Fostering Entrepreneurship: an Analysis of General Enterprising Tendency and Pedagogical Intervention in Building Entrepreneurship Education

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education is considered as one of the most persuasive way which determines the strength of the economy. It’s a way in which flexibility in terms of moulding one’s own self to face the hardship of the world of entrepreneurship is taught in a practically applicable way so as to align with the changing workforce demand. The paradigm shift in education brings challenges to the educators. This has made extremely necessary to make essential changes in the curriculum of entrepreneurship teaching and training. The present study was conducted with an aim to evaluate the effectiveness of the entrepreneurship education offered as a post-graduate management programme at Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII), Gujarat, India. These pedagogical inputs help to impart the “hard skills” and “soft skills”, which are essential for the entrepreneurial journey. The paper reflects on the experience of a 2-year entrepreneurship programme designed and introduced in the academic curriculum. The data was collected from four consecutive batches at three stages during the 2-year programme. For the first stage, data was collected using the Test of General Enterprising Tendency (GET) developed by Caird and Johnson (1989) to assess the competencies of the students. For the second stage, the introduced pedagogical intervention has been analysed by making students undergo a specialized education, named as “New Enterprise Creation” and “Family Business Management” and for the third stage, the students were assessed on the basis of career they are pursuing after completing the course. The findings highlight the analysis of students based on the specialization they have opted and indicated various sectors where they have ventured either in new business or serving in the corporate which is represented through a pictorial model of pedagogical intervention. Further GET analysis discussed the effect of various observable competencies on the entrepreneurial self of students. The article represents a connected model of nurturing the competencies of students, creating an individual learning environment while imparting an understanding, and insights on the entrepreneurial propensity of the students. The present study builds an early experience of connecting classroom teaching with experiential learning and providing a model on entrepreneurship education for effective practices in higher educational environment.The present article is innovative in nature as it has been practically implemented and argues on the holistic approach towards building a pedagogical model for entrepreneurship education and simultaneously nourishing and nurturing the entrepreneurial competencies.