Technological advancements and the transition to a digital economy have transformed the economic environment in which entrepreneurs operate. As digitalization lowers entry barriers and reshapes business processes, entrepreneurial activity increasingly...
Technological advancements and the transition to a digital economy have transformed the economic environment in which entrepreneurs operate. As digitalization lowers entry barriers and reshapes business processes, entrepreneurial activity increasingly requires the ability to respond flexibly to volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous conditions. In this context, entrepreneurial success depends less on the acquisition of fragmented knowledge or skills and more on the capacity to understand business operations under uncertainty and to execute entrepreneurial actions.
Recognizing these changes, this study aims to develop and improve an entrepreneurship education program that enables students to adapt to complex economic environments and engage in entrepreneurial behavior. To achieve this purpose, this study employed an action research design consisting of three cycles conducted in middle school entrepreneurship education settings.
In the first cycle, entrepreneurship as an educational goal was redefined into three categories of entrepreneurial behavior: starting-up, maintaining, and innovating. A mock start-up practice incorporating an actual sales phase was designed and implemented to examine whether students could experience these three types of entrepreneurial behavior. This cycle resulted in the proposal of a five-stage entrepreneurship course model.
The second cycle examined the applicability of the proposed program in extracurricular settings and confirmed that mock start-up practice could effectively foster entrepreneurial behaviors even outside regular class time.
The third cycle expanded the program’s scope by incorporating social value, examining whether the inclusion of corporate social responsibility(CSR) in evaluation criteria could promote students’ social entrepreneurial behavior. The research results revealed that companies respond differently to changing evaluation criteria depending on their organizational culture. Based on these findings, the research led to more sophisticated training strategies to strengthen social entrepreneurship.
This study contributes to entrepreneurship education by providing a curriculum model that integrates economic and social value within social studies and economics education. By emphasizing experiential learning through a mock star-up program, the proposed program provides practical guidance for designing entrepreneurship education that fosters students’ entrepreneurial capabilities across diverse educational contexts, particularly within middle school social studies education.