The study was conducted to determine the classroom management and communication related pedagogical competencies required of Office Technology and Management (OTM) Business Education graduates from public universities for instructional effectiveness. Two specific purposes, two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. Descriptive survey research design was used. The population of the study comprised two hundred and thirty-two (232) Business Teacher Educators (110 males and 122 females) from 13 public universities in South South Zone of Nigeria; out of which eight (8) are owned by the Federal Government and five (5) by State governments. The entire population was used because of its manageable size. The instrument for data collection was a four-point rating scale questionnaire developed by the researchers. The instrument contains 20 items in two clusters: cluster one (classroom management competencies 10 items) and cluster two (communication competencies 10 items). The instrument was validated by three experts and was tested for reliability using Cronbach Alpha method which yielded 0.64 and 0.78 reliability coefficients for clusters one and two respectively. Data collected was analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions while t-test statistic was used to test the research hypotheses at 0.05 confidence level. Results indicate that the respondents agreed that classroom management and communication related pedagogical competencies are required of OTM business education graduates. Furthermore, it was found that there is no significant difference in the mean responses of the respondents on classroom management related pedagogical competencies based on years of experience; and that there is no significant difference in the mean ratings of the respondents from federal and state-owned public universities on the communication related pedagogical competencies. It was recommended, among others, that OTM business education students should be adequately trained by their various institutions to develop the required classroom management and communication related pedagogical competencies to enable them create conducive environments necessary for instructional effectiveness.
Keywords: Competencies, Office Technology, business education graduates, classroom management, communication, management (OTM)
