Abstract

Technical Education programmes at university level involve an effective interaction among the lecturer, the student and the environment. The environment which includes the physical facilities enables the lecturer to attain cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domain objectives. These traits could only be attained if the lecturer adopts instructional approaches that effectively associate with the use of physical facilities. However, doubts have been raised over the adequacy and effective utilization of physical facilities for the attainment of these educational objectives. This study therefore was designed to determine the level of availability of physical facilities, their utilization and what instructional approaches, given available physical facilities, would be suitable for the attainment of educational objectives in the programmes of Technical Education. To carry out the study, three hypotheses were formulated. An instrument containing 213 items was developed and used to obtain data from a population of 40 lecturers in three universities offering Technical Education programmes in Edo and Delta states of Nigeria. Frequency count, mean, percentage and National Universities Commission standard requirements were used to answer hypothses 1&2, while the analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used in testing hypotheses 3, at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed among other things that physical facilities are inadequately provided for instructional purposes as only 22 physical facility items (24%) out of the 161 presented in the list were found in adequate quantity in these universities. Physical facilities were also rarely utilized as only 77, representing 48% of the 161 physical facility items were often utilized for instructional purpose. Based on these findings, recommendations were made for universities to provide and effectively utilize physical facilities, as well as adopt the listed instructional approaches for the attainment of the domains of educational objectives. Suggestions were also made for further studies on the utilization of physical facilities for the attainment of education objectives.

Key words: Standard attainment, technology education, facility utilization.