Parental socio-economic-status as predictor of vocational aspirations of secondary school students in Nigeria: Implications for peace, curriculum planners and special educators

The quantitative study adopted ex-post–facto research design. Two research questions and one hypothesis were used for the study. Sample was 400 students from 20 schools in Nigeria, including students with special needs. Instrument for data collection was a questionnaire. Research questions were analyzed with mean and standard deviation, while analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypothesis. Findings of the study showed that parental socio-economic status is not a strong indicator of vocational aspirations of secondary school students. It was recommended that as educational level of individuals influences their reasoning and how they affect those under them, life - long learning campaigns should be intensified to get students including those with special needs enlightened especially in choice of vocations

Validation of coronavirus-2019 phobia scale using preschool practitioners in urban and rural communities in Nigeria Implication for educational sociologists

Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) emerged in December 2019, causing significant changes in people’s social lives and other human activities. The outbreak halted educational activities throughout the world. The Nigerian experience was unique in that most people were skeptical about the pandemic’s existence. This practice contributed to the Nigerian people’s fear of the COVID-19 outbreak. However, in Nigeria, there has never been a validated or established Covid-19 phobia scale, necessitating this study. This study was a pure validation study on COVID-19 phobia scale (C19PS). The study area was south-east states and a sample of 386 preschool practitioners in urban and rural communities of South East States, Nigeria participated in the study. The eligibility criteria include being a preschool teacher and demonstrating signs of COVID-19 phobia. The validation of the C19PS was done by subjecting the data gathered to principal axis factoring analysis with varimax rotation. The model fit for the data was tested using root mean square error of approximation and comparative fit index. It was found that the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value of .845 for the measure of the adequacy of the sample size. There was also a significant Bartlett’s test of sphericity (P<.05). This implies that the correlation matrix for the C19PS is not an identity matrix. It was revealed that C19PS had good overall reliability (a=.896) and model fit (Root mean square error of approximation=.042, comparative fit index=.943) in a sample of Nigerian preschool practitioners. As a result, C19PS was recommended as a trustworthy tool for identifying persons who suffer from COVID-19 phobia.https://www.journals.elsevier.com/medicineam2023Science, Mathematics and Technology Educatio