Training university educators to foster embedded entrepreneurship education: an evaluation

This paper addresses the critical gap in preparing university educators to integrate entrepreneurship across various disciplines. Despite policy pushes for widespread entrepreneurship education, a significant barrier is the lack of adequately prepared faculty who feel confident in adapting and delivering entrepreneurial elements within their specific disciplines. This paper presents a teacher professional development program and explores its immediate and long-term impact on participating educators. The training is grounded in constructivist active and experiential learning approaches and aims to empower university educators across disciplines to incorporate entrepreneurial elements into their educational practices. The study uses a mixed-methods approach, combining pre- and post-training surveys with follow-up focus-group interviews conducted several months after course completion. The evaluation is based on the Kirkpatrick model, assessing participants’ reactions, learning, behaviour, and results. Quantitative findings indicate initial positive effects on reaction and learning among participants. Qualitative analyses from focus-group interviews reveal sustained learning and changes in teaching behaviours, which have led to positive impacts on student outcomes across diverse fields. These findings support the value of training university educators to foster embedded entrepreneurship education in higher education.