ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT PEDAGOGY, EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: COROLLARY ON GRADUATES ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTIONS
Abstract
The widening gap between the poor and the non-poor, sharp decline in living standards, slow pace of job creation, and the seemingly intractable unemployment problems which have characterized the development process in Nigeria, provide some perspectives on the development challenges facing social and economic progress of the nation, despite the introduction of entrepreneurship development course into the Nigerian higher institutions curriculum 25 years ago, in other to enhance skills acquisition and reduce unemployment. Based on this fact, this study explored the corollary of entrepreneurship development pedagogy and emotional intelligence on entrepreneurial intentions of graduate students that served in three selected states (Lagos, Ogun and Ondo) in south-west Nigeria. The descriptive survey research design was adopted. The participants were 403 corp members selected via convenient sampling technique. Data were collected through standardised questionnaires. The hypothesis proposed was tested using multiple regression with the aid of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23. Result showed a significant influence of entrepreneurship development pedagogy and emotional intelligence on entrepreneurial intentions of the participants (F (2, 400) = 26.8, p<.05), with R2 of .118. This study recommends that, there should be a robust and stimulating pedagogical approach to teaching entrepreneurship development courses in our various institutions in order to promote and increase acquisition of skill (emotional intelligence) needed to be an employer of labour and for students to learn its importance early in their academic programmes as a means of solving unemployment problem in Nigeria.
