STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCING SKILL ACQUISITION AMONG BUSINESS STUDIES STUDENTS IN SECONDARY SCHOOL IN DELTA STATE

Abstract

The study determined strategies for enhancing the enhancing skill acquisition among business studies students in secondary school in Delta State. Two research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised 914 business studies teachers from the 466 public secondary schools in Delta State. Through simple random sampling technique the researcher sampled 30% of the total population of the study. This amounted to 276 business studies teachers. A researcher developed structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts in business education. The Cronbach Alpha technique was used to test the reliability which yielded a co-efficient value of 0.80 and 0.84 for section B1 and B2 respectively with an overall reliability coefficient of 0.82. Data was analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t-test. The mean value was used to provide answers to the research question while standard deviation was used to determine the harmony in opinions of the respondents. The t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Finding on revealed that business studies teachers agree that teachers inability to use appropriate teaching strategies, non coverage of the curriculum content of business studies, lack of physical facilities like computer laboratories and workshops for practical training and lack of instructional facilities for exposing students to real life situations were some of the challenges militating against skills acquisition among business studies students in secondary schools in Delta State. Findings also revealed that the respondents agreed that organizing professional training programs for business studies teachers on techniques for practical skills training, making available state of the art instructional materials for teaching of business studies students, encouraging school industry partnership in the curriculum planning, implementation and teaching of business studies students and  encouraging school industry partnership in the funding of business studies, among others are strategies for enhancing acquisition of business skills among secondary school students in Delta State. The gender of the respondents did not significantly affect their opinion. Based on these findings it was recommended that business studies teachers should improve on their abilities for teaching practical business skills by attending workshops, seminars and conferences.

Keywords: Strategies, Skills Acquisition, Business Studies, Teachers, Students