Abstract
Entrepreneurship teaching programs and initiatives in educating people towards entrepreneurship are everywhere growing in the world. In relation to this development some practical and research key issues are rising. Among them, the question of entrepreneurship teaching programs assessment is probably one of the most crucial both at a social and at a research level. Very often, entrepreneurship teaching programs (ETP) are launched within the universities with a strong involvement of the political and economic environment. These partners are waiting for concrete results which turn around the creation of start-ups and the creation of new jobs by people having been educated and taught through the ETP.. Some research works have been made on this topic and the greater part of them clearly underline the complexity of the assessment question, mainly in terms of indicator choice and also because the measure itself is very complicated due to the existence of late effects. Moreover, the field of the ETP is very diversified and heterogeneous, depending on the teaching objectives, the audiences, the contents, the teacher profiles, the pedagogical methods and approaches, etc. The aim of our paper is to show that it is possible to avoid some of these difficulties by reconsidering and reformulating the assessment question. It seems to us that the most important result of the ETP is not necessarily the creation of start-ups, but could be, among educated students, mindset changes, attitude changes and the development of an entrepreneurial orientation, measured through intentions. We are thus proposing a conceptual framework in assessing the ETP. This framework is using the theory of planned behavior elaborated by Ajzen, which could allow us to measure, under the influences of independent variables related to ETP, attitude changes towards the entrepreneurial behaviour, attitude changes in relation to subjective norms, attitude changes concerning perceived entrepreneurial behaviour control and finally, changes in entrepreneurial intentions. The main research paper idea is to consider that it is expected and also feasible to design a dynamic tool using the theory of planned behaviour to assess the ETP and so to measure variations on entrepreneurial intention throughout the education process. The research paper implications are concerning the entrepreneurship research community. The paper is opening some interesting research perspectives in the field of entrepreneurship teaching and education. One of them could be addressed to the study and the analysis of attitude changes and entrepreneurial intention changes in the ETP processes. Implications are also concerning the entrepreneurship teachers and educators. The presented dynamic approach using the theory of planned behaviour could allow them to improve their understanding of how each ETP is functioning and what are the key ingredients (contents, teacher profile, pedagogical methods, …) and the optimal combination in relation to a particular teaching objective. Finally, the implications are concerning the social and economic world. Politicians and decision makers need probably to reconsider their ideas and views about entrepreneurship teaching and education. The most important thing is not one more start-up by a student or a young graduate, but a strong emergence and diffusion of the entrepreneurial spirit within the university campuses.