A Comparative Study of Vocational and Traditional Courses in

Relation to Self-Efficacy and Hope

Nisha Jyani

1,*

and Anjana Dudy

Chaudhary Devi Lal University, Sirsa, Haryana, India

Protection Officer, Women and Child Development Department, Haryana, India

Keywords: Self-Efficacy, Hope, Vocational Education, Skill Development.

Abstract: Across the world the debate about the importance of vocational education has been going for decades. The

convenience to vocational-education and skill development empowers men and women of all Age-groups

across urban and rural areas and gives the chances and assistances of initial and lifelong learning. The

vocational-education courses trained the students in technical skills and prepare them for dedicated jobs. In

India, there is a great need of vocational education which improves job stability as it is very low as compared

to higher education in traditional courses. The present study compares the vocational and traditional course

in relation to self-efficacy and hope. A total of 80 students of vocational and traditional courses are being

taken as sample for this research. Self-efficacy and hope scale used as tool in research. The result shows that

there is a significant positive relation among vocational courses in relation to hope as compared to traditional

courses and non-significant relation to self-efficacy.

1 INTRODUCTION

For a nation building, education plays a key role as it

provides proper knowledge and proper skills to

children. Education is the only means for progress

and growth of a nation. Vocational education is one

of the types of education and is need of the hour as it

is related to particular work which helps a student

more efficient and self-sustaining. Vocational

education includes all courses from technical courses

to handicraft courses like painting tailoring knitting

etc. Basically education gives direction to meet the

financial needs of the society (Kaushik, 2014).

Vocational education is also named as vocational

training. Vocational training is basically a plan of

action that prepares children for a particular

occupation or job. Formal vocational education is a

structure program conducted by organization which

on completion provides degrees, certificate and

diplomas to the learners from a Government

recognized, Public or private sectors. In non-formal

vocational education, a person gets vocational

education through ‘Hereditary’ to carry out his/her

ancestral business.

In today’s generation purpose of education is not

just getting a job. To cope up in today’s competitive

world, it is necessary to be perfectly skilled and self-

resilient. The vocational education and skill

development empowers all Age-groups across urban

and rural areas. Vocational education empowers

youth to accomplish their goals of earning a

livelihood and living a respectable and dignified life

Given that it provides training for specialized

occupations and skills, vocational education is now in

high demand. Vocational training develops a highly

trained individual who is required by the occupation

and pays very well to retain that individual. It aids

someone in doing their job more effectively.

Vocational education frequently piques students'

interests’ more than traditional schooling.

Additionally, it offers those who somehow missed

their official education a chance to study. It provides

chances for work in rural regions. Vocational abilities

also enable a person to perform better while applying

for jobs abroad. In India, typical vocational training

programmes include those in cooking and baking,

makeup and beautician training, mehandi (henna)

design, sewing, stitching, and tailoring.,

woodworking and carpentry training, jewelry

designing courses, home appliance repair technician

training., mobile, laptop and computer repair training,

soap and detergent making laundry and dry

cleaning ,shoemaking and repair training, soft toy

962

Jyani, N. and Dudy, A.

A Comparative Study of Vocational and Traditional Courses in Relation to Self-Efﬁcacy and Hope.

DOI: 10.5220/0012532800003792

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies (PAMIR 2023), pages 962-966

ISBN: 978-989-758-687-3

making, pottery, ceramics and clay classes,

beekeeping training, horticulture ,sericulture

(Silkworm farming) training ,plumbing, masonry and

electrical training, welding training, medical lab

technician courses, Physiotherapy courses.

Vocational education is a part of education

wherein emphasis is laid on preparation and

participation in occupations. Vocational education

prepares students for occupations that do not require

a university degree as it teaches the art of doing a

work proficiently. The main goal of vocational

training is to enable individuals to achieve greater

independence, make choices that will improve their

understanding of real life, increase their level of

personal liberty, and access to other information

sources in addition to equipping them with the skills

necessary to deal with written words in daily life.

Hope is basically a feeling of desire for a

particular thing to achieve. Hope is a very powerful

word. Hope is a practice that involves the act of

setting goals and working toward them with purpose.

As Wikipedia states “Hope is an optimistic state of

mind that is based on an expectation of positive

outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in

one's life or the world at large”. Being hopeful can

improve your health and relationships. Hope is also

an emotional state. Hope is a fundamental knowledge

that is a solution of every problem or difficulty. Hope

has been considered as a positive cognitive state.

Hope equates with the explanation of achievement of

goal depending upon person’s abilities. Therefore it

is contingent upon one’s intrinsic potential. Hope is a

cognitive state which comes after a feeling of

feebleness.

There are some psychologists who ensured that

hope has both emotional as well as cognitive

components. Hope accompanies the feelings of

courage and confidence leading to a strong

motivation to assert oneself with cognition to reach

the goals in future. Indeed, hope has been considered

as a combination of emotion and cognition.

Self-efficacy means the capability to execute the

specific task by oneself. Self-efficacy means to have

confidence in his or her own capacity to perform

better in particular task (Cherry, 2022). The thought

“I think I can” is somewhere related to self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is essentially a person's ability to carry

out a specific task. Self-efficacy refers to a person's

capacity to manage their own behaviour. Self-

efficacy is the belief that one can perform at a given

level and exert control over unfavourable

circumstances in one's life. Their self-efficacy beliefs

affect a variety of aspects, including how individuals

think and act.The degree of self-confidence a person

has in their capacity to execute certain tasks linked to

their line of work is known as self-efficacy. Self-

efficacy is the degree of assurance someone have in

their ability to execute a task. People frequently shun

jobs that need them to have low confidence and risk

failure in favour of those that require them to have

high confidence (Hong et al., 2021).

Across the world the debate about the importance

of vocational education has been going on for decades.

Vocational education and skill development are

interrelated to each other. Vocational-Education is the

primary source of employment for most of the youth.

The convenience to vocational-education and skill

development empowers men and women of all Age-

groups across urban and rural areas and gives the

chances and assistances of initial and lifelong

learning. Vocational- education and skill

development empower youth to achieve their goals of

earning a livelihood and living a respectable and

decorous life. The vocational-education courses

trained the students in technical skills and prepare

them for dedicated jobs. In India, there is a great need

of vocational education which improves job stability

as it is very low as compared to higher education in

traditional courses.

2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A study on vocational education in higher secondary

schools was done by Grover S. et al. in 2005. The

effectiveness and current state of vocational

education programmes were investigated by the

researcher. The research was descriptive in nature.

The Bhopal district's ten vocational higher secondary

schools were chosen as the sample. 100 students from

the 11th and 12th grades were chosen at random to

form the sample. Interviews, schedules, the attitude

scale, and other data collection techniques were

employed. The study's findings offered a number of

recommendations for enhancing the state of

vocational education as it is currently being delivered

in Bhopal District's higher secondary schools.

In West Bengal, Biswas, R. (2018) investigated

how vocational and technical education and skill

development contributed to Muslim women's

empowerment. Secondary sources were used to

gather the data, including different books, research

articles, periodicals, research journals, electronic

journals, and reports of the Vocational and Technical

Educational and Training. The investigator

discovered that Madrasas did not offer vocational and

technical education, which results in a dearth of

prospects. But in schools, vocational and technical

A Comparative Study of Vocational and Traditional Courses in Relation to Self-Efﬁcacy and Hope

963

education is introduced in the ninth through the

twelfth grades. Additionally, it is discovered that the

State's vocational and technical education and

training colleges lack the ability to educate women

separately.

Research on the predictors of students' interest in

Technical and Vocational Education and Training

(TVET) programmes among school scholars was

completed in Pakistan by Azeema N. et al. in 2021.

386 students from Pakistani educational institutions

made up the sample. There were three active variables.

The sum of the research factors significantly aided

61.2% of students' interest in the TVET programme.

The study came to the conclusion that students'

interest in the TVET programme was highly

influenced by their occupational self-efficacy. The

findings revealed that intercession was thought to

increase school students' attentiveness to think about

professional self-efficacy.

Academic self-efficacy was researched by Hong

et al. (2021) in relation to the interaction between

school and workplace engagements. The study found

that whereas corporate involvement was favourably

correlated with the alleged ease of residencies, school

engagement did not significantly correspond to

academic self-efficacy.

The connection between academic self-efficacy

and job adaptability was researched by Zeng et al. in

2022. The study used two possible mediators to

examine the relationship between hope, future work

self, and life fulfilment. A sample of 635 Chinese

students from a vocational high school was used for

the research. The findings indicate that academic self-

efficacy and job adaptability served as a mediator

between the impacts of optimism and life satisfaction.

Along with Hope, academic self-efficacy,

professional adaptability, and future work self were

all positively correlated with life satisfaction. Greater

career adaptability was linked to optimism and a

clearer sense of one's future professional self, both of

which were related to academic self-efficacy.

According to the findings, greater life satisfaction

was connected with higher academic self-efficacy.

However, men tend to account for more optimism,

greater career flexibility, and higher academic

achievement, self-efficacy, and sophisticated life

satisfaction than females.

3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

To find out the comparison between students of

traditional (Graduate) courses & students of

Vocational courses in relation to Self-efficacy.

To find out the comparison between students of

traditional (Graduate) courses & students of

Vocational courses in relation to hope.

3.1 Hypothesis

4.1 There is positive relation among vocational

courses in relation to self-efficacy as compared to

traditional (Graduate) courses.

4.2 There is positive relation among vocational

courses in relation to hope as compared to traditional

(Graduate) courses.

3.2 Sample

Sample for the present study was drawn from various

public and government schools of Sirsa district of

Haryana. A total of 80 participants (40 males and 40

females) were selected randomly from Graduate

courses and Vocational courses of the educational

institutions about equal number of participants were

selected from Science, commerce and arts streams.

They participants were belonging to middle class

families and their academic atmosphere may be

treated as homogeneous. The selected sample covers

all walk of society.

3.3 Measures

The GSE measures general self-efficacy:- The GSE

scale was created by Matthias Jerusalem and Ralf

Schwarzer in 1979 and adapted in 26 additional

languages by a number of co-authors. It evaluated a

broad logic of perceived self-efficacy to determine

how to deal with minor irritations on a daily basis as

well as suffer from all kinds of upsetting life activities.

This 4-point scale had 10 elements and was one-

dimensional. The final composite score, which ranges

from 10 to 40, is determined by adding up the scores

for all 10 elements. The majority of Cronbach's alphas

were in the high.80s, with values ranging from.76

to.90.

The Adult Hope Scale is as follows: Snyder et al.

created this scale in 1991 to assess people'

perspectives on hope. Eight hope items and four filler

things made up the scale. The subjects are required to

respond using a Likert scale with a range of 1 for

obviously false to 4 or 8 for definitely truthful on a 4-

point or 8-point scale, respectively. Out of these two

domains, four items—the agency, which refers to the

overall effective sense of goal related to determining

the past, present, and future, and four items—reflect

the pathways, which refers to cognitive assessments

of people's capacity to find solutions to enormous

PAMIR 2023 - The First Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies- | PAMIR

964

problems and ways of achieving the goalmouths. The

final four questions are filler and are not used to

determine scores. The paths and agency components

are used to compute hope. The maximum possible

score is 48. The Cronbach's alpha values were

between.74 and.84. Alpha ranges from 0.71 to 0.76

for the agency subscale and from 0.63 to 0.8 for the

pathway subscale. The internal consistency and

temporal stability of the Hope Scale are sufficient.

4 ADMINISTRATIONS OF THE

STUDY

After receiving approval from the institutes in each of

their different educational institutions, the subjects

were contacted one by one for the data collection.

First, the investigator establishes a good rapport with

the subject in order to foster a welcoming

environment where they will feel at ease and provide

an honest and sincere response. They received

assurances on the confidentiality, allowing them to

respond without doubt. After giving the candidates

instructions, the assessments were first given in a

small group setting. Only the investigator and

applicants were present in the classroom during the

exam monitoring. The following instructions were

given when the participants were at ease and ready to

respond: "You will be given two forms with specific

questions regarding your personal data and some

questions relating to self-efficacy and hope. Your

response must be based on your initial selection. Both

forms must be filled out quickly and should take 5–

10 minutes to finish. Your invaluable assistance and

integrity were unwaveringly required for the success

of the current study. According to the guidelines in

their respective booklets, both tests were scored.

5 SCORING OF THE TEST &

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

Both tests were scored strictly in accordance with the

instructions provided in their respective booklets. The

researcher makes analyses on various types of scores

available so that interpretations can be made using the

proper statistical procedures. SPSS is used to assist

with the analysis. The collected data were prepared

for t-testing and descriptive analysis. Results and

Discussion

The present data offered an opportunity to

examine differences as per vocational courses and

traditional courses on the measures of self- efficacy

and hope. For this t-test was applied on the data on 40

students of vocational courses and 40 students of

traditional courses participants. Results of t-test along

with means and SDs of each group are presented in

Table 1. The t-ratio of 1.99 and 2.64 is statistically

significant at .05 and .01 probability level,

respectively.

Table 1: Mean, SD and ‘t’-value for both vocational and

traditional courses groups on study measures.

Variables Students of

vocational

courses (N-40)

Students of

traditional

courses (N-40)

Valu

Significan

Level

Mea

SD Mea

1 SELF-

EFFICAC

71.4

12.9

66.6

13.9

1.60 .116 (NS)

2 HOPE 53.6

6.12 43.5

5.22 7.96 .001

An inspection of Table-1 reveals that significant

differences exist on the measure of hope. It may be

perused from Table-1 that mean scores of students of

vocational courses and students of traditional courses

are 53.65 & 43.52 on hope and 71.4 & 66.63 on self-

efficacy, respectively. The difference between

vocational courses and traditional courses students

was found to be statistically significant on hope. The

t-ratio equals to 7.96, which is significant at .01

probability level. On hope, students of vocational

courses have scored significantly higher than students

of traditional courses whereas on self-efficacy found

non-significant difference among students of

vocational courses than students of traditional courses.

The t-ratio being 1.60 (p = .116), it is non-significant.

6 CONCLUSION

According to the study's findings, there is a

statistically significant difference between students

enrolled in traditional courses and those doing

vocational courses. Conclusion: Students who enrol

in vocational programmes have higher future

expectations than those who enrol in traditional

programmes. These results help broaden perceptions

of the variables influencing vocational high school

students' effectiveness and enhance academic

implications on career flexibility. Self-efficacy is

frequently discussed in terms of academic self-

efficacy in academic settings (Honicke et al. 2016,

Schunk et al. 2002), and it has been linked to

academic success (Honicke et al. 2016, Brouwer et al

A Comparative Study of Vocational and Traditional Courses in Relation to Self-Efﬁcacy and Hope

965

2016). Males expressed more hope, more academic

self-efficacy, and higher life happiness than females

(Zeng et al., 2022). More academic self-efficacy was

also associated with higher life satisfaction.

According to Kelly et al. (2009), many vocational

high school students have low levels of self-efficacy

and self-esteem. In the end, it is determined that

vocational course students are more effective and

hopeful than regular course students.

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