ASSESSMENT OF MENTORING PRACTICES INFLUENCING BUSINESS EDUCATORS IN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS IN EDO AND DELTA STATES

Abstract

This study assessed mentoring practices influencing business educators in Edo and
Delta States. Two research questions guided the study while three null hypotheses were
tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted a descriptive survey design using
asample of 231 business educators. A 16-item questionnaire was utilized for the study.
The Cronbach’s alpha was used to determine the reliability of the instrument, which
yielded co-efficient of .95 and 0.85 for the two sub-sections of the instrument with an
aggregate reliability of 0.90. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the
research questions. The z-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to test the
null hypotheses. The findings of the research questions revealed that formal mentoring
does not influence business educators. Informal mentoring was found to be the
dominant mentoring practice influencing business educators in Edo and Delta States.
Hypotheses testing showed no significant difference on mentoring practice of business
educators either by gender, types of tertiary institutions or state of domiciliation of
institution. This implies that management of tertiary institutions in Edo and Delta States
neither plans, implements nor evaluates mentoring practices for business educators. It
was therefore concluded that mentoring practices for business educators in Edo and
Delta States is inadequate to meet business educators’ career growth and development
needs. It was therefore, recommended among others that authorities of tertiary
institutions in Edo and Delta State especially of Department of Business Education
should compulsorily institute formal mentoring practice in addition to the available
informal professional mentoring for business educators. This could help to give more
opportunities to the young/inexperienced business educators to learn from the wealth of
experience of the older and more experienced business educators so as to enhance their
professional commitment.