Integrating sustainability into entrepreneurship programs? The use of new teaching models in higher education institutions for sustainable entrepreneurship education and its value for organizations

The first entrepreneurship course was born in 1947 at Harvard Business School (Nabi & al., 2017). Since this time, education for entrepreneurship evolved and adapted itself to the international changing environment (Grindsted, 2016 ; Ballereau & al., 2020). In order to respond to the worldwide focus on sustainability, sustainable entrepreneurship education is a topic present in a growing number of higher education institutions even if this transition is only at the beginning stage (Fichter & Tiemann, 2018 ; Ploum & al. 2018 ; Ballereau & al., 2020). This context leads academics to question themselves about the construction of sustainable entrepreneurship programs in higher education institutions (Ballereau & al., 2020).

First, more studies addressing competencies for sustainable entrepreneurs are needed. Ploum & al. (2018) notice that mostly conceptual research has been made recently to identify the knowledge, attitudes and skills for change agents in sustainability. Moreover, the framework of Lans & al. (2014) is the only one that addresses competencies for sustainable entrepreneurship. Secondly, a gap of reviews in sustainable entrepreneurship education can be identified in terms of pedagogies used. Consequently, Nabi & al. (2017) and Klapper & Farber (2016) are asking for future research to better understand the impact of pedagogical designs and methods. Impact research that focuses on emotion and motivation indicators are also recommended (Nabi & al., 2017). Finally, Nabi & al. (2017) consider education for entrepreneurship as an underresearched phenomenon in other school contexts than higher education institutions.

In this thesis, a 3 steps-research will be leading:

• to catch information about the actual state of literature on sustainable entrepreneurship learning outcomes in terms of competences in higher education institutions ;
• about the pedagogical methods permitting to enhance students’ passion for sustainable entrepreneurship ;
• and lastly, about the exploration of sustainable entrepreneurship course implementation at the level of primary schools while understanding the sensibilization effect on sustainability issues and entrepreneurship on children.

To achieve these goals, qualitative and quantitative methodologies will be used on the project around two research fields. The first concerns the selection of a university offering a sustainable entrepreneurship program to their students with different pedagogical means and the second consists of the program “Futur Défi” attended by children from 10 to 12 years old, in Belgium.