Empreender como uma forma de ser, saber e fazer: o desenvolvimento da mentalidade e do comportamento empreendedores por meio da educação empreendedora

Abstract

The interest in the entrepreneurial education has grown significantly over the last years, stimulating new studies and new understandings of what it is to be an entrepreneur and the role education plays in its development. In the last decades researches about entrepreneurship have grown in visibility and importance, however, the entrepreneurial education issue still requires a more solid discussion that will help it to mature and will allow it to be directed and disseminated in a more effective way. With the purpose of contributing in this direction, this study had as its main objective to analyse the development of the entrepreneurial mindset and behavior in graduation students and professors of a private college institution, by the means of an entrepreneurial education which is directed to contemplate the entrepreneurship as a way of being, knowing and doing. To reach this goal, an exploratory qualitative and quantitative study was conducted based on theoretical-empirical research and data triangulation. The first step of the research, socalled informal research, identified the faculty members who, from the student’s point of view, develop unique activities in the classroom. Out of this informal research, which included 249 students, the four most frequently mentioned professors from each course were selected - an amount of 12 professors to be interviewed. The interviews were based on a semi-structured script. For the qualitative evaluation of the data the content analysis method was applied (BARDIN, 2011). From the findings of this analysis, six categories emerged, non-a-priori: nature of the entrepreneurial education; the role and duty of the professor; new didactic-pedagogical methodologies and practices; student-centered education; the entrepreneurship as a means of being, knowing and doing; and the results of the entrepreneurial education. As for the quantitative approach, the questionnaire of entrepreneurial behavioral characteristics (CCE’s) - developed by McClelland (MANSFIELD et. al., 1987) - and the questionnaire forma mentis - developed by Mencarelli (2014) - were applied in order to study the dimensions of the entrepreneurial mindset. 427 students and the 12 interviewed professors have answered the instruments of the quantitative approach, and statistical tests were used in the analysis of the data. Finally, the triangulation of the data acquired in the qualitative and quantitative approaches was executed. The analysis of the results brought forth the evidence of initiatives of entrepreneurial education, identified in the student’s reports obtained through the informal research, as well as in the interviews performed with the professors. It is possible to detect, either in the faculty or in the students’ narrative, the characteristics and specificities of the nature of the entrepreneurial education, the new roles and duties that students and professors assume in it and the new didactic-pedagogical methodologies and practices aimed at the entrepreneurial formation. Furthermore, the information obtained with the faculty and students also support the results, both expected and reached by the parties, based on an entrepreneurial education not only oriented to the transmission and acquisition of knowledge, but above all, aimed to treating entrepreneurship as a way of being, knowing and doing. These results from the qualitative approach were evidenced by the results of the quantitative approach, which identified and quantified in the professors and students the dimensions of the entrepreneurial mindset and the characteristics of the entrepreneurial behavior. With the purpose of performing the triangulation of the data, the students’ expectations concerning the entrepreneurial education, which were identified in the informal research, were cross-examined with the professors’ view on the entrepreneurial formation and their role as educators, views which were obtained through the content analysis method summed up to the entrepreneurial mindset and behavioral characteristics of the faculty obtained through the use of the questionnaires. In addition, the professors’ expected results in terms of the students’ entrepreneurial formation, also gathered with the use of the content analysis method, were cross-examined with the actual results achieved by the students, verified in the accounts of the informal research, as it was also perceived in the entrepreneurial mindset and behavior measured by the questionnaires. The results obtained through the triangulation evidenced direct connection between the students’ expectations in relation to the entrepreneurial education, the results they have been achieving, the intensity of the dimensions of the entrepreneurial mindset and the entrepreneurial behavioral characteristics to what the professors seek to develop in the students, what is being done and how it is being done, the results they have been reaching also for themselves and the dimensions of the entrepreneurial mindset and the entrepreneurial behavioral characteristics assessed amongst the faculty. As from this study, the search for ways of improving the entrepreneurial formation in high education seems promising. There is still great room for understanding and contribution through theoretical and empirical research, not only for the development of the scientific knowledge, but also for its considerable real-life applicability in the social and economical context.