Here in this post, we will assess the national content standards for entrepreneurship education. We hope you find this article rich in information.
Entrepreneurs abound almost in every sector of the economy, for example, in manufacturing, and business, and agriculture, and health care, and tourism, and education, and government, even in the arts.
Essentially, they are also among the employees and employers in every endeavour of life. But never forget that to be an entrepreneur does means more than to be a business owner.
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Being an entrepreneur simply means that you must possess entrepreneurial qualities and entrepreneurial traits that are essential to becoming a productive citizen of one’s nation as well as excelling in one’s career.
To be entrepreneurial means to create a new something or to develop ideas or to develop projects; One cannot follow already trekked paths and consider himself as someone being entrepreneurial, no, he must be a kind of fellow who thinks outside the box.
And do not ever forget that, the entrepreneurial spirit is usually in the heart of any society that moves forward and any society that adapts to changing economic, and technological challenges, as well as social challenges.
Assumptions Of The National Content Standards For Entrepreneurship Education
The national content standards for entrepreneurship education actually based its assumptions on two core premises, and these are:
-Entrepreneurship is a major driver of any economy.
-Entrepreneurship education is a long term (life-long) learning process.
Business schools can always support these objectives by way of emphasizing the central elements of entrepreneurship, especially in their educational programme across every content area.
In fact, they can go as far as fostering entrepreneurship education as a central element of the culture of teaching and learning, as well.
Entrepreneurship is mostly essential for economic growth and also for stability. The competitive edge any nation has over the other, even in the global economy will be determined by the talent it develops for both innovation and entrepreneurship.
That is why there is advocacy that business schools should ensure that they foster a learning environment that will encourage entrepreneurial mindsets among students.
Because the knowledge, and the attitudes, as well as, the skills students learned usually raised the bar in helping them to develop the competence as well as, the confidence needed to deal with opportunities and also challenges that may be faced by the nation.
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Perhaps, this may have explained why, the Department of Public Instruction, in collaboration with the Department of Financial Institutions, is setting up the Entrepreneurship Task Force for the purpose of developing a framework, aimed at guiding district planning for entrepreneurship education within the curriculum.
Accordingly, the calibre of persons that made up the task force is; educational advocates, including leaders and teachers from various disciplines, as well as, in business plus entrepreneurs. Their responsibility is to achieve the following objects:
-Defining entrepreneurial literacy as well as, its role in the curriculum
-Identifying student’s entrepreneurial knowledge, and skills and also their dispositions
-Creating a framework for the purpose of supporting programs, and instruction, as well as, learning.
Besides, there are elements of entrepreneurial literacy, which according to them, it is called, ‘PK-12’ education, and is expected to identify and capture and nurture, as well as develop innovation and creativity in every student.
National Content Standards for Entrepreneurship Education
The object of the National Content Standards for Entrepreneurship Education is to actually make provision for the standards and performance framework that are most necessary and important for the development of curriculum for entrepreneurship education programmes as a long term learning process.
Accordingly, these content standards must carry resources such as background information on entrepreneurship education and also the entrepreneurship education long term learning model, including sample applications of the standards. More so, the information about the research used in the development of these standards is also necessary.
However, in considering the national content standards for entrepreneurship education in Nigeria, there are about 15 main standards, and these 15 are divided into the 3 major sections.
Nevertheless, we will be looking at these content standards for entrepreneurship education in this article, and here are there:
-Entrepreneurial Skills:
The distinguishing traits, and behaviours including processes that usually differentiate an entrepreneur from either an employee or a manager.
-Ready Skills
The business, and/or the entrepreneurial, and the knowledge and the skills that are considered prerequisites or you can call it, co-requisites for the study of entrepreneurship.
-Business Functions
The business function performed when wanting to start a business and run a business. Here, what overlying the Ready Skills as well as, the Business Functions are the following; the Entrepreneurial Skills, and the processes including traits and behaviors applicable to either new ventures and/or ongoing ventures that usually creates and drives and changes economic activity, for instance, new markets, and new products, and new businesses among others. However, these non-sequential, sometimes overlapping.
Now phases of the entrepreneurial process are discussed below:
1. Discovery
The phase in the entrepreneurial process, whereby the entrepreneur generates ideas and recognizes opportunities, as well as, determines the feasibility of ideas, and markets, and ventures, among others.
2. Concept Development
The phase in the entrepreneurial process, whereby, the entrepreneur plans the venture, and identifies the needed resources via using a business plan, and also identifies strategies for the purpose of protecting intellectual property, among other things.
3. Resourcing
The phase in the entrepreneurial process, whereby, the entrepreneur identifies and as well, acquires financial, and human, and also capital resources that are needed for the venture startup, among other things.
4. Actualization
The phase in the entrepreneurial process whereby the entrepreneur operates the venture as well as, utilizes resources for the purpose of achieving its goals and objectives.
-Harvesting The phase in the entrepreneurial process whereby the entrepreneur decides on the venture’s future, that is, the growth, and the development, and the demise of the venture.
These five phases of the entrepreneurial process, together with the individual characters and behaviours which actually associate with any successful entrepreneur, are made up of a set of entrepreneurship skills, as listed in the National Content Standards for Entrepreneurship Education.
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Conclusion
The competitive edge any nation has over the other, even in the global economy will be determined by the talent it develops for both innovation and entrepreneurship.
That is why there is advocacy that business schools should ensure that they foster a learning environment that will encourage entrepreneurial mindsets among students.