According to the OECD (2018), our societies are changing deeply and rapidly, and the societal, economic, and environmental challenges humanity will have to face in the coming years are unparalleled and unrivalled in history. In this context, education plays a key role in nurturing the key competences in everyone, A key competence is as a combination of knowledge, skills, and attitudes appropriate to the context. This is known as the K-S-A (knowledge, skills and attitudes) model (Komarkova, Gagliardi, Conrads, & Collado, 2015).

Despite large interest in the entrepreneurship competence no agreement was present about its distinctive parts. The EntreComp Framework (Bacigalupo, Kampylis, Punie, & Van den Brande, 2016) sought to tackle this issue with a consensus process around a common understanding that identified three competence areas (Into Action, Resources, Ideas and Opportunities), and, for each of these, five sub-competences, descriptors, as well as learning outcomes were defined and eight proficiency levels drawn out. Yet the EntreComp framework lacks empirical evidence on its use and effectiveness.

In an OECD policy document, Paniagua and Istance (2018) describe the teacher as a designer of learning environments, and identify six clusters of innovative pedagogies, one of which is experiential learning defined as “an approach where learners are brought directly in contact with the realities being studied” (p. 110). This cluster is characterised by the need to learn from evidence and the nurturing of those inquiry skills that allow students to tackle problems, hence in a lifelong learning perspective. The cluster of experiential learning revolves around three pedagogies to help students deal with real and complex challenges: teaching of uncertainty, service-based learning, and project-based learning.

Savery (2015, p. 9) defines problem-based learning as an “instructional learner-centred approach that empowers learners to conduct research, integrate theory and practice, and apply knowledge and skills to develop a viable solution to a defined problem”. According to Barrows (1986) problem-based learning is characterised by the following features:

-           learning is student-centred,

-           Learning occurs in small student teams,

-           Teachers are facilitators or guides,

-           Problems form the organizing focus and stimulus for learning,

-           Problems are a vehicle to cultivate problem-solving skills,

-           New information is acquired through self-directed learning.

The Korda Method can be defined as a highly structured problem-based learning method for entrepreneurship education, which is suited for K12. Yet, recalling Barrows’ (1986) principles of problem-based learning and Paniagua and Istance’s (2018) metaphor of teacher as designer of learning environments, in the Korda Method, the teacher’s role shifts “from being an arbiter of knowledge to being a designer of transformational learning experiences” (Korda S., 2019, p. 40).

This paper reports on a multiple-case study to test for the Korda Method as a suitable method for teaching entrepreneurship to both secondary as well as tertiary-level students. Contemporaneously, to measure the impact this method had on improving the students’ entrepreneurship competences in the two contexts, this paper makes use, also for the first time in scientific literature, of the EntreComp framework. The explorative research questions this paper tackles are:

●         RQ1: To what extent can the EntreComp framework be used to evaluate entrepreneurship courses?

●         RQ2: To what extent is the Korda Method suitable for EE, and how does it connect to other student-centred pedagogies?

The main dataset was obtained with the help of a questionnaire with multiple-choice, and open-ended questions, thus allowing for triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data (Flick, 2018). The questionnaire was administered through the Opinio software on the last day of the course and mirrored almost verbatim the EntreComp Framework. It was based on the 15 sub-competences listed by EntreComp (three competence areas, each with 5 competences) that together constitute the fundamental units of entrepreneurship as a key competence. Each question was taken directly from Bacigalupo et al. (2018, pp. 12-13) under the column ‘Hints’, while the column ‘Descriptors’ was used as possible examples. The wording was sometimes slightly changed to make it more accessible for students who spoke English as a second language. The students were answering five-point Likert scale ordinal responses (‘not at all’, ‘a little bit’, ‘moderately’, ‘considerably’, ‘very much’). Contemporaneously, in an open-ended question the students were asked where or how they had developed the described sub-competence, thus connecting the sub-competence to the context of its acquisition, like the example below demonstrates. Eventually an additional five open-ended questions asked the students about the course: what they found distressing, what they liked and did not like about it, how they would improve it the next year, and if a similar course should be proposed to the next generations of students. Data analysis of the open-ended answers was qualitative, recursive, and followed data engagement with multiple readings and discussions to vet themes and ensure data trustworthiness (Ravitch & Carl, 2019). First, each author went through their dataset and found possible codes for each question. The general rule was that each code had to represent at least three students’ answers, even though (occasionally) a student’s answer could be used for two different codes if and only if it expressed two very different ideas. During this phase, the authors also wrote memos next to the answers. Second, each author went through the other’s dataset to search for possible codes without having seen the colleague’s coding beforehand. Third, a discussion followed to find the best possible codes and fit. Up to this point, the two datasets were kept separated. Fourth, another discussion followed to harmonise the codes of the two datasets if and when possible, as the codes were often similar.

We found possibilities and challenges in the use of the EntreComp framework. On the practical side, we found it useful to evaluate and compare our EE programs as this represented a starting point with a variety of competences most associated with entrepreneurship. From the theoretical side, we found the EntreComp model partly contradictory. Entrepreneurship as a competence was supposed to pertain to the a K-S-A- holistic model of competence (Komarkova et al., 2015), where the entrepreneurship competence as the key competence was taught as a combination of knowledge, skills, and attitudes appropriate to the context (Deakin Crick, 2011). Beyond a framework for entrepreneurship, we claim that a framework for teaching and learning entrepreneurship is needed. The evaluation of the two courses through the EntreComp framework suggests that the application of the Korda Method develops the sub-competences and areas connected to an entrepreneurial competence, which suggest that the method is appropriate for EE. This connects well to the experiential learning cluster of Paniagua and Istance (2018) and its three distinctive pedagogies. This cluster is particularly interesting in entrepreneurship education, since most literature implicitly or explicitly supports the idea of constructivist, learner-centred, and experiential courses (Hägg & Gabrielsson 2019; Macht & Ball, 2016). In this paper, experiential learning is taken as a learning theory based on the Deweyan philosophy of experience (Kakouris & Morselli, 2020), which highlights the importance of reflexivity in each phase of the learning process as well as planning action and then testing it to the experience. The Korda Method can be used as a structured PBL pedagogy based on experiential learning either when an entrepreneur (who can be a social entrepreneur) presents a challenge to a class, or can also support community learning when the students tackle a community challenge.

Bacigalupo, M., Kampylis, P., Punie, Y., & Van den Brande, L. (2016). EntreComp: The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework. Joint Research Centre. https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC101581/lfna27939enn.pdf Accessed 27 July 2020. Barrows, H. S. (1986). A taxonomy of problem‐based learning methods. Medical Education, 20(6), 481–486. Biggs, J. B., & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the Student Does. Berkshire, UK: McGraw-Hill Education. Blenker, P., Elmholdt, S. T., Frederiksen, S. H., Korsgaard, S., & Wagner, K. (2014). Methods in entrepreneurship education research: A review and integrative framework. Education and Training, 56(8/9), 697–715. European Commission. (2019). Key competences for lifelong learning. Brussels: Publications Office of the European Union. https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/297a33c8-a1f3-11e9-9d01-01aa75ed71a1/language-en Accessed 27 July 2020. Hägg, G., & Gabrielsson, J. (2019). A systematic literature review of the evolution of pedagogy in entrepreneurial education research. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research. Jones, C., Penaluna, K., & Penaluna, A. (2019). The promise of andragogy, heutagogy and academagogy to enterprise and entrepreneurship education pedagogy. Education+ Training, 61(9), 1170-1196. Kakouris, A., Morselli, D. (2020). Addressing the pre/post-university pedagogy of entrepreneurship coherent with learning theories. In: S. Sukanlaya, Entrepreneurship Education. A Lifelong Learning Approach. 35-59. Cham: Springer. Komarkova, I., Gagliardi, D., Conrads, J., & Collado, A. (2015). Entrepreneurship competence: An overview of existing concepts, policies and initiatives. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/institutes/ipts Accessed 27 July 2020. Korda, S. (2019). Reinventing teaching. Childhood Education, 95(1), 38–43. Macht, S. A., & Ball, S. (2016). “Authentic Alignment” – a new framework of entrepreneurship education. Education and Training, 58(9), 926–944. Paniagua, A., & Istance, D. (2018). Teachers as Designers of Learning Environments: The Importance of Innovative Pedagogies. Educational Research and Innovation. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/teachers-as-designers-of-learning-environments_9789264085374-en Accessed 27 July 2020. Peltonen, K. (2015). How can teachers’ entrepreneurial competencies be developed? A collaborative learning perspective. Education and Training 57(5), 492-511. Pepin, M. (2012). Enterprise education: A Deweyan perspective. Education and Training, 54(8), 801–812. Pittaway, L., & Cope, J. (2007). Simulating entrepreneurial learning: Integrating experiential and collaborative approaches to learning. Management Learning, 38(2), 211-233. OECD. (2018). The future of education and skills education 2030. https://www.oecd.org/education/2030/E2030%20Position%20Paper%20(05.04.2018).pdf Accessed 27 July 2020. Ravitch, S. M., & Carl, N. M. (2019). Qualitative research: Bridging the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Savery, J. R. (2006). Overview of problem-based learning: Definitions and distinctions. The Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 1(1), 9-20. Scott, J. M., Pavlovich, K., Thompson, J. L., & Penaluna, A. (2020). Constructive (mis)alignment in team-based experiential entrepreneurship education. Education and Training, 62(2), 184–198.