Integrating Construction Craft Skill Acquisition in the Built Environment Curriculum using a Competence Based Education Approach

The relevance of the study is to enrich the built environment curriculum. The resolve of this study is to examine construction craft skill acquisition in the built environment using a competence based education approach. This study was carried out through a detailed literature base and questionnaire survey to elicit data on construction craft skills acquisition in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions. The targeted population comprised educationist and students in the faculty of environmental science. The study revealed that the students were mostly interested in acquiring three (3) major craft skills which include painting, tiling and landscaping craft skills. Acquiring construction craft skills will increase self-employment, increase business opportunities and increase employability of the students. In conclusion, major barriers in acquiring construction craft skills in tertiary institutions are lack of interest from the students and inadequacies in construction curriculum to cover the craft skills. The study developed a construction craft skills’ acquisition framework for the built environment curriculum. It was recommended that the government, National University Commission (NUC) and educators should integrate construction craft skills acquisition programmes in the built environment curriculum. Also, the National Vocational Qualification Framework (NVQF) policies for training and retraining indigenous artisans be extended to tertiary institutions to assess and license construction students in specific chosen trained construction craft skills. It is important to make the craft wage attractive in this quest