ASSESSMENT OF FUNCTIONAL LITERACY NEEDS AND ENRICHMENT INTERESTS OF COMMERCIAL DRIVERS IN NORTH-CENTRAL NIGERIA
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Date
2018
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UNIVERSITY OF ILORIN
Abstract
The general aim of literacy is to equip individuals with knowledge, attitudes, skills and values for personal, interpersonal and community development. Individuals are expected to use these attributes to acquire information, values and other skills that can enable them function more effectively and efficiently. Based on this key role of literacy, this study assessed functional literacy needs and enrichment interests of commercial drivers in North-central Nigeria. The objectives were to investigate: (i) their functional literacy needs; (ii) their enrichment literacy interests; and (iii) the influence of social demographic characteristics of ethnic background, age, religion, formal education and driving experience on their functional literacy needs and enrichment interests.
A descriptive research survey of the cross-sectional type was employed in this study. The population for this study was all the literate commercial drivers in Kogi, Kwara and Niger states. The target population was all inter-state literate commercial drivers in Kogi, Kwara and Niger states. Six hundred and sixty respondents were selected using incidental sampling technique. A researcher-designed questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents. The test-retest method of three-week interval was employed to determine its reliability and a value of 0.67 was obtained. Thirteen research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while ten hypotheses were tested with One-Way Analysis of Variance.
The findings of the study were that:
the commercial drivers in the North-central Nigeria needed functional literacy much for cultural (x ̅=3.30), civic (x ̅=3.25), economic (x ̅=3.38) and social (x ̅=3.31) development in all settings, with economic development (x ̅=3.38) more needed than the others;
the commercial drivers had moderate interest in enriching their prose (x ̅=3.12), document(x ̅=3.18) and quantitative (x ̅=3.28) literacy domains, with more interest in enriching their quantitative (x ̅=3.28) than document (x ̅=3.18) and prose (x ̅=3.12) literacy skills; and
ethnicity and driving experience did not influence their functional literacy needs, but age (F=4.68, p˂0.05), religion (F=13.27, p˂0.05) and formal education (F=5.03, p˂0.05) significantly influenced their functional literacy needs, while ethnicity (F=8.05, p˂0.05), age (F=8.46, p˂0.05), religion (F=14.01, p˂0.05), formal education (F=7.63, p˂0.05) and driving experience (F=5.76, p˂0.05)significantly influenced their enrichment literacy interests.
The study concluded that commercial drivers needed functional literacy more for their economic development than social, cultural and civic development; they also had moderate interest in enriching their quantitative literacy domain more than document and prose. The implication of these findings was that there was need to plan and organise functional literacy programmes for the drivers, especially for economic development and with regard to quantitative domain. The study recommended that a functional literacy programme be organised by adult literacy professionals for the commercial drivers, taking cognisance of their economic development and quantitative literacy domain. Also, other stakeholders such as the Federal Road Safety Commission should endeavour to discharge voluntary community service by organising a functional literacy programme for commercial drivers, taking into consideration their demographic characteristics of ethnic background, age, religion, formal education and driving experience.
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ASSESSMENT, FUNCTIONAL LITERACY NEEDS, ENRICHMENT INTERESTS, COMMERCIAL DRIVERS, NORTH-CENTRAL NIGERIA