Entrepreneurship is significant to the production process for economic growth and development. The Nigerian government supports entrepreneurial development by providing business training for entrepreneurs across the country; however, the impact of such programs in current entrepreneurship in Nigeria has not been researched. This study was designed to examine the impact of the training on entrepreneurial outcomes such as profitability, revenue, and access to finance using the social construction framework and the theory of external control of organizations. Based on a quantitative quasi-experimental design involving a posttest comparison group, the impact of government support on randomly selected beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries with the FCT was tested using an independent samples t test and binary logistic regression analysis. The results showed no significant relationship between business training and entrepreneurial outcomes. Additionally, it was not likely that an unemployed beneficiary would start a new business after the training, and trainees had difficulty accessing business loans. The social change implication of this study is that public sector institutions engaged in entrepreneurship development in Nigeria need pragmatic interventions that translate into positive entrepreneurial outcomes. They also need to focus on areas that cater for different categories of entrepreneurs such as age groups, educational level, business experience, and nature of the business to enhance effectiveness. Periodic assessment of the intervention programs is necessary using experimental and quasi-experimental studies. Therefore, this study can contribute to the data that public sector institutions can use to develop better interventions for entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this study was to examine the ways by which student learning improvement and the self-regulation of learning are possible through the use of quality formative assessment in the teaching of a university course. In recent years, researchers in educational assessment are showing an increased interest to the improvement of learning resulting from the use of formative assessment. Formative assessment is generally recognised as an improvement oriented assessment. It is believed to result in instructional effectiveness. Quality formative assessment includes formative feedback, self-assessment and peer assessment. Previous studies show the contribution of each of these quality formative assessments to learning improvement. However, less attention has been given to studying the combined effect of quality formative assessments on learning improvement. On the other hand, the predominant use of summative assessment remains a challenge to the improvement in instruction. Thus, the question was to determine the extent to which the use of quality formative assessment improves learning. The literature review in this study show an over reliance upon summative assessment in the context of higher education classrooms. There is also recognition in that formative assessment improves learning and enhances self-regulation. This study followed a mixed-methods research design of the type partially mixed sequential and applied a quasi-experimental intervention, where the educators used quality formative assessment on lessons with the students in the intervention group. The quasiexperimentation was implemented with 378 (214 male and 164 female) first year students of three universities enrolled for “General Psychology” course and six educators who were teaching the course. The students in this study were taken from intact classes, because this is possible in quasi experimental research. Data for the quantitative part of the study were generated using a structured questionnaire and achievement tests. Interviews with the educators, focus group discussions with the students, and classroom observations were used to generate data for the qualitative phase of study. The pretestposttest scores as well as the students’ perceptions on self-regulating learning were compared between the intervention (N =191) and the comparison (N = 187) groups. The quantitative analysis used different inferential statistics, which proved the presence of statistically significant variations between the intervention and comparison groups for the outcome measures (posttest achievement and perception about self-regulating learning). Although the qualitative study showed the presence of positive perceptions towards quality formative assessment, the practice was found to be inconsistent. Perhaps, this may be because of the predominantly summative assessment tradition and the reluctance to use quality formative assessment. Finally, recommendations were made to promote the use of quality formative assessment aiming at the improvement and the self-regulation on learning. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D. Ed. (Didactics)