Opettajien yrittäjyyskasvatusvalmiuksien kehittyminen ja siihen vaikuttavat tekijät

Purpose - The aim of this research is to deepen understanding of the development of teachers' entrepreneurial readiness. This study also seeks to shed light on the methodological issues concerning studying the authentic learning processes. The key research questions are: 1) What are teachers' entrepreneurial competences and how are they defined?2) How entrepreneurship is defined as a pedagogical issue?3) How teachers' entrepreneurial competences can be enhanced through social learning and what elements are essential in those learning processes?4) How to study authentic entrepreneurial learning processes? Theories and methods - The dissertation involves the overview part and four independent, but complementary research articles. As a whole this dissertation and the research articles are grounded in the concepts and theories of entrepreneurial learning and teaching and entrepreneurial competence development linking them with the educational discussions on teaching. The article concerning the entrepreneurship research methodology is grounded in the prior literature on the current state and future avenues of the entrepreneurship research. Key contributions- This dissertation contributes to the entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education research by opening the concept of entrepreneurial competence in teaching context and the dynamic learning processes in acquiring those competences. The key findings show that collaborative learning and collegial support are the key drivers of the development of teachers' entrepreneurial readiness. This dissertation offers also theoretical contribution to the methodological discussion of entrepreneurship research by opening the explorative research approach.