The Impact of Ethno-Chemistry Activities on Senior Secondary School Students’ Development Of Entrepreneurship Skills in Kogi State, Nigeria

Abstract

The need for self-employment has increased in recent time due to the increasing number of graduates in Nigeria. To solve this problem students, need to be equipped with the necessary skills to become successful entrepreneurs. This study determined the impact of Ethno-chemistry activities on senior secondary school students’ development of entrepreneurship skills in Kogi state. The research was guided by six (6) objectives and three hypotheses. The research adopted mixed research design with entrepreneurship checklist, questionnaire, pre-test-post-test control group, observation and structured interview used as instruments for data collection. The population comprises of all the 24,517 senior secondary school students in Kogi state, while the study sample is 840 senior secondary school students which were selected using multi-stage sampling technique from all the 21 local government areas (40 from each LGA) of Kogi state. The instrument was validated by three experts with a reliability coefficient of 0.77 and 0.74 were used for pre-ethno chemistry and post-ethno chemistry activities respectively.  The data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The analysis shows that there was a significant difference based on gender on various entrepreneurship interests at 0.05 level of significance, the result also revealed that Chemistry students Entrepreneurship skill/interest mean scores were high when taught with Ethno-chemistry teaching approach.  It was also discovered from the result that male students have higher interest in the production of dyes for clothes, petroleum jelly and essential oils than the female students while the female student has higher interest in Soaps/toiletries and food additives/colourants production than the male students. Generally, both male and female chemistry students developed high interest in self-employment (entrepreneurship). Recommendations were made, among which was, attention should be given to the application of ethno-chemistry activities in senior secondary school to ignite entrepreneurial interest and subsequently acquire necessary skills needed.