Use of Mother Tongue and Gender as Determinants of Students’ Attitudes Towards Entrepreneurship Education

Abstract

The study investigated the use of mother tongue and gender as determinants of students' attitudes towards entrepreneurship education (EE) in higher education institutions (HEIs) using the Faculty of Education, Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu-Alike, Ebonyi State, Nigeria as a case study. The objective was to determine the relationship between the use of the mother tongue, gender, and students' attitude toward entrepreneurship education. Two hypotheses were formulated to serve as a guide to the study. Three hundred (300) Alex Ekwueme Federal University students were randomly selected for the study. A questionnaire titled ‘“Use of mother tongue scale and students’ attitude towards entrepreneurship education”’ questionnaire was administered and used for data collection. The hypotheses were tested using multiple regression tested at a 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that the criterion variable (students' attitude towards entrepreneurship education correlated positively and low towards the use of the mother tongue. Also, gender was not a determinant factor in both students' attitudes towards entrepreneurship educationand the use of the mother tongue. The results also showed that only students with knowledge of the use of the mother tongue with the regressional coefficient (b) of .258, and a beta weight of .592 significantly have a good attitude towards entrepreneurship education, while gender was not a significant factor in predicting students’ attitude towards entrepreneurship education. Based on these findings, some recommendations were made which include, but are not limited to, that students should be encouraged to be knowledgeable on the use of their mother tongue, understand, speak, and use their mother tongue, irrespective of gender. The university should encourage the use of the mother tongue in entrepreneurship education.