USASBE is the national organization for practitioners and scholars of entrepreneurship. They held their annual conference in Los Angeles January 10-14th, and a wonderful paper was produced after an entrepreneurship education and pedagogy panel. What is so interesting is that the very best teachers in the field have refined entrepreneurship education (EE) as developing the mindset, skill set, and practice necessary for starting new ventures. With EE “at a tipping point”, exploding in growth over the last 30 years, and “making glorious waves”, it has outpaced our understanding of what should be taught by educators and how outcomes should be assessed.
The paper, portions published here, should be read in its entirety at:
http:// journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2515127417737286.
Students experience and learn entrepreneurial skills only through engagement and practicing the various aspects of new venture creation. The lessons of new venture creation can be used to become better at creativity, team building, resource acquisition, or alleviating problems around the globe. These learned skills and many others provide the opportunity for contribution back to psychology, organizational behavior or leadership, finance or accounting, and sociology, respectively. Those seeking to operate at the middle or right of the entrepreneurship educator continuum should play a coaching role that guides and inspires students to practice and take action. The coaching role encourages shared ownership, whereas the facilitator role really allows the student to completely own their learning and even develop their learning process.
Here are the panel’s finding for the role of entrepreneurship educators:
This expert panel was chosen via the Delphi Method, comprised of 17 entrepreneurship educators. Among the panelists, were 13 men and 4 women as well as a geographic mix of educators (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, and France). Authors Heidi M. Neck is the Jeffry A. Timmons professor of Entrepreneurial Studies and professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson College; Andrew C. Corbett is a Babson Research Scholar and professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson College. Formerly, he was the general editor of the Journal of Management Studies. For more email: hneck@babson.edu.
