On the way towards becoming a more competitive knowledge-society, the European and national governments need to encourage entrepreneurial spirit across the boards through their knowledge producers. Even though education in general is seen as one of the major catalyser of regional entrepreneurial potential, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial training is largely undertaken only at the university level in the selected programmes associated with business development. For a more comprehensive and rounded development of the entrepreneurial mindset regionally and nationally, it is vital to start embed the elements of entrepreneurial education in wider variety of courses and especially in those that educate our new generations – initial teacher education programmes. To address this need, a new Erasmus + project “Partnership for Initial Entrepreneurship Teacher Education – PIETE” is established to increase entrepreneurial competence deliverance in higher education pre-service teacher training programmes (ISCED 3-4 level).

To do so, the project relies on regional tandem constellations between experts from initial teacher education (ITE) institutions and higher education staff responsible for entrepreneurship education (EE) in Austria, Hungary and Poland. Operationally, PIETE is carried out as Strategic Partnership between Univations GmbH (Coordinator), University of Bielsko-Biała, University of Economics in Katowice, University of Szeged, Management Center Innsbruck, Pedagogical University Tyrol, and University Industry Innovation Network.

1. As a first step, a mutual understanding of either side’s needs will be created through joint workshops and awareness creation sessions.
2. In the next step, partners will create a novel teaching compendium for entrepreneurial competence development inside ITEs institutions. It will be based on EntreComp and, among others, provide indications for ETCS-Credit attributions.
3. PIETE will also develop a cross-country comparison study on how pre-service teacher educators understand EE terminology and assess entrepreneurial competence deliverance. This study will be complemented by a good practice report on European initiatives that have successfully enriched ITE programmes with EE contents.

PIETE will largely impact educators and students of the involved and other institutions by raising their awareness and capacities for entrepreneurial competence development as understood under EntreComp. Consequently, PIETE`s reach may ultimately extend to the school-level once impacted pre-service teachers enter the professional service.

PIETE has been selected for a 3-year funding period by DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) as one of only 19 German led Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership initiatives launched in 2018.

Stay tuned for the news about the project and in meantime, follow PIETE on:

Twitter: @piete_project or follow the link 

LinkedIn: PIETE – Partnership for Initial Entrepreneurship Teacher Education or follow the link

Facebook: @PIETEproject or follow the link