Society requires education to prepare students with the tools and ability to navigate and find success for unknown futures. Entrepreneurship education has the potential to deliver the relevant curriculum and competencies to support young people to develop resilience, independence, innovation and ability to recognise opportunities to live productive and rewarding lives in this new post COVID-19 environment. Entrepreneurship has been encouraged by government initiatives to address rapidly evolving challenges due to economic disruption. The purpose of this study was to conduct a literature review of entrepreneurship education pedagogy in order to understand the growing evidence of the effectiveness of programmes that support students to act on opportunities that address social, economic, and environmental issues that have arisen in their communities. An analysis of 45 studies across nine countries suggests that although these types of learning opportunities are written into curricula, students rarely experience this type of learning in their schooling. Sustained interest in entrepreneurship through effective methods such as assistance from external trainers and value creation throughout schooling develops students’ intent for continued study of entrepreneurship at university. Teachers need opportunities to build confidence, knowledge and capacity to develop effective entrepreneurship education learning experiences that are relevant to today’s students’ future life challenges.

Collaborative learning (CL) is widely used in higher education around the world because it is associated with increases in students’ knowledge and social skills. Low student engagement in CL activities has been identified as a common issue, while there is no CL-specific engagement scale to measure and understand engagement in such settings. Additionally, although western countries have been investigating student engagement since the 1950s, there have been comparatively few studies of this important construct in China. To address these imbalances, the present paper adopted a mixed methods approach to developing and validating a Chinese CL engagement scale. In the quantitative study, Chinese university students (N = 405) completed an anonymous online survey to assess their engagement in CL activities. Results from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a hierarchical (second-order) three-factor model of student engagement (behavioural, cognitive and emotional engagement), consistent with the tripartite conception of student engagement in Western countries. Participants were further divided into three unique groups based on engagement scores, and in the qualitative study, 12 participants from three groups were interviewed about CL experiences. Interviews served to further validate the quantitative results. The significance, limitations, and implications of these findings are discussed.

Purpose: The primary purpose of this research is to explore how the cultural context, in this case, China, influences the teaching of entrepreneurship that seeks to cultivate student entrepreneurs during their university experience.Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative case study approach is adopted to explore how the cultural environment affects the delivery and application of entrepreneurship education to university students in a Chinese context. Seventeen student entrepreneurs and three lecturing staff members in three Chinese universities were interviewed using a semi-structured interview approach.Findings: The findings suggest that while Chinese universities have been importing teaching models and methods of entrepreneurship education from the United States and other countries, both students and educators are starting to recognise the need for teaching methods to be contextualised and designed based on national conditions and cultural characteristics. Findings from this study highlight cultural fusion and collision in the process of importing and implementing entrepreneurial teaching methods. For example, teaching students how to write a business plan appears to offer limited value for students' start-up activities and their venture development. The didactic teaching method centred on teachers without entrepreneurial experience works for the teaching “about” entrepreneurship but is paradoxical to the goal of teaching “for” entrepreneurship.Originality/value: Little theoretical or empirical attention has been paid to the complexity of the cultural environment of teaching approaches to entrepreneurship education. This paper provides novel empirical insight into why the cultural environment plays a critical role in teaching approaches to entrepreneurship education and how these teaching approaches can be culturally nuanced to better meet the needs of nascent student entrepreneurs in various cultural contexts.