Students’ Edupreneurial Knowledge Awareness and Skills Development in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Edupreneurial education is a way of preparing individuals to be responsible, self-reliant and enterprising in becoming job creators. Tertiary institutions in Nigeria have embraced edupreneurial skills in the curriculum which prepare students to be self-employed after graduation, early childhood education is not left out. Ever since the introduction of ECE in tertiary institutions, the enrolment of students was high, but recently, enrolment decreased over time. Recently, ECE curriculum was later designed to embracing edupreneurial skills, yet, the decline in enrolment has not increased the reasons yet to be ascertained. The study therefore examines students’ edupreneurial knowledge awareness and skills development in early childhood education. The study adopted descriptive survey design. The population for the study comprised of the students in the faculty od Education of the Adeyemi Federal University of Education, Ondo. Purposive random technique was used to select a faculty, which is the faculty of Education and a Department of ECCE. This is because the study is about students studying early childhood education as a major course. Random sampling method was used to select thirty students from the Department. A self- designed three-sectioned questionnaire named Early Childhood Edupreneurial Awareness and Skills Development Questionnaire (ECEASDQ). The instrument showed a high reliability coefficient results of 0.83, 0.75 and 0.77 respectively using cronbach Alpha. The questionnaires were administered and data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics of frequency counts, percentage, and mean. This study concluded that the level of pre-service teachers on the awareness of edupreneurial skills in ECE is high, that pre-service teachers were able to identify edupreneuiral skills they were exposed to in the course of their exposure to early childhood education and they made choices of different edupreneurial skills they would like to venture in after graduation in other to be self-employed. The study therefore recommended that government should provide funds in terms of loan that could allow graduates of ECE to establish themselves and that current ECE practitioners and entrepreneurs should sensitize the public of their success in the field of Early childhood education.