This study investigated the ?Effects of Practice-Based Inquiry Cycle on the Performance of Colleges of Education (Technical) and Polytechnics Students in Building Technology in Nigeria" Specifically the study; determined the effect of PBI Cycle on the general performance of Building Technology Students; ascertained the effect of PBI Cycle on Performance of the students in Building Technology Concepts; examined the effect of PBI Cycle on Building Technology Students in affective task performance in Building Technology; found out the effect of PBI Cycle on Building Technology Student in Hands-on task performance in Building Technology and compared the effects of PBI Cycle on Performance of Building Technology Students between Colleges of Education and Polytechnics in Nigeria. Five research questions and five null hypotheses were developed; literatures on learner-centered principles which are synonymous with the PBI were reviewed. Quasi experimental design with pre-test, post-test and control groups was used. The population consisted of 645 NCE II Technical students in the 2014/2015 academic session from the four purposefully selected institutions. Intact class sizes were used as the samples that received the treatment. One hundred and twenty (120) subjects were purposely selected based on full participation during treatments, thirty subjects each from the institutions. This number is adequate for analysis in an experimental research. The instrument used for data collection was Practice-Based Inquiry Student Test (PBIST) which contained 70 adapted NABTEB items in building technology, which measured performance in building technology concepts, affective task performance in building technology and hands-on task performance skills in building technology. The PBIST was validated by experts, trial tested and subjected to reliability test using PPMC and a value of 0.84 was obtained as the reliability index. Collated results were analysed using descriptive statistics, the five null hypotheses were tested using independent sample t-test at 0.05 level of significance. Hypotheses one, two, three and four were rejected because, all the p-values were less than the Alpha values , while hypothesis five was retained because the p-value was higher than the Alpha value at 95% confidence level. The findings revealed significant effect of the PBI on the performance of students in building technology concepts, affective performance tasks and hands-on task performance amongst others. The study recommended a paradigm shift to learner-centered instructions in the institutions, the injection of the PBI in teaching building technology and suggested the replication of the study in the complementary trade's subjects of the NCE (Technical) programme in Nigeria, and by implication NCCE and NBTE could use the finding during periodic curriculum reviews