EDUCATING FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP: A NEW CHALLENGE FOR TEACHER TRAINING INSTITUTIONS

Resumo

On the first part of the article we defend the idea that we are nowadays living a new economic and social paradigm which poses new challenges to local communities and citizens. Societies have globalized themselves and opened up to the world. The economy is increasingly based on knowledge, and competitiveness is becoming even more fierce and dependent of innovation and differentiation factors. This set of constraints demands from local communities a strategic repositioning. This being the case, it is crucial that the different local players are equipped with enhanced skills in the area of entrepreneurship, a sine qua non condition for guaranteed success in this new socioeconomic scenario.
We then argue that raising awareness to this area is essential to preparing our young people for the challenges that they will have to face throughout their life, in order to stimulate their creativity and capacity for initiative and innovation. Therefore, the promotion of the spirit of entrepreneurship in schools is a critical step towards this aim. So, entrepreneurship education should clearly constitute a strategic instrument of the contemporary education policy.

Subsequently, we assume that there is a set of arguments coming from different disciplinary backgrounds, namely from the psychology, the pedagogy, as well as from the economy and management, that give support to this bet and justify the need for teacher training institutions to intervene in this new area. We will deepen this problematic as a means to back the urgent need for higher education players answer positively to this new challenging problem.

We, then, will concentrate on the efforts that are being done by the Castelo Branco Polytechnic, School of Education, in Portugal, an institution with a long tradition in the area of teacher training, pointing out the main features, initiatives and projects that characterize its strategy on this new training field.