The Role of Education and Training in Promoting Women’s Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education seeks to provide students with the knowledge, skills and motivation to encourage entrepreneurial success in a variety of settings. Variations of entrepreneurship education are offered at all levels of schooling from primary, secondary schools and through tertiary or graduate university programs. Entrepreneurial education has a big role to play in revolutionizing the way education builds the learners for a world of work. Entrepreneurial education prepares school-leavers for work as entrepreneurial education must include skill-building courses in negotiation, leadership, new product development, creative thinking, exposure to technological innovation (McMullan & Long, 1987: Vesper & McMullen, 1988; King, 2001; Honig, 2004). It is further argued that entrepreneurial education should instill in the learners awareness of entrepreneur career options (Donckels, 1991; Hills, 1988; Kuratko, 2004). Therefore, teachers and students should embrace hands-on teaching and learning for that recognizes certain desirable outcomes and endorses studentcentered instructional approaches. Research has confirmed many of the seemingly intuitive benefits of hands-on learning and has also documented a variety of unanticipated benefits to the learners long after schooling.