Educators’ Attitude to Teaching and Preference of Entrepreneurial Expression Options from Programme of Studies

Abstract

Accredited academic programmes suggest the existence of social needs and complementary programmes of studies, which if properly implemented, should produce manpower needed by the society through entrepreneurial expression options which would be easily identifiable by learners. However, the most common characteristic of the entrepreneurship development programmes in tertiary institutions in Nigeria is the focus on entrepreneurial expression options from common local trades or craft businesses outside students’ programs of studies. This suggests an under-exploitation of the potentials of programmes of studies to generate entrepreneurial expressions options for students and reduces the justification of such programmes. In the light of this, survey research design was employed to investigate the relationship between teachers’ attitude to teaching and preference of entrepreneurial expression options from student’s programmes of studies. The population for the study comprised of 250 entrepreneurship educators in Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Abeokuta. Structured questionnaire was used to elicit data from a sample size of 100 educators, selected through simple random sampling techniques. The data were analyzed with the aid of descriptive and inferential statistical techniques. The analysis showed a weak but significant positive relationship between professional attitude to teaching and preference of entrepreneurial expression options from the student’s programme of study (r = 0.310, p < 0.01). This suggests that the more professional educators are likely to prefer generating entrepreneurial expression options from student’s programme of studies. It was therefore recommended that educators should cultivate a more professional attitude to teaching, especially teaching entrepreneurship. Teachers should teach all their courses entrepreneurially such that it could be easy for the learners to generate entrepreneurial expression options from their chosen programme of studies, if only to justify the running of such programmes.

Keywords: Attitude to Teaching, Entrepreneurial expression, Curriculum, Educators, Programme of Studies