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This study aims to examine the role of gender balance in forming individuals’ understanding of entrepreneurship as manifested in the graduates’ occupational choices, asking: Does gender balance in entrepreneurship education influence start-up behaviour after graduation? Based on gender mainstreaming, this study builds on the assumption that gender balance influences classroom and student community discourses. This study presents two hypotheses suggesting a positive relationship between gender balance (student and mentor gender balance, respectively) and the likelihood of engaging in start-up behaviour after graduation.

The context is an international one-year master's programme in entrepreneurship and innovation, which adopts an experienced-based pedagogical approach to support learning. This study applies binary logistic regression analysis to test the hypotheses on a sample of 107 graduates who responded to a web-based questionnaire on post-graduation career paths.

This study finds support for the first hypothesis indicating that student gender balance in the classroom has a significant positive impact on graduates' likelihood of engaging in start-up activity post-graduation. In the interpretation of these findings, this study emphasizes that a master's programme in entrepreneurship is an important arena where students' attitudes, values, aspirations and intentions towards entrepreneurship are shaped and their identity developed.

While studies have demonstrated gender bias in the discourses on entrepreneurship education and content, there is little evidence of its consequences or how it is addressed. Findings of this study point directly to this gap by revealing that improved gender balance is not only beneficial to the underrepresented gender, but to the overall student group.

This article focuses on the assessment of entrepreneurship competence by selected vocational teachers in Italy. The exploratory research question addresses the extent to which entrepreneurship assessments are competence based, and the research seeks to identify fully fledged assessment programmes with both a formative and summative component, and the use of assessment rubrics. It also explores the extent to which entrepreneurship competence is referred to in school documentation and later assessed, and the tools and strategies used for such assessment.

This case study is part of a larger European research project promoted by Cedefop; in Italy it focused on six selected vocational IVET and CVET programmes and apprenticeship schemes. It used a wide range of instruments to ensure triangulation and multiple perspectives: analysed policy documents and undertook online interviews with experts and policy makers. At VET providers' premises it deployed: analysis of school documents; observations of learning environments; interviews and focus groups with (in schools) teachers, directors and vice directors, learners and alumni (in companies) instructors, company tutors and employers, apprentices and alumni.

Assessment tasks were rarely embedded within fully fledged assessment programmes involving both formative and summative tasks, and assessment rubric for grading. Most of the time, entrepreneurship programmes lacked self-assessment, peer assessment and structured feedback and did not involve learners in the assessment process. Some instructors coached the students, but undertook no clear formative assessment. These findings suggest institutions have a testing culture with regard to assessment, at the level of both policy and practice. In most cases, entrepreneurship competence was not directly assessed, and learning outcomes were only loosely related to entrepreneurship.

One limitation concerned the selection of the VET providers: these were chosen not on a casual basis, but because they ran programmes that were relevant to the development of entrepreneurship competence.

At the policy level, there is a need for new guidelines on competence development and assessment in VET, guidelines that are more aligned with educational research on competence development. To ensure the development of entrepreneurship competence, educators need in-service training and a community of practice.

So far, the literature has concentrated on entrepreneurship education at the tertiary level. Little is known about how VET instructors assess entrepreneurship competence. This study updates the picture of policy and practice in Italy, illustrating how entrepreneurship competence is developed in selected IVET and CVET programmes and apprenticeships.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether participating in an entrepreneurship education programme with short-term international placements can help pre-service teachers to identifying the characteristics of entrepreneurial competence from a wide definition of entrepreneurship (Lackéus, 2015) rather than from a business centred definition, to be developed by entrepreneur teachers.

A three-year longitudinal qualitative study was carried out. In-depth interviews were conducted using open-ended questions with 17 pre-service teachers from the University of Deusto (Spain). They were participating in a European project with short-term international placements at five different European higher education institutions.

There is no consensual definition of the term entrepreneurship, which varies depending on the context. Entrepreneurship could be considered to be both a mindset and a lifestyle. The characteristics of entrepreneurs that were mentioned the most included: being creative, team players, open-minded, innovative, passionate, motivated, hard-working and risk-takers; being able to overcome challenges; having initiative; being proactive, organised and persevering; having leadership skills, communication skills, the ability to adapt; having a positive attitude and, being decision-makers. Short-term placements contribute to personal development, improved foreign language competence, increased awareness and understanding of other cultures, and acquiring entrepreneurship competence.

Research on the characteristics of teacherpreneurs is still in its early stages. The vast majority of studies focus on entrepreneurs and teachers of entrepreneurship education programmes aimed at those who wish to start up new businesses. This study contributes to a better understanding of the term entrepreneurship, to identifying the current characteristics of teacherpreneurs, and to outline certain variables that could be considered during pre-service teachers training plans. It also proposes further research into in-service teacherpreneur education.

This paper analyses whether the entrepreneurship education centres introduced by the Italian Ministry of Higher Education and Research in 2012 (the Italian Contamination Labs – CLabs) are effectively adopting the emergent digital technologies for nurturing their entrepreneurship education activities and dissemination of knowledge contamination practices among university students.

An in-depth analysis of italian entrepreneurship education centres provides evidence about the direct role played by digital technologies in supporting and enhancing the entrepreneurial processes, as well as on their indirect role in stimulating entrepreneurship activities of nascent student entrepreneurs.

Findings provide some insights into the strategic role of some categories of digital technologies inside the CLabs. The main results show still a weak use of digital technologies in CLabs except for social media and digital platforms, mainly used for promotion scope and communication of the entrepreneurial outputs achieved by the students.

Limitations of the study consist of the need to expand the study to all the other CLabs belonging to the CLabs Italian Network and to derive a set of “invariance” among the cases in terms of digital technologies support for student entrepreneurship.

New ways of managing entrepreneurship centres will involve a more massive adoption of digital technologies to support and transform some processes realized inside the CLabs, even if the governance of such centres must develop new digital skills.

The originality of the work regards the contribution to the emerging role of digital technologies on the student's entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to understand whether entrepreneurial education imbibes entrepreneurial orientation (EO) among engineering students. The authors wanted to test whether students’ performance in the Technology Entrepreneurship Programme (TEP) influences the propensity of entrepreneurial firms to hire them.

Data was collected from 1,296 students who were enrolled with the two-year TEP during the academic year 2016–2018 using structured questionnaires. Multinomial and Ordinary Least Squares regressions were used to examine the hypotheses.

The findings of this study suggest that superior student performance in the programme is positively correlated with the students being hired by entrepreneurial firms.

This study identifies aspects of EO that relates with employability. The positive relationship found between student performance in the programme and chances of getting hired insists on the need to inculcate entrepreneurial values among students at the college level. The findings will also provide valuable insights for graduate entrepreneurs, policymakers, corporates and educators on multiple dimensions for customizing EO among students during their study at college level.

The authors used a live intervention titled TEP as empirical context to explore how training in entrepreneurial, design and management concepts influences EO. The authors also tracked the success of the programme through actual job offers made to the participants of the programme.

The purpose of this study is to answer the following questions. What kind of entrepreneurial identities do students have that motivate them to choose either of the entrepreneurship course and university-based incubator? How do students involve in the entrepreneurship ecosystem at university based on their entrepreneurial identity?

For this study, the author began to gather information using previous knowledge and any aspect of a work, namely, from the literature review to represent interpretive syntheses of the meaning-making literature review addressing the research question.

This study suggests what happens to entrepreneur students from academia and the reason that they end up in one of the two aforementioned paradigms. This paper aims to underpin the issue of how various entrepreneurial identities of students cause substantial contributing factors in forming such entrepreneurial activities at university and throughout the entire innovation ecosystem.

Almost all of the content of the entrepreneurship education (EE) courses and incubator training is oriented towards consensual entrepreneurship methods, in accordance with entrepreneurship education. Although the core contents of the EE courses and university-based incubators’ training are the same, the outcomes are quite different.

This study considers the students’ entrepreneurial identities with a focus on their point of view that led them to end up in one of the two common entrepreneurship resources at universities: the EE course and entrepreneurial activities related to university-based incubators.

Three different pedagogical approaches grounded in three different definitional foundations of entrepreneurship have been compared in relation to their effects on students. They are: (1) “Idea and Artefact-Creation Pedagogy” (IACP), grounded in opportunity identification and creation, (2) “Value-Creation Pedagogy” (VaCP), grounded in value creation and (3) “Venture-Creation Pedagogy” (VeCP), grounded in organisation creation.

Data were collected at 35 different sites where education was deemed to be entrepreneurial and experiential. A quantitative, smartphone app-based data collection method was used alongside a qualitative interview approach. 10,953 short-survey responses were received from 1,048 participants. Responses were used to inform respondent selection and discussion topics, in 291 student and teacher interviews. Comparative analysis was then conducted.

The three approaches resulted in very different outcomes, both in magnitude and in kind. VaCP had strong effects on entrepreneurial competencies, on student motivation and on knowledge and skills acquisition. VeCP had weaker effects on knowledge and skills acquisition. IACP had weak effects on all outcomes probed for. Differences were attributed to variation in prevalence of certain emotional learning events and to variation in purpose as perceived by students.

VaCP could serve as an escape from the potential dilemma faced by many teachers in entrepreneurial education, of being caught between two limiting courses of action; a marginal VeCP approach and a fuzzy IACP one. This could prompt policymakers to reconsider established policies. However, further research in other contexts is needed, to corroborate the extent of differences between these three approaches.

Most impact studies in experiential entrepreneurial education focus only on organisation-creation-based education. This study contributes by investigating entrepreneurial education that is also grounded in two other definitional foundations. Allowance has been made for novel comparative conclusions.

The purpose of the paper is to theorize how to develop student entrepreneurs' ability to reflect by means of a learning activity called the entrepreneurial diary, which seeks to develop self-regulated learners capable of intelligent entrepreneurial action. The importance of self-regulation in entrepreneurship is linked to the individual's ability to make judgments under conditions of uncertainty, which requires reflective thinking.

The paper builds on a synthesized conceptualization of three main literature strands, reflective thinking, cognitive-load theory and experiential entrepreneurship education. In addition to the synthesized conceptualization, it builds on some empirical insights derived from a venture creation master programme in which the learning activity has been developed and refined for the last seven years.

The main finding from the paper is the theoretical justification for why reflective thinking deserves an important place in the educational process and how the entrepreneurial diary as a learning activity can create a bridge between theory and practice in venture creation programmes that take an experience-based pedagogical approach. Furthermore, the study also provides some empirical insights of how students create self-awareness of their learning through the method and the metareflection reports. Self-awareness is foundational for developing conditional knowledge on why and when to make entrepreneurial decisions to balance the often action-oriented processes seen in venture creation programmes.

The paper provides both a practical learning activity to be used in the entrepreneurial classroom and a theoretical contribution on how entrepreneurial experience is transformed into entrepreneurial knowledge to enhance students' judgmental abilities to make entrepreneurial decisions in future entrepreneurial endeavours.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a model to examine the factors that mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial education and entrepreneurial intentions among undergraduate students in Ghana. Specifically, the study identified entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviours (namely, risk-taking ability, self-efficacy, pro-activeness and behavioural control) that students ought to acquire through entrepreneurial education to increase their intentions to indulge in entrepreneurship.

The survey approach was adopted, with data collection done through administering questionnaires to students in the two public universities in the Central Region of Ghana. The model was tested using the partial least squares procedure.

The results found support for the proposed model, depicting that, with the exception of self-efficacy, other factors such as behavioural control, risk-taking ability and pro-activeness mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial education and entrepreneurial intentions of students.

The major limitation of this study is that the proposed model was tested in only the public universities in the Central Region of Ghana. Subsequently, the validity of the model should be confirmed in other institutions.

The findings suggest that entrepreneurial education should be integrated into the course structure of all programmes across all disciplines in the tertiary institutions of Ghana. This will promote entrepreneurship and alleviate unemployment among university graduates.

The study provides a basis for tertiary institutions to develop programmes, policies and measures to help students to build upon their ability to take a risk, control their behaviour and be pro-active. This will influence their quest to become self-employed and not to rely on others and the government for employment after graduation.

This paper aims to investigate the entrepreneurial behaviours exhibited by commercial smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe, focusing on their socio-economic characteristics, and considers their implication for outcomes of livelihood resilience in a resource-constrained and turbulent rural context.

The study used survey data collected from 430 smallholder farmers in Masvingo province, Zimbabwe. Using a two-step cluster analysis, the study constructed a typology of farmers based on their entrepreneurial behaviour and socio-economic characteristics.

The results revealed that commercial smallholder farmers are heterogeneous in terms of their entrepreneurial behaviours. Four clusters were identified: non-entrepreneurial, goal-driven, means-driven and ambidextrous. Beyond their entrepreneurial behaviours, these clusters significantly differ in the socio-economic characterises (gender, age, education levels, farm size, proximity to the market and social connection) and farm performance (seasonal sales per hectare and farm income per hectare).

The typology framework relating farmers’ entrepreneurial behaviours to their socio-economic characteristics and business performance is important to tailor and therefore improve the effectiveness of farmer entrepreneurship programmes and policies. In particular, tailoring farmer entrepreneurship education is crucial to distribute land, finance and market resources in purposive ways to promote a combination of smallholder farmers’ effectual and causal behaviours at an early stage of their farm ventures.

Researchers still know little about which farmers’ behaviours are entrepreneurial and how these behaviours manifest in action during their commercial farm activities. This research leverages effectuation and causation theory to unveil previously overlooked distinctions on farmers’ entrepreneurial behaviours, thereby enhancing a more grounded understanding of farmer entrepreneurship in a resource-constrained context.