Train Teachers

When discussing interventions for entrepreneurial teaching and learning these are mostly interventions that create benefits or skills for students. Interventions for teachers, in particular training teachers for entrepreneurship education is less often addressed.

However, teachers and their qualifications are crucial for entrepreneurship education. Several studies report that when higher education institutions started to implement entrepreneurship education academic teachers criticized that they do not have sufficient knowledge about it or lack entrepreneurial skills themselves. To some, this situation hindered sufficient engagement.

Interventions for teacher training aim at creating teaching skills in teachers that enable them to engage in entrepreneurial teaching. These skills are thus more than just entrepreneurial knowledge but include skills to teach entrepreneurship, liaise with the (regional) business sectors and to support student in becoming entrepreneurs.

Interventions that aim at teachers can include measures to train teaching staff regards entrepreneurship competencies in their disciplinary area. This training can include a twofold approach: first, it can create the teachers’ entrepreneurship competencies and second, it refers to enhancing their skills in integrating entrepreneurial training in their teaching. Studies on teacher training reveal that these interventions appear to be more self-initiated by staff rather than an intervention planned by the institution (Murray, 2019; Thom, 2017). However, interventions that aim to train teaching staff often happen as informal learning (for example, in peer learning or professional learning communities) as well as – though less frequently – as formal learning (for example, in (mandatory) didactical courses for young teachers (Terzaroli, 2019). To date, there a no instruments that measure entrepreneurial competencies in teachers.