Mohsen Tavakoli

Composition of the Jury

Abstract

The study of the effectiveness of Entrepreneurship Education Programs (EEPs) addresses growing educational, social, political, and economic challenges. Indeed, the rapid development of entrepreneurship courses necessitates a more rigorous evaluation of their effectiveness. We focused on the impact of teachers on the effectiveness of EEPs. The question we sought to answer was: "To what extent can entrepreneurship teachers influence the effectiveness of EEPs?" A systematic and critical literature review allowed us to identify gaps in the entrepreneurial education literature. We employed a multidisciplinary approach, integrating several fields. The proposed theoretical and empirical frameworks enable us to study the effectiveness of entrepreneurship courses through their impacts and the role played by teachers. In particular, we examined the various effects of teachers' passions for entrepreneurship on both the outcomes and the participants in entrepreneurship courses. Indeed, evaluations of entrepreneurship education are generally conducted to determine whether the program succeeds in achieving its stated learning objectives. Furthermore, these evaluations primarily focused on assessing short-term goals. We identified that the study of the effects of education on individuals is an emerging field and that it could open new avenues of research on the impacts of entrepreneurial education. Following on from our study of the link between different forms of capital and entrepreneurial education, we chose to explore entrepreneurial psychological capital (EPC). Given the existence of studies highlighting the positive impact of EPC on organizational behaviors and entrepreneurial processes, we attempted to shed further light on the development of this capital among students who participated in an entrepreneurial education program. Regarding the entrepreneurship instructor, we examined their passion for the subject matter, their passion for the activity itself, and also the passion perceived by the students. Initially, we developed a conceptual model to understand how the link between different entrepreneurial education models, the roles played by teachers, and the various outcomes is impacted by the teachers' individual passions. Next, we conducted a longitudinal empirical study to understand how entrepreneurship education can have a lasting impact on all students. The results showed that the educators' stated passions could not explain the development of this capital. It was only when these stated passions were combined with the passion perceived by the program participants that the hierarchical regression model used in our study was able to demonstrate a causal relationship between these variables. This thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter highlights the importance of this research, details its objectives and underlying questions, and establishes the conceptual framework and positioning of the work carried out and presented in Chapter Two. This work explored the impact of entrepreneurship education programs, and more specifically, of entrepreneurship teachers, on course outcomes as well as on the participants. The third chapter highlights the contributions of our work and outlines its limitations and future avenues of research. The various implications of this thesis are then listed.

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