Despite the increase in the number of entrepreneurship initiatives and interventions, there is a poor understanding of the range of entrepreneurship programs in secondary education and their learning objectives. This study provides insight into the current supply of entrepreneurship programs and their underlying pedagogy in secondary education in the Netherlands. To examine existing offerings and their underlying pedagogy, we used the 11 design principles of Baggen, Lans, and Gulikers (2021). Data were collected from three different sources for triangulation purposes - data from Vecon Business Schools (VBS) application forms, interviews with VBS schools, and documents and additional information (student ratings, learning goals, missions, and visions). Our findings show that schools offer mostly causation-oriented and traditional entrepreneurship programs, in which there is little room for effectuation-oriented education. Also, due to the lack of a clearly stated mission, vision and learning goals of entrepreneurship education, schools pay little attention to the effect of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship skills/intentions. However, we observe that schools acknowledge this and slowly design and offer entrepreneurship programs more consciously.
This thesis presents an exploration of ‘how entrepreneurship education pedagogy can enhance undergraduate business students’ autonomous motivation for self-directed learning’. It has twin, equally valuable, purposes: to make an original theoretical contribution and to improve professional practice in this area. The work addresses the lack of pedagogical research in entrepreneurship education that focuses on learner development, with a specific aim at development of self-directed learning skills for lifelong learning. The research is approached with a concurrent, mixed methods design, comparing pre- and a post-EE, self-assessment survey results from 245 students, enrolled in a Young Enterprise venture creation programme, and a control group at a Dutch university. With the use of open-question surveys among the same population, during and after the EE modules, as well as from focus group discussions with a selection of participating students and teachers, explanation was sought for the observations drawn from the quantitative study. Significant relationships were found between students’ self-reported maturity of autonomy, self-efficacy, and motivation for learning, and in how these relate to self-directed learning readiness. Entrepreneurship education was found to significantly moderate the relationship between the learning characteristics and self-directed learning, and to strengthen of the students’ perceived readiness for self-directed learning. Explanation for the impact of EE were found to be related to the stage-wise, mixed pedagogy approach to learning, that combines authentic learning with a hierarchical approach to competence development, and supportive team dynamics. The research contributes to practice with a proposed conceptual framework for understanding how to prepare for self-directed learning readiness and a teaching-learning framework for its development in formal educational settings. It contributes to knowledge with its deeper understanding of how students experience learning in EE and how that affects their willingness to pursue learning opportunities.
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Workshop summaryIn this workshop we work together with the participants towards concrete steps that educators could take to promote inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems. Nowadays, entrepreneurial ecosystems do not provide all entrepreneurs equal access to opportunities, resources, and support. Specifically, entrepreneurial ecosystems remain heavily male-dominated with women and other underrepresented groups facing challenges to access resources and grow their ventures due to a range of (institutional) barriers. This lack of inclusivity is problematic as it limits the release of untapped entrepreneurial potential necessary to maximize the societal and economic benefits of entrepreneurship. During this workshop we want to engage in discussions and propose actions to be undertaken by educators and HEI’s to foster the inclusivity of their institutional and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem in which they are embedded. By using the ‘inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem framework’, we want to raise awareness of this topic and share actionable ideas that participants can implement in their daily practices.
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