The project Teaching Entrepreneurship for Sustainability aims at implementing sustainability in a comprehensive way in entrepreneurship education. This goes two ways: involve sustainability more strongly in the entrepreneurship courses and "marry" sustainability with the entrepreneurship approach in one module. It should create a better understanding of in which ways and dimensions sustainability and entrepreneurship are compatible, and in which ways and dimensions they are not. Additionally, the project needs to contribute to the quality of teaching in sustainability and entrepreneurship education. Furthermore, the project aims at developing a working approach which students can adopt in order to achieve sustainable results in a highly uncertain and changing environment. This work approach focuses on soft skills development for students as future actors of sustainable entrepreneurship, as there is not a “syllabus” to follow in reality. This includes re-gearing entrepreneurial processes to a variety of contexts and situations and embedding uncertainty into the learning process. There are in total 3 participants involved in this project, all with their own courses and programmes in entrepreneurship: 1. Uppsala University (Campus Gotland), Sweden Course in master's programme 'Sustainable Destination Development': Introduction to Entrepreneurship in the tourism industry 2. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (Campus Fryslan), The Netherlands Master's programme Sustainable Entrepreneurship 3. Nord University, Norway Courses in the bachelor's programme 'Business Administration': Knowledge based business development and Sustainable Business Development All three universities will be actively involved in the development of the project and each university is responsible for one workpackage. The project is divided into three workpackages, consisting of various goals, activities and outputs, which follow up on each other in a chronological order. This means that the work being done in each workpackage contributes to the following workpackage and the goals, activities and outputs of these workpackages. WORKPACKAGE 1: MAPPING AND SYSTEMATIZING CURRENT PRACTICES In workpackage 1 the focus lies on gaining a thorough understanding of the current available approaches to teaching sustainability in entrepreneurship education. This will provide the required knowledge base for developing a module that teaches sustainable entrepreneurship in an integrated way. > Responsible: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen > Result: Report on Sustainable Entrepreneurship Education WORKPACKAGE 2: DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHING MODULE With the knowledge base created in workpackage 1 and the views and feedback of experts and stakeholders collected through a LTT-activity and multiplier events, the new teaching module for higher education will be developed. > Responsible: Uppsala University > Result: Curriculum for Teaching Module WORKPACKAGE 3: IMPLEMENTATION AND ASSESSMENT This workpackage consists of two elements, namely to train the trainers and to develop assessment tools. To successfully implement the module, firstly the teachers active in the relevant programmes and courses of the partner universities need to be trained in the course content. The assessment tools will be developed in order to measure the success and quality of the teaching module. > Responsible: Nord University > Result: Train the Trainer Guideline & Assessment Tools for Teaching Module The work being done in the workpackages leads to the aim of this project: to develop a new teaching module for sustainable entrepreneurship education at the partner universities and other universities in Europe and the world. Furthermore, they contribute to the fulfillment of the following objectives: 1. To provide an accessible framework on available approaches to integrating sustainability in entrepreneurship education 2. To provide universities with an evidence-based teaching module on ‘sustainable entrepreneurship’, applicable in different higher educational contexts 3. To provide students with motivation, capabilities and opportunities to become agents of change and active actors in sustainable entrepreneurship 4. To provide educators with tools and guidelines in order to teach an integrated ‘sustainable entrepreneurship’ module 5. To provide educators with the tools to monitor and evaluate the quality of the ‘sustainable entrepreneurship’ module The project impact is as follows: Students will have an increased awareness of entrepreneurial solutions to sustainability challenges and will have gained an entrepreneurial mindset. Teachers will gain experience of teaching sustainability principles and entrepreneurship in an integrated way. Local enterprise incubators will have increased long-term opportunities to be involved in the entrepreneurship education. The activities of the project will continue as permanent additions to existing operations.
We recognized the need for in-depth exploration and novel pedagogical methods to teach sustainable entrepreneurship. This project was geared towards a comprehensive infusion of sustainability into entrepreneurship education. This dual approach encompassed a heightened infusion of sustainability principles into entrepreneurship courses within a single module. The aim was to foster a nuanced understanding of the synergies and disparities between sustainability and entrepreneurship across various dimensions. Recognizing the absence of a prescriptive "syllabus" in real-world scenarios, this framework involves recalibrating entrepreneurial processes to suit diverse contexts and scenarios, while seamlessly accommodating the inherent uncertainties in the learning journey. To realize this, we shared sustainable entrepreneurship teaching experiences across universities and national borders, thereby enhancing the quality of entrepreneurship education (Caniglia et al., 2017) and crafting a contextually relevant teaching module for broader European application.
In line with UN's Agenda 2030 sustainable development goals, there's a pressing demand to seamlessly integrate sustainability into entrepreneurship education. This is crucial as entrepreneurial enterprises play a pivotal role in achieving these goals (Hockerts and Wüstenhagen, 2010; Patzelt and Shepherd, 2011). However, current practice often treats sustainability as an adjunct to entrepreneurship education rather than an integral aspect, not effectively blending these concepts (Lans, Blok, and Wesselink, 2013; Ploum, Blok, Lans, and Omta, 2018). Entrepreneurship education typically emphasizes opportunities and processes, whereas sustainability education leans towards systems and consequences (Hermes and Rimanoczy, 2018). Can these two approaches seamlessly complement each other within educational settings, or does it necessitate innovative teaching methods? In the TES project we dived deeper into this inquiry, seeking novel avenues to impart the principles of sustainable entrepreneurship.