EFFECTS OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ATTITUDES ON CAREER CHOICE AND STUDENTS INTEREST TOWARDS ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION IN ABAK LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
- BACK GROUND OF THE STUDY
Entrepreneurship implies an occupationally oriented approach aimed at giving emerging entrepreneurs the requisite knowledge and skills. It involves an entrepreneur taking actions to make a difference in the world. (Holt, 2003). In his definition, viewed the key elements of entrepreneurship as creation of something new with values and assuming risk, putting in efforts and receiving monetary and personal gains. These varied definitions however concurred that entrepreneurship involves creativity and innovations, risk taking, working in uncertain environment and perception of opportunities that result in change.
Entrepreneurship therefore is about execution of ideas, entrepreneurs sees possibilities and solutions whereas the average person, sees annoyance and problems. Transforming ideas into action has been done since the beginning of civilization around the globe. It has really transformed the world. Entrepreneurs have vision for doing things in a better way, thinking beyond the constraints of current rules and resources. Perhaps more importantly, they have the passion and urgency that literally compels them to take risk necessary to realize their vision. They want to look deeper in the world and by doing so, they inspire their fellow men and women. Therefore, entrepreneurship is not just a venture creation process; its essence goes beyond contemporary times with maturity and serves as an agent of change. Entrepreneurship is a multi-faceted phenomenon. Gangaiah and Viswanath (2010) explained the genesis of the term entrepreneurship from the French word “entrepreneur” which originally means an organizer. The word has been in used since the 16th century. In the middle ages, the term entrepreneur was referred to a person who was managing large projects (Lakeus, 2014). He further added that in the 17th century the word extended to cover architects and contractors engaged in activity such as construction, fortification and public work. In this era of global work practices and technological innovations, there are individuals who always “think outside the box“. These individuals have a passion for novelty and like to distinguish themselves from the others. Legendary world entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Narayana Murthy and young entrepreneurs like Larry Page, Sergey Brin (co- founders of Goggle) and Mark Zukerberg (CEO of Facebook) have set the bar for being the most inspirational and influential entrepreneurs in their respective fields.
Balasubramanian (2012) opined that entrepreneurship is a key facet of any nation’s economy and is a crucial driver for employment and economic growth. It touches human lives through their creativity and dogmatic approach to overcome failure, improve the world by innovation and help build a society that is richer, socially adapted and technically advanced.
Entrepreneurship education is the process of providing individuals with the ability to recognize commercial opportunities and the insight, self-esteem, knowledge and skills to act on them (Jones and English, 2004,) NKC (2008) mentioned entrepreneurs as a wealth creator and challenge taker
Accordingly, entrepreneurship education can be defined as the process of professional application of knowledge, attitude, skills and competences. It is more than teaching students how to become independent business owners. It is about creating and nurturing a learning environment that promotes entrepreneurial traits and behaviors, such as becoming creative and independent thinker, risk taker, assuming responsibility, and valuing diversity. Entrepreneurship education is not just an academics discipline; it is the way of life.
Entrepreneurship education basically focuses on creation of entrepreneurial culture. It helps potential entrepreneurs to identify and pursue opportunities. It is not limited to boosting start-ups, innovative ventures and new jobs. Entrepreneurship education is a competency for all, helping young people to become creative and self-confidents in whatever they undertake.
Career development is a lifelong process of managing, learning, work, leisure, and transitions in order to move towards a personally determined and evolving preferred future.
In the educational development, career development provides a person (often a student), focus for selecting a career or subjects to undertake in the future. Most often, educational institutions provides career counsellors to assist students with their educational development.
In personal development, career development is “the total constellation of psychological, sociological, educational, physical, economic and chance factors that combine to influence the nature and significant of work in the total life span of any given individual.
Career development involves the person’s creation of a career pattern, decision making style, integration of life roles, values, and expression and life role self-concepts. Career development among student provides a great opportunity to develop student’s entrepreneurial skills such as planning skills, Communication skills, Interpersonal skills, Project management, and Leadership skills
Something vital has been missing in our schools. If we really need the students to be successful in the 21st century global economy, we need to be teaching them entrepreneurship. If we desire entrepreneurship skills to become part of the students DNA, it must be introduced at the youngest possible age. Entrepreneurship should be thought as early as kindergarten and first grade. The under listed constitutes reasons why these skills are critical for students success in the future.
We live in a world where the future is uncertain, so students need skills that will allow them to make their own way. We cannot predict the job market and economy that the students will enter. Therefore we really can’t predict what content our students need in order to be successful after leaving school. We know however with doubt that our students need skills that will allow them navigate the uncertain waters and chart their own paths. Entrepreneurship education teaches these skills and equips the students to seek out problem solving opportunities, think creatively, take risk, accept the future as part of the growth process and appreciate between hard work and success.
Students need more opportunities for creativity, innovations and collaborations in schools. As random testing and standards has taken over our educational systems, opportunity for students to create, innovate, collaborate and demonstrate proficiency or mastery in real life becomes scarce. Entrepreneurship education does not only encourage but also requires students to be creative, innovative and collaborative with others.
Students need to learn how to identify problems or needs before learning problem solving skills. Problem solving has been all the rage in education for years.
The problem with the way we traditionally thought problem in schools is that problems are already set up or defined by someone else (the teacher, the test writer, the textbook company). In the real world, problems are fixed only when the problems have been properly identified. Therefore students need to learn how to identify problems and how to solve the right problems. If the student identifies the problems incorrectly or solves the wrong problem, the solution to problem has no value.
Students need more grit; Students learn grit through entrepreneurship because entrepreneurial process is both demanding and uncertain. These experiences can be extremely beneficial for students to learn before they graduate and begin to face the real life, dollars and cents, people in situations. Entrepreneurs prove to be some of the grittiest people on the planet and grit can be thought through entrepreneurship education.
The world needs students who are looking to make a difference. This truth is self-evident as entrepreneurs seek to solve problems, meet needs and ease pains or difficulties as a means of selling products or services.
In the social sense, entrepreneurs seek to solve problems because impact, ideas and solutions can make human beings in the environment. However students trained in entrepreneurship education are not only trained to identify problems that need to be solved but also to determine to creatively solved problems, meet needs and make the world a better place. Thus as a discipline, entrepreneurship education always tries to inculcate some skills so that one can play a role of catalyst for socio economic change. It gives force to shape the future society and one’s own life simultaneously.
The definition of entrepreneurship as a starting point to a full understanding of the phenomena under discussion through it, one may be able to discover the essence, concerns and objectives of the phenomena too. These basic issues, emanating from the definition may be taken later to be the basic for conceptually aligning entrepreneurship education with the appropriate target audience, course content and teaching methodologies.
In existing literature review, conflicting sides of entrepreneurship schools of thoughts and an inherent lack of a common definition of entrepreneurship has been found. But the focus of most of the reviewed literatures on entrepreneurship education is ongoing, fostering on entrepreneurial attitude, skills and managerial attributes (Co and Mitchell, 2006; Henry et al, 2005; Galloway et al, 2005).
Accordingly, it has been reviewed using articles related to entrepreneurship education to some kind of education (training) process that is aimed at influencing individuals’ attitudes, behaviours, values or intentions towards entrepreneurship either as a possible career or to enhance among them an appreciation of its role in the community.
EFFECTS OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ATTITUDES ON CAREER CHOICE AND STUDENTS INTEREST TOWARDS ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION IN ABAK LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA
