Evaluation of Practical Skills Possessed by Woodwork Graduates of Technical Colleges in Niger State, Nigeria

The study identified practical skills possessed by woodwork graduates of Niger state technical colleges in using woodworking machines, hand tools and consumables. Three research questions were answered and two hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. A survey research design was adopted for the study. A structured questionnaire was used to gather data from one hundred and two respondents. Simple random sampling was applied to identify the study sample. Mean rating was used to answer research questions, t- test statistics was used to test the hypotheses. Cronbach Alpa Formula was used to determine reliability coefficient of the instrument. The reliability coefficient of the instrument was found to 0.81. The findings of the study showed that Woodwork graduates of technical colleges in Niger State used all the woodworking machines listed except band saw machine, tenoning machine, mortiser and thicknesser. They used all the hand tools such as hammer, screw driver, hand plane, electric jig saw, scraper, pincer, plier, try square and spanner. It was recommended that State Government should provide modern machines for improving practical skills of woodwork students and Woodwork teachers should teach students how to apply formica on wood surfaces.