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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