With today’s blogpost, we want to introduce the EntreCompEdu Self-Assessment Tool for educators. The tool was developed by LUT University, Finland. It is based on earlier self-assessment tools, prepared by LUT, which have been used in many countries.
EntreCompEdu SAT builds on entrepreneurship education expertise built in Finland since 1994
The very first Measurement Tool for Entrepreneurship Education (MTEE) was developed as part of a European Social Fund-funded project in 2008. LUT built it to support the work of teachers, principals, and decision-makers, and to guide entrepreneurship education. Finland brings particular expertise on entrepreneurship education to this, as entrepreneurship education has been included in the Finnish national core curriculum since 1994. Nevertheless, teachers at times have had difficulties in identifying contents and means by which to respond to challenges posed by entrepreneurship education. As is frequently the case, “ you get what you measure”, and that was the main challenge LUT aimed to meet in the initial project. Later on, the tool was translated into English and was used in many European countries.
LUT’s self-assessment tools are based on a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative studies and more than forty publications have been published based on its data. LUT’s findings have been widely utilised in developing entrepreneurship education curricula, regional policy guidelines and as evaluation tools to follow-up policy.
Developing the EntreCompEdu SAT to measure teachers’ entrepreneurial education skills
Developing a measurement tool is a lengthy process that starts with sketching the main idea, developing the science-based questionnaires to be tested by different user groups, fine-tuning the content, and finally creating the tool itself, which needs to be tested too. It is a challenging process where science meets technology to develop a user-friendly tool for teachers that is fit for different education systems, different education levels, different cultures, different languages, and different levels of understanding of what entrepreneurship education is all about. Led by LUT, the EntreCompEdu team has spent many hours discussing with teachers and fine-tuning wordings to develop something that is easy-to-use, insightful and helps educators’ understand their entrepreneurial education strength and weaknesses.
The EntreCompEdu SAT captures how teachers execute entrepreneurship education and focuses on what the respondents do or do not do when they are conducting entrepreneurship education. It encourages teachers to reflect on whether they have set goals for entrepreneurship education or whether they have used different methods and contents in their teaching. These could be using entrepreneurs’ stories in their classroom, do entrepreneurship-related projects, or organising company visits. For teachers, the EntreCompEdu SAT is a reflection tool that provides feedback and helps teachers understand in which areas they can develop their entrepreneurial education skills. For our LUT researchers, the anonymous data we gather in turn helps in developing entrepreneurship education across Europe.
The EntreCompEdu SAT is available in six languages (English, Dutch, Italian, Macedonia, Spanish, and Welsh). It can be found at: https://eumtee.lut.fi
