Entrepreneurial educators: vital enablers to support the education sector to reimagine and respond to the challenges of
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Entrepreneurial educators: vital enablers to support the education sector to reimagine and respond to the challenges of COVID‑19 Carol Langston1 Received: 5 September 2020 / Revised: 5 September 2020 / Accepted: 13 September 2020 / Published online: 28 September 2020 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
Abstract This article examines the experiences of the educator as a key actor in entrepreneurship education. Since the 1990s, the education sector has been called upon to create more ‘entrepreneurs’ to find solutions to global problems leading to entrepreneurship education. The educator is a key participant in the process of entrepreneurship education, but too little is known or understood about their experiences. Employing an interpretative phenomenological approach with ten UK-based higher education entrepreneurship education educators, this article sheds light on their experiences. The article concludes by proposing a conceptual model of the essence of entrepreneurship education educators’ experiences which identifies shared values, multiple identities and innovative practices. It finds something personal and inherently ‘good’ about entrepreneurship education, beyond the knowledge of entrepreneurship, which attracts certain educators. These educators are found to be entrepreneurial with a need for change, distinctiveness and action which at times can lead to marginalisation from the traditional educational establishment. They are found to be highly efficacious entrepreneurial employees (Lackéus et al., Bacigalupo (ed) The entrepreneurial employee in the public and private sector—what, why, how. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2020) and, it is argued, could act as significant enablers for wider educational systems change required to respond to the challenges of COVID-19 (WHO in Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, 2020. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019). Keywords Entrepreneurship · Education · Educator · Experience · Student · Value
* Carol Langston [email protected] 1
General Teaching Council for Scotland, Edinburgh, UK
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Vol.:(0123456789)
312
Entrepreneurship Education (2020) 3:311–338
Introduction The globally influential Handbook of Entrepreneurship Research describes an ‘upending’ in the understanding of entrepreneurship in the twenty-first century with entrepreneurship now being widely recognised as the driver of global economic and social development (Acs and Audretsch 2001, 2010, p. 1). For more than 20 years, the education sector has been called upon to embed entrepreneurship education. Initially with the aim to encourage new ventures by creating more ‘entrepreneurs’ and latterly, there has been a move towards enterprise education, particularly in Europe, to develop graduates’ broader enterprising competencies in order that they are better able to find innovative solutions to societal problems and jobs in the dynamic world of work. Particularly over the last decade, policy makers (EC 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011a,
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