ABSTRACT

The study determined the perceived influence of teachers’ competencies on teaching of entrepreneurship education in public secondary schools in Abia State Nigeria. The study was guided with five research questions and five null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance respectively. The study adopted survey research design. The population of the study comprised 3,357 respondents from 255 public secondary schools in Abia State, Nigeria. The population is made up of 255 principals and 3102 teachers in the 255 public secondary schools in the 17 local government areas in the three education zones in Abia State, Nigeria. The sample size for the study was 378 respondents comprising of 29 principals and 349 teachers from public secondary schools in Abia state. This was determined using Taro Yamane formula. Proportionate stratified random sampling technique was used to select a sample of 378. A sampling fraction of 0.2 was used to multiply the population of the study of each strata to obtain the sample size of teachers and principals. The researcher employed multi-stage sampling procedure in the study. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire titled ‘Perceived Influence of Teachers Competencies on Teaching of Entrepreneurship Education Questionnaire” (PITCTEEQ).’ The instrument was face validated by two experts from Department of Educational Management, and one from the Department of Measurement and Evaluation, all from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike, Abia state, to ensure its congruence.  The data collected from the respondents were analyzed to test the internal consistency of the instrument using Cronbach Alpha reliability method which yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.83. Data obtained for the study were analyzed using mean, standard deviations for the research questions while t-test was used in testing the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings among others revealed that personal entrepreneurship competencies (soft skill), interpersonal competencies, business competencies, entrepreneurship technical competencies, instructional delivery competencies, classroom management competencies, managerial competencies, entrepreneurship education qualification competencies and assessment (formative & summative) incompetence are the competencies of the teachers in teaching of entrepreneurship education in secondary schools and that there is no significant difference between the mean responses of teachers and principals on the competence of the teachers in teaching of entrepreneurship education and that there is no teachers and principals’ entrepreneurship education highest qualification competencies for effective teaching of entrepreneurship education teachers’ entrepreneurship education. Based on the findings, it was recommended that teachers should endeavor to acquire competencies identified for effective teaching of entrepreneurship education in secondary schools.