Die uitbouing van praktykgerigte entrepreneuriese vaardighede van Besigheidstudies-onderwysstudente

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is considered one of the most important tools in solving the unemployment issue in South Africa. The promotion of entrepreneurship is included in the budgets of educational programmes locally as well as internationally, yet education in its entirety is condemned as one of the obstacles that does not prepare learners for the world of entrepreneurship. Criticism of entrepreneurship within the South African school curriculum indicates that Business Studies as a school subject does not provide sufficient opportunities for practising problem-solving skills. Thus far, few studies reporting on appropriate teaching-learning strategies and learning tasks for the promotion of entrepreneurial skills have been conducted. The primary question that research in this study focused on was to determine how the training of Business Studies education students can be expanded to bridge the gap between theoretical subject knowledge and entrepreneurial skills. In order to achieve this goal, a basic qualitative study was conducted which was approached from an interpretivist paradigm. The research participants – first-year Business Studies education students from all three campuses of the North-West University – were purposefully selected. As data collection technique, assignments as documents of assessment opportunities were collected from the participants during two events and analysed by means of content analysis using a priori codes. The assessment opportunities were aimed at determining the proposed teaching-learning strategies and learning tasks of the participants before and after the intervention. An intervention was designed from the literature and Vygotsky's socio-cultural learning theory, and information on entrepreneurial skills, practice-oriented learning tasks and cooperative learning were included. The intervention was implemented during contact sessions of the Business Studies education students and was only implemented on one of the campuses of the university. During the intervention, students were exposed to the integration of practice-oriented learning tasks and cooperative learning as a teaching-learning strategy. The research results indicate that exposure through the intervention increases the tendency of Business Studies education students to apply practice-oriented learning tasks and learner-centred teaching-learning strategies such as cooperative learning in the Business Studies classroom. It was also found that during the teaching of Business Studies, entrepreneurial skills can be developed through exposure to the integration of practice-oriented learning tasks and teaching-learning strategies such as cooperative learning.

It is recommended that such intervention be implemented in the training of Business Studies education students. Exposure to the intervention may lead them to change their entrepreneurial mindset and to realise the value of integrating this knowledge and skills into the classroom. The study contributes to the development of the training of Business Studies education students by identifying specific teaching-learning strategies and learning tasks that can be implemented to bridge the gap between theoretical subject knowledge and practice.