PEDAGOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN TEACHING BUSINESS EDUCATION PROGRAMME AS PERCEIVED BY BUSINESS EDUCATION LECTURERS IN DELTA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The global world has observed that the traditional pedagogy of Business Education programmes can no longer meet the recent trends in the education sector, especially in the institutional delivery of Business Education courses in tertiary institutions. This study examined the Pedagogical Innovations in Teaching Business Education programme as perceived by Business Education Lecturers in Tertiary Institutions in Delta State, Nigeria. A survey research design was adopted for the study. The population consisted of 157 business education lecturers in all the public tertiary institutions offering the Business Education programme in Delta State. The entire population was studied, thereby adopting the census sampling technique. The instrument used for data collection was a structured questionnaire having two sections A and B.  Section ‘A’ dealt on demographic data of the respondents such as institution type and ownership while section ‘B’ was broken into two clusters titled “Innovative Pedagogical Skills for Teaching Business Education Programme (IPSRTBEP)”, made up of 8 items, and “Reflective Teaching Content Skills Required for Teaching Business Education Programme (RTCSRBEP)”, with 7 item statements. The instrument was validated by two experts in Business Education. A test of the instrument's reliability using the Cronbach Alpha method yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.83. The questionnaire was administered physically and electronically.  Out of the 157 copies of the questionnaire distributed, 121 were successfully retrieved, representing a 77 percent response rate.  Data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation, while the t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at a 0.05 level of significance. Findings of the study revealed that Innovative Pedagogical Skills required in teaching the Business Education programme are: focusing on creativity skills, technology/technical skills, computer-based ability skills, especially on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI), leadership-oriented skills, team/collaborative skills, amongst others. While reflective teaching content skills in the Business Education programme embrace developing transferable higher-order skills (critical thinking, problem solving) beyond rote memorization of business facts in learners; ability to align the teaching of digital marketing with current industry standards and adjust instructional methods to build deeper conceptual understanding of office management against procedural knowledge, amongst others. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that Business Education lecturers should endeavour to apply the identified innovative pedagogy and reflective teaching content skills in the teaching and learning process, with the expected results that inspire and encourage the students by transforming the learning process into an active, dynamic, innovative, and enriched experiences