Abstract:

The European Commission and the OECD jointly published a thematic paper entitled “Entrepreneurial Learning Environments and a Changed Role for Teachers” that describes how our “globalized and highly technological world” is demanding new types of knowledge and competencies, how high school entrepreneurship can address these changes, and why educational institutions find changes in educational design to be difficult and even disturbing (EU, OECD 2015). As the founder of the True Entrepreneurs Platform (TEP), a high school entrepreneurial program in Hungary, we have discovered that coaching, collaboration, and competition are the three key areas required to motivate and empower high school teachers and students.

Playing high school football in the United States had a huge impact on my life. This impact, however, is not about the game itself, but rather about the motivation and confidence I gained while playing it. While my coaches were always there to teach us the game, they also knew when to take a step back and let us play. It is in these moments of trust between coaches and players that comfort zones are expanded, and limitations recede. Entrepreneurship in high school education also requires a balance between teaching and coaching where students are taught but also empowered to co-design, co-educate, and co-assess their own entrepreneurial education activities (EU, OECD 2015).” TEP coaches high school teachers, using proven materials, to help them discover their own teaching/coaching balance that best suits their students and their path to entrepreneurship.

After coaching, the next step is to connect students, high school teachers, and qualified business professionals across Hungary. This collaboration creates a dynamic community with “collaborations with the surrounding world integrated as a natural part of the implemented curriculum, in the purpose of offering the students opportunities to create value to themselves as well as to others in their learning process (EU, OECD 2015).” In our rapidly changing world, collaboration is critical to enable a community of teachers and students to share and receive recent and relevant materials thereby creating a virtuous cycle.

Competition is an inherent part of entrepreneurship and a powerful tool to motivate students to make extraordinary efforts. Although competitions are important, these competitions need to provide every participating team valuable feedback above and beyond awards. TEP creates a consensus amongst its members and will organize a Pitch Competition and an Entrepreneurship Hackathon at the end of the 2019-2020 academic year. These events are fantastic ways for teachers, students, and business professionals to all come together both celebrate entrepreneurship and to honor the extraordinary efforts of certain students.

There is a difficult gap to fill between the awareness of the benefits of high school entrepreneurship and how high schools can implement high school entrepreneurship. My research demonstrates that a real-time platform supporting high school entrepreneurship in these key areas will significantly increase the number of participating high school teachers, students, and business partners in Hungary. This increase in participation creates a powerful and positive network effect that raises the standard of entrepreneurship education for all participants.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship Education, Digital Platforms, Innovative behavior, Coaching, Collaboration, Competition.