3 Different Models and Frameworks for Entrepreneurship Education
3.1 Context Models and Frameworks
An economic‐driven approach was taken up by O'Connor (2013, p. 555), identifying four concrete objectives which supply the drafting of entrepreneurship education’s purpose and orientation (see Figure 1). He connected behavioural distinctions to several units of analysis which consist of economic objectives and market contexts (differentiated by macroeconomic terms: utility – exogenous; development – exogenous; growth – expansionary; productivity – endogenous), of organisational levels of enterprises and their corresponding objectives (social change, innovation, survival or arbitrage), and of the individual form of reasoning (effectual, creative causal or causal) needed to contribute to these distinct objectives. Building upon this assumption, O'Connor (2013, p. 557) connected different sectors to the four economic objectives: Economic utility is linked to the social sector, targeting on social welfare, outcomes and businesses.
Economic development is related to the knowledge sector emphasizing innovation and facilitating strategy and effectiveness. Economic productivity is associated with the corporate sector, concentrating on existing firms which enhance competitiveness by innovation and development of capabilities. Economic growth, finally, encompasses activities from all the other three sectors taking also into account the human actor level (such as knowledge, competences or experience).
Figure 1 Relating sectors to the economic objectives. (O'Connor 2013, p. 557)
As a result of a systematic literature review, Pittaway and Cope (2007) present a thematic framework for entrepreneurship education in higher education identifying key areas for empirical research (see Figure 2). Two macro‐level areas were detected: The
“general policy climate for entrepreneurship education” as a “systemic input into the environment” and the “general enterprise infrastructure” as a “systemic output”
providing the “infrastructure and support […] once ‘education’ is turned into ‘practice’”
(Pittaway & Cope, 2007, p. 484). Factors that serve as indirect inputs for entrepreneurship education are, for instance, the university enterprise context, including the supply of the faculty in terms of academic enterprise, student‐
entrepreneur interactions, outreach activity and management training. These factors, however, also influence graduate employability and graduate enterprise and as such have an impact on the general enterprise infrastructure. The core of the framework is enclosed in the programme context (comprising pedagogical curricula, extracurricular activities, the intensities of student orientation and propensity and their capability to reveal this, and departmental philosophical influences). When systemically identifying contextual factors and then consolidating all these areas and factors, the demand for a holistic approach to entrepreneurship education is obvious, but then again there is the need for transparency on the outcomes to design the adjacent incomes. Thus, the impact of interventions and specific entrepreneurial programmes might be evaluated on a high degree.
Figure 2 A Thematic framework for entrepreneurship education (Pittaway & Cope, 2007, p. 484)
As soon as 2006, the European Commission had established a European reference framework and identified eight key competences for lifelong learning. One of these, the “[s]ense of initiative and entrepreneurship”, “refers to an individual’s ability to turn ideas into action. It includes creativity, innovation and risk‐taking, as well as the ability to plan and manage projects in order to achieve objectives. This supports individuals […] in being aware of the context of their work and being able to seize opportunities and is a foundation for more specific skills and knowledge needed by those establishing or contributing to social or commercial activity” (European Commission, 2006, n.p.). In the framework (see Figure 3), elements of entrepreneurship education are split up into two categories: on the one side, there is the entrepreneurial individual, on the other side entrepreneurship in personal, social and work life.
Knowledge (learn to understand entrepreneurship), skills (learn to become an entrepreneur) and attitudes (learn to become entrepreneurial) of the individual influence processes and behaviour in personal, societal and work‐life and thus bridge the worlds of the individual and society by simultaneously improving the awareness of the individual’s role in the context of work, society and economy.
Figure 3 The elements in entrepreneurship education (European Commission, 2012, p. 43)
Intentions and competence levels of entrepreneurship education are combined in the TRIO Model of Entrepreneurship Education (see Figure 4), developed during a pilot project of the Schumpeter College (Lindner, 2018). It covers three segments: core entrepreneurship education (core competences fostering entrepreneurial development and implementation on the personal or individual level), entrepreneurial culture
(encouraging entrepreneurial thinking, communication and relationships by empathy and independence), and entrepreneurial civic education (focussing on a societal culture of responsibility in order to face social challenges). Intentions are divided into three different approaches of entrepreneurship education: learning to become an entrepreneur (learning how to start and manage a business: “education for entrepreneurship”), learning to become entrepreneurial (learning to take responsibility for one’s own life: “education through entrepreneurship”) and learning to understand entrepreneurship (learning about an entrepreneur’s role in society: “education about entrepreneurship”) (Lindner, 2018, p. 120). Competences comprise three levels (primary, secondary and tertiary level). Segments, intentions and levels can be combined in various ways so that entrepreneurship education can be varied according to curricular dimensions and requirements.
Figure 4 TRIO Model of Entrepreneurship Education: Possible combinations in Entrepreneurship Education (Lindner 2018, p. 120)
Shane and Venkataraman (2000) see the biggest challenge in creating a unifying framework in the definition of entrepreneurship when this discipline is reduced to the entrepreneur’s deeds and person: “The problem with this approach is that entrepreneurship involves the nexus of two phenomena: the presence of lucrative opportunities and the presence of enterprising individuals” (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000, p. 218). Reconceptualising this approach, Thrane et al. (2016) present the
entrepreneurship education learning process as the result of the nexus of the individual (or team) and a disclosive space, where entrepreneurial identity work and development and entrepreneurial opportunity creation are seen as a mutually beneficial process supporting the entrepreneurial learning process (see Figure 5).
Figure 5 Reconceptualization of the nexus (Thrane et al., 2016, p. 914)
This reconceptualised individual‐opportunity nexus is characterised by 6 steps of learning for, about and through the entrepreneurial process of opportunity creation:
identity work, disclosing harmonies, qualifying disharmonies into general anomalies, constructing innovative solutions, prototyping and business modelling (Thrane et al., 2016, 914f). All these steps include an experiential, process‐based and action‐oriented learning approach which is said to provide students with a positive association to the creation of opportunities (Walter & Dohse, 2012) (also see Section 5).