CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1Â Â BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The high proportion of jobless graduates in Nigeria is disconcerting and alarming. Over 90 institutions in the country generate thousands of graduates annually, of which only a number of them can be accommodated into the labor market (Ade, 2012). Therefore, entrepreneurial education was introduced in secondary and tertiary institutions to serve as a device to combat this issue of “unemployment”. This is because entrepreneurship education is a lifetime process, beginning as early as elementary school and going through all stages of education, including adult education. Hence, students are introduced to trade studies in the basic level, which helps them broaden their knowledge of entrepreneurship until they reach higher institutions. After graduation, it is assumed that at least a significant percentage of graduates should be able to acquire certain abilities that would allow them to exist as self-employed persons.
n light of the aforementioned, entrepreneurship education is now a core subject in Nigerian secondary schools, with the principal purpose of ensuring that each student has an opportunity to become an entrepreneur and each student is an architect of his or her fortunes or destiny. According to Nwosu and Ohia (2009), entrepreneurship education is that component of education which prepares an individual and establishes in the person the attitude to incur the risk of going into something new by employing the information and skills obtained in school. This implies that entrepreneurship education helps give students with information, skills, and desire to foster entrepreneurship in a range of situations. It creates the attitude and aptitude in a person to seek out investment possibilities in society and be able to start and operate an enterprise successfully based on recognizable opportunities (Fashusa, 2006).
Additionally, entrepreneurial education is in reality the core purpose of education. It is the development of expertise, skills, and attitude that allows the learners to perceive life difficulties in whatever shape they may take and to recognize new trends and chances for confronting those challenges in all facets of human existence. It is undoubtedly a significant resource for whole-life education. Entrepreneurship education, according to Akinseinde (2001), “is the act of providing people with the capacity to identify business opportunities and the insight, self-esteem, knowledge, and skills to act on them. It entails the turning of an idea into reality. This means that the initiative drive and aptitude to become an entrepreneur are latent in all persons but need reactivation.
What separates entrepreneurial education from other kinds of education is its focus on the achievement of opportunities. These opportunities may be exploited by establishing an enterprise, presenting new goods or ideas, or through doing things in a different manner with the intention of accomplishing goals. It’s in this sense that the European Commission (2007) portrays entrepreneurship as an individual’s capacity to convert ideas into action.
In entrepreneurial education, the teaching approaches are aimed towards entrepreneurship, student engagement, focus on social interaction, and student orientation. New pedagogical techniques, problem-oriented learning, experiences, and varied co-operations with business life are vital in entrepreneurial education. Connecting entrepreneurship education with the real operations of a company boosts the subject’s motivation. The key objective of entrepreneurship education is to advise students so that they may attain this opportunity technique. Success in this frequently leads to the formation of new firms or many new potential employers. With the support of an entrepreneurial-spirited instructor and the educational institution, the responsibility for learning transfers to the students and participation will take on a more essential role instead of passive receiving. Several studies demonstrate that the quality of teacher training could be enhanced at the various school levels. Since teachers have great influence on students’ attitudes towards the subjects they offer, the researcher is interested in the teacher’s perception of entrepreneurship education and the strategy of implementation.
