Covid-19 Pandemic Challenges for Technical-Vocational Education

Challenges of technical-vocational students during the Covid-19 pandemic, when unidentified and unanswered, can result in detrimental outcomes and incompetent students. This paper presents the challenges for technical-vocational students during the Covid-19 pandemic. Phenomenology was used to gather the data from one Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with five participants and one Key Informant Interview (KII) participant from the sophomore and junior students of technical-vocational education classes in the University of Southeastern Philippines, Obrero Campus, Davao City. Another two KII participants, freshman, and junior students, from technical-vocational education institutions in Davao City. Results revealed that technical-vocational students faced challenges with intermittent internet connectivity, limited financial resources, uncertainty about the future, lacking resources, lack of experiential learning, frequent power outage, lacking self-motivation, unable to manage time, ambient noise, poor response from instructors, unhealthy mental state, too much gadget exposure, busy with household chores, lacking computer skills, and neglectful instructor, technical issue, and lacking in-person interaction. Moreover, these challenges of technical-vocational students have been coped with through resourceful individuals, nurturing spiritual faith, being able to organize tasks, tending to socialize, being able to think positively, fostering mental and physical health, engaging in recreational activities, fostering self-motivation, adaptable to the current situation, determined to finish studies and sentimental feeling towards family. The researcher found that the lack of hands-on learning increases the challenges for students investigating these challenges. The author intended to help students address these problems by developing an efficient intervention.