researcher-constructed structured three-item interview guide was also used for qualitative data collection. The two instruments were administered by the researchers to the facilitators and participants respectively. The oral interview sessions were conducted with all that signified readiness to have their oral contributions recorded. The analyses of the collected data were done with frequency counts and percentages. The findings show a general preponderance of the use of English-Yoruba codemixing and codeswitching by the facilitators, occasional communication breakdown resulting from linguistic factors, and a variety of language-of-instruction preferences by the learners, among others. It is then recommended that vocational education providers in Nigeria should not consider any cost too high to ensure that all learners have access to vocational skill acquisition in their most preferred languages.