Combining teaching “about” and “through” entrepreneurship: A practice to develop students’ entrepreneurial competencies

Abstract

Many universities have incorporated entrepreneurship education into their programs. However, research and the practice show that this curriculum is taught in various ways, which the authors group into three themes: teaching about entrepreneurship, teaching for entrepreneurship, and teaching through entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship educators face several challenges, especially the difficulties in defining the best way to teach entrepreneurship and the lack of evaluation of the chosen method’s effectiveness. This article focuses specifically on how entrepreneurship is taught at the Faculty of Economics and Management of Tunis and what effect it may have on the development of students’ entrepreneurial competencies. It attempts to support entrepreneurship educators by describing a pilot experience consisting of combining teaching about and through entrepreneurship and a conventional method that adopts just teaching about entrepreneurship. These descriptions may help to explore and uncover what happens in the classroom and aid teachers in choosing the appropriate practices to achieve their educational objectives. The article evaluates the two programs by comparing their effects on the development of students’ entrepreneurial competencies. The authors use a two-sample independent t-test to make the comparison, and the results indicate that the combined method is stronger overall than the conventional method.

Experiencing Live Action of Business: Reflections on an Immersive Course in Entrepreneurship

“…Chaker and Jarraya (2021) say that entrepreneurship can be taught by combining teaching about entrepreneurship and teaching through entrepreneurship. When entrepreneurship is taught as a core course with an objective of increasing the ‘awareness about entrepreneurship as a potential career choice’ (Sirelkhatim & Gangi, 2015, p. 5), education gets limited to knowledge transfer (Piperopoulos & Dimov, 2015), and it gets bracketed under teaching about entrepreneurship.…”

Comparing Entrepreneurial Spirit in job descriptions seeking business undergraduates and graduates

“…Entrepreneurship education at the university level is complex because the content of the curriculum taught is inconsistent among faculty and is delivered using a variety of formats. Recently, Chaker and Jarraya (2021) have examined the “for,” “about,” and “through” approaches to teaching entrepreneurship. Their findings reveal that combining teaching about and through entrepreneurship is more effective than just teaching about innovation.…”

How to Educate Student Become Competent Entrepreneurs

“…However, there is still less research that discusses the study of learning and learning entrepreneurship from a scientific perspective. (Chaker & Jarraya, 2021). The educational environment, experience, and teachers' attitude have not implemented an entrepreneurial education approach (Chaker & Jarraya, 2021;Pittaway & Cope, 2007), lack of clear understanding of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education.…”

“…(Chaker & Jarraya, 2021). The educational environment, experience, and teachers' attitude have not implemented an entrepreneurial education approach (Chaker & Jarraya, 2021;Pittaway & Cope, 2007), lack of clear understanding of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education.…”