Pedagogical approaches to teaching entrepreneurship

Abstract

Higher education has long been considered central to the development of the future professional workforce, economic planning and social policy. However, it is relatively recent that entrepreneurship has established legitimacy among university-based disciplines across the world and in Europe. The European Commission first referred to the importance of entrepreneurship education in the 2003 Green Paper on Entrepreneurship in Europe (Bacigalupo et al., 2016). This document outlined the importance of developing the entrepreneurial capacity of European citizens and organisations as a key objective. In 2006, the European Commission further identified ‘a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship’ as one of the eight pillar competencies necessary to develop a knowledge-based society. Moreover, there is a growing awareness that entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and attitudes can be learned and that, in turn, this may lead to the diffusion of entrepreneurial mindsets and culture, potentially benefiting both individuals and society at large (Bacigalupo et al., 2016). Empirical evidence supporting the assumption that skills relevant to successful entrepreneurship can be taught (Gorman et al., 1997; Solomon et al., 1994) goes back to the nineties, when entrepreneurship education was still in its infancy.