How to train entrepreneurship educators?

1. How to train entrepreneurship educators? Evidence from the CB Entreint project Interreg IVA programme @BalticDynamics Riga, September 2013

2. Background of the study(I) • Qualitative research: brainstorming, 34 in-depth interviews • Countries: Estonia-11, Latvia-16 and Finland-7 • Interviewees: entrepreneurship educators + from the leading HEIs • Levels: vocational, higher and continuing education. • Aim: to analyse and compare practices and needs, to inform the training programme development • Topicality: • findings from earlier studies (EC, 2010; EC, 2008; OECD, 2008; Curavic, 2011); • “The Budapest Agenda: Enabling Teachers for EE” (2011); • how much do we know who the educator is and how e-ship is taught? (Fayolle, 2013).

3. Background of the study (II) • Framework: adapted from Béchard & Grégoire’s(2005) Teaching Models in EE: supply, demand, and competence; • 6 dimensions – methodology, curricula, evaluation, environment, regulations and financing. • Tool: NVivo 10. Descriptive • Varying definitions of the notion: business Vs. attitude and behaviour • Terminology: entrepreneurship Vs. enterprise management/business management • Experience in e-ship: 2-20+ yy, tends to exceed teaching years for younger respondents.

4. Results (I) Methodology, Evaluation – internal • Methods: more practice-based, but more experiential methods are used less, understanding and depth of using them varies a lot. • - Rare: creativity development, student lectures, product development, self-reflection (diaries), coaching and workshops by practitioners, practical application of academic projects… • University-industry cooperation: exists, but the most common forms are internships and work placements (real-life projects, innovation teams??). • Teaching aims and outcomes: do not always match. • EE outcomes measurement: only feedback and tracking alumni.

5. Results (II) • Curricula – internal: • Integration: yes, in most of the cases. • Interdisciplinarity: truly lacking, currently exists only as part of extra-curricular activities (labs, incubators, business competitions). • Specialised EE trainings for educators: practically non-existent. Environment, Regulations, Financing – external: • Physical: inconvenience of study rooms for interactive group work; specialised learning soft not a common tool. • Social: decreasing level of the secondary school preparation (LV); students read less, do not have enough time to prepare. • HEIs management: generally supportive towards EE, but tends to be uninvolving, when actions required (LV, EE). • Insufficient financing of educational initiatives, absence of legislative support in LV as compared to EE & FI.

6. Results (III)

7. Recommendations for the training programme development (I) • Entrepreneurship • evolving conceptual views from the economic and social science to the management era and a field on its own (Landström, 2013) • change of the learning paradigms from behaviourism to constructivism – influence on teaching (Kyrö, 2008) • practical theory: the process perspective, opportunity recognition, innovation and creativity, product development.

8. Recommendations for the training programme development (II) II. Entrepreneurship pedagogy and didactics • how to set/align objectives, methods, outcomes and measure them • teaching models/approaches and the toolbox integration • experiential methods inside and outside classroom, e.g.: • pedagogical drama, creativity exercises, business games • real-life projects with companies, innovation teams, work-based projects, student companies • university-industry networks • formation and moderation of interdisciplinary teams, facilitation.

9. The training programme example (6 ECTS, Finland) • The main idea is a blended learning • Need for understanding customer and human-oriented process, in which creative skills are identified and controlled with supportive, listening and goal-oriented way • The idea of the programmeis to give the participant: • capabilitiesto act as an entrepreneurship trainer and developer, as well as a business counselor or in a similar position in a renewable economic environment • Pedagogical framework for the studies is: • Effectuation (Sarasvathy, S.D. 2001) • Ritual pedagogy (Hägg, O. 2011) • Individual differences in affective and conative functions (Snow, R.E., Corno, L. & Jackson, D.N. 1996) • Building conative constructs into entrepreneurship education (Ruohotie, P. & Koiranen, M. 1999) • Cognitive, conative and affective constructs and metaconstructs of personality and intelligence in entrepreneurial learning (Kyrö & al. 2008).

10. What has happened during the studies? • “I have learnt deeper insights of entrepreneurship as the wide concept, not only to start up business” . • “I have learnt experiential learning, dialogues and business canvas”. • “I'll be focusing on learning on entrepreneurship, primarily in the training of people through the building on their strengths, and approaching them to do things together, and a practical case in the business world on the basis of reality.” • “I’ll do things more hands-on, not theory based.” • “I’ll will pay more attention to a personality, how to help people manage themselves and become an entrepreneur.” • “I have not been coaching and teaching before. From now on I can use all that I have learned in my work” (business coach). • “I have learnt the transformation process from employee to entrepreneur.” • “I have learnt to use team methods for supporting entrepreneurial mindset.”

11. Qs & As… Thankyou!