ABSTRACT
The
study examined effect of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial behavior
on secondary students in Rivers state. Four research questions and four
hypotheses guided the study. The population of the study consisted 237 public
secondary schools in twenty three education zones with student population of
118, 723. Based on students’ attendance register, a sample of 164 students from
eight (8) secondary schools in four education zones was drawn using the multi
stage sampling technique. Instruments used for data collection consists of
Students’ Adaptive Entrepreneurial Behavior Test (SAEBT) and Students’ Adaptive
Entrepreneurial Behavior Evaluation Scale (SAEBES). Data generated from trial
testing were analysed using Cronbach Alpha statistics and the overall
reliability index of 0.44 was obtained for the control group and the index of
0.79 for the experimental group. Mean and standard deviation were used to
answer the research questions while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to
analyse the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Results of the
hypotheses yielded a significant mean score difference between the control and
experimental group on all the sub-variables of entrepreneurial behavior.
Findings of the study indicate that entrepreneurship education has a far
reaching effect on entrepreneurial behavior when measured on opportunity
identification, conduct of feasibility study, writing of business plan and
business plan presentation to the audience. Based on the findings,
recommendations were made which include: that there should be prompt training
of entrepreneurship education teachers for secondary school education; that the
curriculum of secondary education be reviewed to include entrepreneurship
education as a compulsory subject.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Education plays a very important role in socio-economic development
including employment creation. With this fact, some African countries including
Nigeria have put in place innovative reforms to strengthen their education
systems. However, there is a limited progress in comparison with other nations
of the world. This may be contributed by insufficient understanding of the
positive effect that education can have on economic development (European
Commission, 2009). Based on that fact, education is defined as the process of
learning to live as useful and acceptable member of society. Thus, the
definition of education has two key components, namely usefulness and
acceptability. Usefulness may entail the process of converting a person from
being non-productive to become productive in a particular society and thus an
entrepreneurship education may serve the purpose. A key assumption underlying
this belief is that entrepreneurial skills and behaviours are not fixed
personal characteristics. They can be learned through education system using an
appropriate curriculum.
However, one of the main challenges facing Nigeria education system is
the appropriateness of educational package that can deliver on the skills
needed to boost entrepreneurial behaviour in order to deal with unemployment
issue. In attempt to address this challenge, Nigeria government introduced
entrepreneurship education in the secondary school curriculum. Supplementary
education policy reforms such as change in educational system from 6-3-3-4 to
9-3-4, curriculum review, teacher training and quality assurance were also put
in place. To ensure effective implementation of the policy reform, the Rivers
state government of Nigeria further declared
state of emergency in primary and secondary education. Based on that
development, secondary school students are assumed to be prepared for
entrepreneurship before and after graduation.
Entrepreneurship is the recognition of an opportunity to create value,
and the process of acting on the recognised opportunity, whether or not it
involves the formation of a new entity (Ulrich, 2006). In Ulrich’s definition,
opportunity identification and actions involved in realizing that opportunity
are crucial concepts in defining entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is also
described as a dynamic process of creating incremental wealth such as income
(Marques, 2010). According to Marques, incremental wealth is created by
individuals who assume major risks in terms of equity, time, and commitment in
providing additional value (innovation) and utility (satisfaction) to others.
For this study however, entrepreneurship refers to an individual’s
creative action (skill) of transforming ideas or opportunities into value for
self and others. This definition is considered in fewer than four dimensions.
First dimension of entrepreneurship is having the capacity to be innovative.
Innovativeness is depicted here as ability to generate better ideas that will result
in pursuing new opportunities or taking initiative to solve problem. The second
dimension is pro-activeness which indicates the stance of entrepreneurs towards
opportunities: encouragement and confidence in pursuing business opportunities.
The third dimension of entrepreneurship is the risk-taking and it involves the
determination and courage to make resources available for projects that have
uncertain future behavioural outcomes. The last dimension is the fact that
entrepreneurship can be learned through education.
Based on the definition of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education
refers to the process of imparting entrepreneurial skills for the purpose of
shaping learners’ behaviour towards opportunity maximisation within an environment.
The opportunities may include rendering service, providing goods, working for
others or even generating self -employment. Through entrepreneurship education,
students should attain competence that will enable them apprehend life
challenges in whatever form and take decisive steps to realize new
opportunities for meeting those challenges in all aspects (Ediagbonya, 2013).
Findings from various research works found that students can acquire
entrepreneurial skills through entrepreneurship education and those skills are
known to influence their entrepreneurial behavior (Ediagbonya, 2013; Katundu
& Gabagambi, 2014).
Entrepreneurship education curriculum provides opportunities for teachers
to focus on what to teach (objectives), how to teach (method), what to
emphasise (content) and what to assess (evaluation). However, other components
of entrepreneurship are anchored on the objectives. The objectives of
entrepreneurship education that are relevant in this study include: to enable
learners recognize business opportunities in their environment; to inculcate a
philosophy of turning ideas into actions; to equip learners with a range of
business skills in planning, organisation and financial literacy; to develop
learners in communication and presentation of business proposal; and to develop
learners in fundamental skills such as self-confidence, critical thinking,
creativity and problem solving. What distinguishes entrepreneurship education
from other forms of education is its emphasis on realization of opportunity and
innovative ways to exploit the opportunities.
Entrepreneurs and non entrepreneurs are identified by the extent they
identify ground-breaking opportunities in their immediate environments.
Secondary school students
should identify the enormous opportunities in their communities. However, lack
of skills, and cultural norms and values may hamper the development. The
researcher observed that to a greater or lesser extent, in just about every
culture in Rivers state, there are skeptical or even hostile attitudinal and
behavioural barriers to entrepreneurship. Hence, entrepreneurship education
should aim specifically at “young people, who are typically more open to
self-exploration and usually more willing to challenge new knowledge and societal
prejudice than are most adults” (World Economic Forum, 2009:30). However, going
by the conventional perspective which is growing and managing business,
entrepreneurship education for secondary students may be confronted with many
specific challenges. For example, teenage students are often not allowed to
start up their own businesses or may not have full control over their financial
situation. Furthermore, career choices may be part of some distant future for
teenagers. As a result, educational initiatives aimed at stimulating
entrepreneurship for career purposes may be perceived by teenagers as
irrelevant, or may be long forgotten by the time actual career choices have to
be made (Peterman & Kennedy, 2003). The question posed for this study is
then what entrepreneurial outcomes can be achieved with entrepreneurship
education among secondary students, and how?
As response to the above question, the European Commission (2015)
identified three broad outcomes which are usually triggered by entrepreneurship
education, namely, immediate or initial outcome, intermediate outcome and long
term outcomes. The immediate outcome is the concern of this study. It refers to
the short term influence or effect of an intervention (entrepreneurship
education) on learners which is measured in skills, attitude and behaviour.
Immediate outcome is usually linked to specific objectives of the intervention.
This study determined the....
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