ABSTRACT
This study title the nexus between entrepreneurial education and business studies using Ijebu North local government as the case study for the research. It was determined to understand the connection that exist between education and business studies. Four research questions were formulated for the study and were tested at 0.05 level of significance using T-test statistical analysis. Literatures were reviewed as regards to the topic of the research, descriptive research survey design was adopted for the study. A well structured questionnaire was the main instrument for collecting the information needed, the analysis of the result revealed there is a huge significant connection between entrepreneurial education and Business Studies, there is a hugesignificant difference between the perception of business studies student and other students towards the need for entrepreneurial education, there is a hugesignificant difference between the male and female students perception of business studies towards the need for entrepreneurial education and also there is a significant difference between the perception of male and female students towards factors affecting the study of entrepreneur in secondary school .
The study recommends that Entrepreneurship studies involves diverse aspects hence a justification for its existence as a separate field of knowledge. Entrepreneurship education as a separate subject would facilitate teachers to motivate learners to start their own ventures rather than becoming employees which is synonymous with the goals of business studies.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Ohiwerei (2005) considers education as the development of person’s head, heart and hands for his self-fulfillment and optimum service to humanity. Hence, education has continued to be important and this is why there has been a growing concern in the last few years about the quality of education (including business education) that is offered in Nigerians schools. Business education is an aspect of the total education programme.
Aliyu (2006) describes business studies education as the intellectual and vocational preparation of people for earning a living in the contemporary industrial and business environment. If general education is seemed as a means of adjustment of the individual to his environment, then business education should simply be seen as a means of adjustment of the individual to his business environment. Business education as a course is been offered in the faculties of education of universities and colleges of education. Business studies education, either in the university or college of education affords its recipients teaching mastery in business subjects, necessary competencies in professional education, functional general education for life, skills to undertake research and additional learning experiences through in-service programmes. However, business studies education at all levels of education enables the recipients to:
· Develop basic skills for personal use in the future
· Acquire the basic knowledge and skills of business education
· Relate the knowledge and skills acquired to national development
· Develop basic skills in office occupation
· Prepare students for further training in business studies
· Provides orientation and basic skills with which to start a life of work for those who may not undergo further training (Igboke,2005:4).
As a result, in recent years teaching and learning methods have started to change in educational institutions in general and in business studies education in particular (Okwuanaso, 2004). Change is the only constant factor in life. This characterizes the dynamism in the competitive business environment. Education is seen as a document per excellence in preparing citizens for effective roles in the society. One form of education that equips its recipients to adapt to the changing world of work is business education.
According to the American Vocational Association (AVA) in Osuala (2009), business education is a programme of instruction which consist of two parts:
(a) office education; a vocational education programme for office careers through initial, refresher and upgrading education leading to employability and advancement in office occupation;
(b) general business studies; a subject to provide students with information and competencies which are needed by all in managing personal and business affairs and in using the services of the business world.
For Business studies to remain relevant in providing the needs of individuals and that of the society; it must embrace current trends in the academic and economic demands of the society. For our educational systems to deliver on their mandates, the quality of the training given to individuals passing through a course or the other should be such that can give adequate skills and information needed in the real world sense. If Business Education should serve this purpose of providing the needs of the learners and the society, there should be continuous review in its curriculum in order to ensure that the quality of education provided is in line with societal demands. This review of the curriculum will be to integrate new technologies that can help in passing the desired and required skills to the learner to make him/her employable and as well relevant in the ever-changing business environment.
Entrepreneurship education is more than educating people into forming new enterprises, or, any form of business. Broadly defined, entrepreneurship education is about educating the function of interaction occurring between the human nature and the environment (Jones, 2006). It is about development of learning skills centered on dealing with ambiguity, uncertainty and complexity. There are many definitions of the concept ‘entrepreneurship’ for instance, Putari (2006) observes that scholars had not been in agreement in their definitions of entrepreneurship and chronicled the definitions of entrepreneurship by various scholars (Brockhaus and Horwitz, 1986, Wortman, 1987; Gartner, 1988) Cantillon (circa 1730) views entrepreneurship as: “self employment of any sort”.
Joseph Schumpeter (1934) equated entrepreneurship with the concept of innovation and applied it to a business context, while emphasizing the combination of resources. Penrose (1963) views entrepreneurship as the activity that involves identifying opportunities within the economic system. While Leibenstein (1968, 1979) perceives entrepreneurship as involving “activities necessary to create or carry on an enterprise where not all markets are well established or clearly defined and/or in which relevant parts of the production function are not completely known”. Gartner (1988) conceives entrepreneurship as the creation of new organizations. Okpara (2000) defines entrepreneurship as the willingness and ability of an individual to seek out investment opportunities in an environment and be able to establish and run an enterprise successfully based on the identifiable opportunities. In addition, Nwachukwu (1990) regards entrepreneurship as a process of seeing and evaluating business opportunities, gathering the necessary resources to take advantage of them and initiate appropriate action to ensure success.
Dividing entrepreneurship into ‘self-directive’, ‘internal’, and ‘external’ entrepreneurship clarifies applications of school education. Self-directive entrepreneurship means the individual way to act generally in an entrepreneurial manner and taking responsibility for one’s life. Internal entrepreneurship refers to entrepreneurial activities as a member of an organization or as a worker in a firm. External entrepreneurship is related to the establishment and management of one’s own firm. In early and basic education the focus is on one’s own, self-directive entrepreneurship. In upper grades of comprehensive school, some elements of internal entrepreneurship can be added. In upper secondary and vocational education, some parts of external entrepreneurship can be included in the education. Even if the aim of entrepreneurship education in general education is clearly targeted at self-directed and internal entrepreneurship, in the background there is a wish to have as many students as possible to become adults that are also external entrepreneurs. So the long-term aim is that students would grow to be citizens creating work for themselves.
Basic education can create a good basis for the development of students’ entrepreneurial thinking. If this basis remains weak, it is difficult to compensate for these shortages later on in secondary or higher level education. It is clear that entrepreneurship education has to progress systematically through basic education. For instance, implementing some occasional visits to companies or theme days is not enough to bring sustainable results.
Education should be coloured by diverse challenges for students to be creative, innovative and independent. There should be a drastic change in education methodology in order to activate teachers and students to move from carefulness and security to courage, risk taking, and independent decision making; from resignation and withdrawal to initiatives, convincing, challenges, and involvement; from solitary hard work to team work, openness, and networking; from avoiding possible hazards to seeking opportunities. The recent development of society and industry has given birth to these changes above. They concern every citizen even if s/he is not planning an entrepreneurial career. Facts and phenomena are learnt best in their original contexts.
The most real learning environment for entrepreneurial education is everyday life (out-of-school), e.g. working life and industry, leisure and hobbies. Most of the contents and also methodological clues for entrepreneurial education are found there. This means that the organization of learning and the choice of problems handled should not be made only by the teacher. On the contrary, students should be encouraged and taught to observe and find them out by themselves. Working should lead learners to real entrepreneurial experiences; they should have opportunities to develop their creativity and design skills, make choices, take risks, cope with uncertainties and constraints, learn to commit themselves to the chosen aims. Over the past two decades, developments in the economic, social and technological environment have led to far reaching changes in the way organization operate. In particular, advances in Information Technology (IT) have assisted the emergence of new organizational forms, work practices and training methods.
Entrepreneurship education is an element that should play a critical role in higher education institutions but are mostly seen as playing in the modern knowledge economy. Through education, universities can enhance the awareness of entrepreneurial opportunities among scientists and engineers and equip them with skills to enhance their ability to start a business based on their scientific work. Again following the lead of American institutions, universities in the UK and Europe have initiated programs of entrepreneurship education at an increasing pace since the turn of the century, partially in response to policy incentives (McKeown, Julie, Cindy Millman, Srikanth Reddy Sursani, Kelly Smith and Lynn M. Martin., 2006 and Hannon 2007). Recent benchmarking surveys of entrepreneurship education programs in the UK (Botham and Mason 2007) and across Europe (NIRAS Consultants 2008) have attempted to identify common aspects and best practices of these educational initiatives. And Harding (2007)has tried to determine the impact of enterprise education on the new venture activities of university graduates.
The past two decades have witnessed significant growth in entrepreneurship education in most industrialized countries (Matlay and Carey, 2006). The number of entrepreneurship courses increased in the US tenfold in the period from 1979 to 2001(Katz, 2008) and investment in entrepreneurship programmes is still on the increase (Gwynne, 2008). The growth “can be seen as indicative of widespread governmental belief in the positive impact that entrepreneurship can have on the socio-economic and political infrastructure of a nation” (Matlay, 2008: 382). Public policy makers recognise the importance of entrepreneurship as promoter of economic development and hence support instruments like entrepreneurship education to increase entrepreneurial activity (Fayolle, Gailly, and Lassas-Clerc, 2006). By offering new entrepreneurship education programmes, the initiators follow “conventional wisdom” (Souitaris, Zerbinati, and Al-Laham, 2007): If you want to become an entrepreneur, you need to learn “how” first. Research has, to date, contributed to this belief and underlined the positive impact of entrepreneurship education (Chrisman, 1997; Peterman and Kennedy, 2003; Zhao, Seibert and Hills, 2005).
1.2 Objectives of the Study
The purpose of this study generally is to assess the nexus between entrepreneurial education and business studies. Specifically, the objectives are;
1. To determine the extent to which entrepreneurial education and business studies are connected.
2. The adequacy and competence of teachers available for business studies at secondary schools level in Ijebu North local government.
3. To determine the perception of business studies students and other subject students towards the need for entrepreneurial education in business studies.
4. To determine the perception of male and female students of business studies towards the need for entrepreneurial education.
5. To determine the factors affecting the study of entrepreneur in secondary school business studies curriculum.
1.3 Statement of the Problem
This study is of course significant, in this era of accelerated technological development; school certificate alone cannot solve the problem men face day-in day-out as to get a reasonable and satiable income to sustain life. Azih (2008) found that students offering business education in schools find it difficult to acquire the needed entrepreneur skills and competencies as a result of lack of adequate entrepreneurial knowledge in the school. This situation in the teaching and learning of business education has been of great concern to educators and the decline in students’ achievement may not be unconnected with the poor learning of entrepreneurial education. Accordingly, Dolor (2001) also noted that most business teachers have little or no knowledge of modern entrepreneurial skills themselves which has in one way or the other turn out to be major disadvantages to the students of business studies. The question to be asked is “Is there any lin k between entrepreneurial education and business studies” which is the main focus of this research work. To this end, there is the need to understand the nexus/connection/link between entrepreneurial education and business studies. A look at the nation’s schools may show that they are struggling with the knowledge of entrepreneur’s skills.
1.4 Research questions
The following research questions will guide this study;
1. Is there any connection/link between entrepreneurial education and business studies?
2. Is there any difference between the perception of business studies student and other subject students towards the need for entrepreneurial education?
3. Is there any difference between the male and female students of business studies towards the need for entrepreneurial education?
4. Is there any factor affecting the study of entrepreneur in secondary school business studies curriculum?
1.5 Research Hypothesis
H01: There is no significant connection between entrepreneurial education and business studies
H02: There is no significant difference between the perception of business studies student and other students towards the need for entrepreneurial education.
H03: There are no significant differences between the perception of male and female students of business studies towards the need for entrepreneurial education.
H04:There are no significant differences between the perception of male and female students towards factors affecting the study of entrepreneur in secondary school business studies curriculum.
1.6 Significance of the Study
This study is relevant, given the importance that entrepreneurship education has today in our environment and also in business environment. The number of entrepreneurship programmes offered is growing in spite of a lack of clear scientific answers regarding the impact of entrepreneurship education on its participating students. This study will elaborate in depth on the impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intention and its antecedents. The findings of this research would be of benefit to the authorities of education, the government and/or proprietors of the schools and of course other stakeholders especially researchers in business education and other related fields.
This study will provide facts and information on the level of availability of academic staff available for business studies of the secondary education in Ogun state and also it will provide facts on the connection between entrepreneurial education and business studies. This fact will enable the authorities of education to plan business studies curriculum (if need be), recruitment and employment policies such that more staff will be employed where inadequate and more content will be added to the subject content. Also, the findings of the study will no doubt, help the authorities of education to plan for the procurement of facilities and equipment where needed as well as update with the necessary state-of-the-art equipment for the entrepreneurial programme. Similarly, the government will be aware of the resources needed of the schools by virtue of the information that would be provided by the findings of this investigation. The awareness will enable the government to re-direct funds where needed.
Also, researchers and other stakeholders in business education and related fields will be provided with input materials, data, facts and ideas for other researches through the findings of this study. If all the necessary facilities and equipment are put place as recommended in this study, teachers and students will be motivated to teach and learn respectively of entrepreneurial education.
1.7 Scope of the Study
The study will be limited to Ogun State, while the sample for the study will be centered around the twenty (20) public secondary school in Ijebu North Local Government of Area of Ogun state.
1.8 Definition of Terms
Entrepreneurial education: it seeks to provide students with knowledge skills and motivation to encourage entrepreneurial success.
Business studies: is the study of that deals with the acquisition and development of skills and competencies, attitudes and attributes which are necessary for efficiency of the economic system.
Business environment: it the place where business transaction takes place.
Nexus: connection/links/similarities between two or more items/things.