Teachers' mindset and attitudes towards learners and learning environment to support students' entrepreneurial attitudes in universities

Abstract

Supporting the development of students' entrepreneurial skills requires efforts from teaching staff. It needs specific knowledge, skills, and a mindset of teachers that helps to create a supportive learning environment for learners. The relationship between teachers' mindset and the creation of a learner-centered learning environment is still less studied in entrepreneurship education. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to identify how the university teacher's mindset relates to the creation of a learner-centered learning environment and their support to learners' entre preneurial attitudes and behavior. Learner-centered learning environment was conceptualized using the framework of Self-Determination Theory (SDT). The data were gathered using an online questionnaire completed by 150 university teachers from different higher education institutions in Estonia.The results indicated that university teachers who tend to think that entrepreneurial abilities are fixed traits are also reporting lower scores in using teaching principles that can be described as learner-centered and tend not to purposely support students' entrepreneurial attitudes. Creating a learner-centered learning environment was positively related to learners' entrepreneurial attitude support. The value of the study and contribution to research lies in a better understanding of the relations between university teachers' mindset and their tendency to use teaching strategies that support entrepreneurial learning. This paper positions the growth and fixed mindset theory and SDT within the context of entrepreneurial learning, adding the aspect of teachers' mindset for characterizing the profile of teachers. Also, the difference between entrepreneurship and non-entrepreneurship teachers were investigated for identifying the opportunities of embedding the principles of entrepreneurial learning in subject-specific courses. From a practical point of view, these results are useful for university managers, program managers and educators, including non-entrepreneurship teachers.