Teaching Methods to Facilitate Learning Entrepreneurial Competences in Higher Education

The concept of entrepreneurial competences includes various skills, knowledge, attitudes towards entrepreneurship, as well as generic and subject-specific competences needed for setting up and running a business. Entrepreneurial intention and attitudes can also be regarded as one part of entrepreneurial competences. The objective of this qualitative study is to describe and understand how teaching methods are used by teachers. Seven core courses which facilitate the learning of entrepreneurial competences best were selected. The data was collected by asking the teachers of the courses to answer what teaching methods they used. The findings illustrated that the teaching methods used covered many dimensions of entrepreneurial competences. However, the most challenging competences, such as personal maturity skills, intentions and attitudes were not covered well enough by the present teaching methods. Therefore it can be concluded that if the aim is to support and facilitate the development of personal characteristics which are related to the entrepreneurial behaviour and actions, more attention should be paid to the teaching methods.