Need Assessment of Developing Vocational and Skill Virtual Education in Mazandaran Province

This study was done to investigate influential factors in developing vocational and skill virtual education approach from the point of views of teachers and principals of vocational and technical high schools of Mazandaran. In this study based on constructional learning theory and Charies Wedemeyer theory on developing virtual vocational and skill education, factors affecting vocational and skill virtual education development in technological, cultural-social, pedagogical, economic and strategic aspects were identified and ranked by the use of Delphi method. The statistical population of the study was all teachers and principals in vocational and technical high schools in academic year of 2009-2010. A group of 35 teachers and 27 principals as members of panel were selected through step-wise clustering with respect to the research method. Two kinds of questionnaire for the students and the principals were prepared to explore developmental factors based on likert scale. The questionnaires were distributed in 3 stages. The reliability coefficient or Cronbach Alpha in all approaches was higher than 0.86. In the first and second stages of questionnaire distribution, the mean and Kendall’s coefficient of concordance of developmental factors were calculated. Then propositions which were larger than 4 and kendall’s coefficient larger than 0.5 were considered in the third stage. The data collected from the questionnaires in the third stage were used as responses to research questions. Friedman test and U Mann-Whitney test were used to analyze data. The main results are listed below: From teacher's point of view, social-cultural, technological, economic, pedagogic and strategic approaches were given priorities respectively. From the principal's point of view, technological, social-cultural, economic, strategic and pedagogic approaches were given priorities respectively. Finally, there was no meaningful difference in the mean of technological, social- cultural, pedagogical, economic and strategic approaches between the teachers and managers viewpoints.