Mediation roles of pedagogical approaches and personality traits in entrepreneurial curriculum design and entrepreneurial intention nexus

Abstract

Planned behaviour theory was used in a path analysis modelling to investigate the serial mediation role of teaching methods and personality traits (locus of control, need for achievement and entrepreneurial attitude) in the relationship between entrepreneurship curriculum and entrepreneurial intention among university students in Ghana. A proposed 40-item instrument was used to measure outcomes for six constructs (3 personality trait constructs, entrepreneurship curriculum, teaching methods and entrepreneurial intention) for 324 participants. Acceptable convergent, divergent and construct validity scores were observed for the instrument. Teaching methods fully mediated the first-order relationships between entrepreneurial curriculum and each personality traits. The three constructs of personality traits parallelly mediated the second-order relationship between teaching methods and entrepreneurial intention. Teaching methods and each personality trait serially mediated the relationship between entrepreneurial curriculum and entrepreneurial intention. This empirical evidence provides insight into the design of pragmatic interventions by major stakeholders including entrepreneurship educators to inspire students into start-up activities