RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MENTORSHIP SKILLS AND CAREERGROWTH OF BUSINESS EDUCATORS IN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES, SOUTHSOUTH, NIGERIA

Abstract

The focus of this study was to investigate the relationship between mentorship skills and career growth of business
educators in public universities in south-south, Nigeria. To guide the study four research questions were raised
and hypothesized. All hypotheses were tested at 0.05 levels of significance. The design of the study was a
correlational survey research design. All business education lecturers in public universities in South-South Nigeria
constituted the population of the study. As at the time of conducting the study, there were 158 business education
lecturers in the institutions under study. Given that this size is manageable, the entire population was used for the
study which makes it a census sampling. The research instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire
segmented into three sections namely Sections A, B and C. Section A was designed to elicit responses on
demographic data while Section B addressed mentoring skill received by business educators. Section C contained
items on the career growth of business educators. Face validity of the instrument was estimated by giving a draft
copy of the instrument to five experts. To establish the reliability of the instrument, it was pilot-tested with twenty
respondents who were not part of the study. Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Simple linear regression
analysis were used to analyze the research questions and test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The
study revealed that the relationship between mentorship skills and career growth are of various strength from
being weak and positive to moderate and positive. In addition, mentorship skills significantly predicted career
growth of business educators in South-South Nigeria. Findings of the study also revealed a weak relationship
between mentorship methodological and communication skills and career growth of business educators in SouthSouth Nigeria while demonstrating that mentorship communication skills significantly predict career growth of
business educators. However, mentorship methodological skill did not significantly predict career growth of
business educators. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended among others that the development
of reading, writing, communication, and research methodological skills should be encouraged within all
mentorship programme in order to maintain the positive benefits of these skills on career growth.