Teaching Entrepreneurship for Sustainability – a Review of Educational Tools

Abstract

Entrepreneurial competences geared towards sustainable actions are necessary for the transition towards sustainability. Higher education institutions are dedicated to training students to acquire these competences, which entails equipping teachers with educational tools that facilitate students’ learning to act for a sustainable future. This paper discusses educational tools for sustainable entrepreneurship, focusing on the competences they intend to train. We map a sample of 51 educational tools used to teach sustainable entrepreneurship in higher education. We then discuss the intended sustainable entrepreneurship competences that each tool seeks to impart and the underlying pedagogical traditions upon which these tools are built. Our mapping reveals that the educational tools in our sample are predominantly adapted from business administration and lack a specific focus on teaching entrepreneurship for sustainability. Additionally, alternative post-growth economic paradigms are notably absent in our sample of tools. Our exploration of each tool in terms of its intended competences and the underlying tradition contributes to the ongoing discourse on sustainable entrepreneurship education as a field that combines entrepreneurship education and education for sustainable development.