INNOVATIVE PEDAGOGIES AND ENTREPRENEURIAL EMPOWERMENT OF BUSINESS EDUCATION STUDENTS IN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS IN LAGOS, NIGERIA

The increasing rate of youth and graduates’ unemployment in Nigeria and the need to ascertain the extent of entrepreneurial empowerment of Business Education students for employability and self-employment opportunities necessitated this study. The study raised three research questions and tested two hypotheses. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised all penultimate and final-year Business Education students, and all Business Education lecturers, in all public Universities and Colleges of Education in Lagos, Nigeria. Specifically, the population comprised seven hundred and ninety-four (794) penultimate and final-year Business Education students and forty-eight (48) Business Education lecturers. The sample size for this study was two hundred and sixty-six (266) Business Education students and twenty-one (21) lecturers using Taro Yamane sample calculator model. The research instrument used was a structured questionnaire. The internal consistency of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha Correlation Coefficient and it yielded an average index of 0.90. The statistical tool used to analyse research questions data were mean, percentages and standard deviation while paired sampled t-tests and independent sampled t-tests were used for the research hypotheses. The results showed that Business Education students inadequately acquired entrepreneurial competencies. The instructional strategies used were not innovative enough and they contributed significantly to the inadequate acquisition of entrepreneurship skills. Constant use of innovative pedagogies by Business education lecturers and their collaboration with other stakeholders for adequate empowerment leading to self-employment and sustainable development of the Nigerian economy were the recommendation