Abstract

The study assessed the effect of constructivism instructional approach on teaching practical skills to mechanical related trade students in western Nigeria technical colleges. Elements of constructivism assessed include concept mapping, cooperative work skills and cognitive apprenticeship. Pretest, posttest experimental design with a non-equivalent control group was adopted for the study. A total of one hundred and six randomly selected year two students in mechanical related trades were drawn from four technical colleges spread across the south western Nigeria States. Forty six of these numbers were placed in the experimental group while sixty were placed in the control group. The research instruments developed, validated and used for data collection were the constructivism lesson plan, conventional lesson plan and the general metalwork achievement test (GMWAT). The GMWAT which was a 30 item objective questions with four options was administered on all the groups before the commencement of teaching (pretest). This was later administered as posttest on the students after the experiment. Three research questions were raised while two hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significant were used for the study. Frequency counts, mean and standard deviation were employed to answer the research questions while t-test and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were used to test the hypotheses. Preliminary results of findings showed a significant difference between the students taught with constructivism teaching approach and those in the control group. Significant difference does not exist between male and female students exposed to the constructivism approach. Recommendations and suggestions for further studies were advanced.

Key words: Constructivism, technical college, students, mechanical trades.