Relevance of Mathematics Education to Entrepreneurship Skills Acquisition towards the Realization of Vision 20:2020

Abstract

Over the years, Nigeria has been clamoring to be self reliance, self sufficient and self actualization. In realizing this desired dream, the country came up with vision 2020, which is to make Nigeria one of the 20 top economy nations in the world. To achieve this goal there is need for entrepreneurship education. One major ingredient of such education is mathematics. The study sought to find out the relevance of mathematics to entrepreneurship skills acquisition. The data consisted of 200 pre – service teachers selected from three colleges of Education in Lagos, Nigeria. The instrument used was twenty – four item questionnaires on the entrepreneurship skills acquisition. The results showed that the knowledge of mathematics could positively influence the computational skill, problem solving skill, innovative skill, analytical skill, decision making skill and creative skill of the subjects for successful entrepreneurship activities but the subjects could not see the relevance of mathematics to managerial skill, though, mathematics is an effective way of communicating managerial ideas. Furthermore, there was significant difference in the opinion of pre-service teachers towards the relevance of mathematics to entrepreneurship development based on gender. However, the school type did not have significant effect on the opinion of pre-service teachers.