Teachers implementing entrepreneurship education: classroom practices

Purpose This study aims to highlight the entrepreneurship education practices teachers use in their work. Another target is to analyze how these practices differ based on a number of background factors. Design/methodology/approach This article presents a quantitative analysis of 521 teachers and other entrepreneurship education actors. The paper first examines the overall picture of entrepreneurship education practices. Then, after a factor analysis, the paper builds new sum measures of entrepreneurship education practices. Finally, the paper studies the teachers’ background information to further analyze the entrepreneurship education practices. Findings The findings provide information on which methods appear to be used the most frequently in basic and upper secondary education, and how these practices vary between different school levels. The results also indicate that the perception teachers have of their own entrepreneurship education skills is closely connected to the implementation of entrepreneurship education. Moreover, the findings present the connection between teacher training and the implementation of entrepreneurship education. Originality/value Teachers’ entrepreneurship education practices and related teaching and working methods are important in many respects. As research has primarily focused on higher education where the transferability of the results to basic and upper secondary education seems vague, this paper concentrates on the teachers’ role and especially their practices in lower education. The authors consider that their article has a special value in exploring and opening dialogue in this area.