Entrepreneurship Pedagogy and Entrepreneurial Intention among Students of Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria: Mediating Effect of Educators’ Role Model

Abstract

This study examines the mediating effect of educators’ role models on the relationship between entrepreneurship pedagogy and entrepreneurial intention, a descriptive survey research was adopted in this study. A purposive sampling technique was used to select seven (7) universities that are duly accredited by Nigeria University Commission (NUC) to run the Entrepreneurship program at the undergraduate level, while simple random sampling was employed to select 282 respondents as a sample size using Slovin, 1963 for the study. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data with STATA version 15. The results reveal that entrepreneurship pedagogy has a substantial and positive association with entrepreneurship intention among students with beta-value of 0.603 and t-value of 6.67. Evidence also proves that entrepreneurship pedagogy has a direct correlation with educators’ role models with beta-value of 0.756 and t-value of 11.74. Furthermore, the result shows that educators’ role model influences entrepreneurial intention in a substantial and positive way with beta-value of 0.193 and t-value of 2.12. It was also discovered that educators’ role model partially mediates between entrepreneurship pedagogy and entrepreneurial intentions with a beta-value of 0.1460 and t-value of 2.08. Subsequently, the study recommends that the teaching methods should be, do-it-yourself approach, learning by doing, or problem-based learning. Also, Nigerian universities should adopt teaching strategies that work, such as, individual and group projects, inviting guest speakers and especially business simulation activities, in order to spark the interest of students and start-ups. This will go a long way toward educating students about the entrepreneurship process and identifying business opportunities.