Instructional Approaches, Entrepreneurial Competencies Development and Business Education Students’ Intention to be Self-Employed after Graduating from Degree Awarding Institutions in Rivers State

Abstract

This study investigated instructional approaches, entrepreneurial competencies development and Business Education students’ intention to be self-employed after graduating from degree awarding institutions in Rivers State. Four specific purposes, three research questions and one hypothesis were posed to guide the study. Descriptive survey research design using quantitative approach was adopted for this study. The population and sample of the study was made up of 359 undergraduate final year Business Education students from four degree awarding institutions in Rivers State who offered Entrepreneurship Education during the 2020/2021 academic year. A researcher’s developed structured questionnaire was used for the study. The face validated instrument was subjected to reliability using Cronbach Alpha. The computation gave an average reliability index of 0.76 for the three clusters within the instrument. Only 342 copies of the instrument administered were successfully filled and retrieved from the respondents, this was made up of 95% of the entire number of copies administered. Data collected for the study were analysed using descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions. Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that instructional approaches used for Entrepreneurship Education are conventional approach and experiential approach. The results also revealed that Business Education students agreed to have developed entrepreneurial competencies after being exposed to entrepreneurship education. The results also revealed that to a high extent Business Education students exposed to EE intend to be self-employed after graduation and this was significantly predicted by the instructional approaches used for EE and the entrepreneurial competencies developed by Business Education students. Based on the findings, the following recommendation was among others, that Centre for Entrepreneurship Development in degree awarding institutions in collaboration with Entrepreneurship Educators should provide opportunity for Business Education students to exploit adding value to local products through innovative competition as this will go a long way to stimulate their interest in taking risk and learning through fun.