Constructivist Entrepreneurial Teaching: The TeleCC Online Approach in Greece

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education is observed as expanding in both academic and informal settings. Drawing on the Business Schools paradigm, relevant courses deliver contiguous knowledge and competencies applicable to new business creation based on cognitive and experiential instruction. Germane studies explore the entrepreneurial intention of trainees as a consequence of the pursued instruction. This chapter follows a more student-centric perspective which supposes the underlying cognitive schemes of trainees and their evolution as primordial structures that are affected through learning. This focus turns the approach into pure constructivism where the Piagetian concepts of assimilation and accommodation underpin learning. Based on a coherent constructivist online environment, that is the TeleCC platform in Greece, evidence for reflection, critical thinking and meta-learning incidents is investigated amongst the trainees’ dialogues and comments. The appearance of these processes verifies the dynamics of constructivist learning and Piaget’s equilibration process. There has been minimal attention in research so far into genuine constructivist signatures relevant to entrepreneurial learning; a gap that motivated the research of this chapter. The features of the learning environment and the facilitating role for the educator are crucial presuppositions for deep constructivist learning processes to occur. Else, instructional interventions favour the customary guidance and knowledge or experience transfer. It is maintained that the constructivist approach is an underdeveloped yet innovative perspective for educational research in entrepreneurship that needs good examples and contextualisation of relevant concepts and processes. Its contribution will be especially important and inclusive for the lifelong learning domain where adult learners participate in with repositories of personal life experiences and crystallised and resistant conceptualisations for the phenomena under consideration.

Citation

Kakouris, A. (2017), "Constructivist Entrepreneurial Teaching: The TeleCC Online Approach in Greece", Entrepreneurship Education (Contemporary Issues in Entrepreneurship Research, Vol. 7), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 235-258. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2040-724620170000007015