Habits of Mind for Entrepreneurship Education

Entrepreneurship education is vital to ameliorate the high youth unemployment rate in South Africa. As part of efforts to augment entrepreneurship education, purposeful teacher training is needed. Integral in this pursuit is the amendment and development of teachers’ entrepreneurial mindset. The concept of ‘mindset’ is, however, ambiguous, as literature uses this term interchangeably with concepts such as 21st century skills, soft skills, non-cognitive skills, or character strengths. When a new teacher training program for entrepreneurship education was being developed, it was necessary to investigate and analyze all these skills or characteristics, to ascertain which aspects should be included in the program to contribute to the entrepreneurial mindset that was envisioned for these teachers. An exploratory qualitative literature review was conducted from a constructivist point of view. Accessible literature on ‘entrepreneurship education’ and ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ was systematically and thematically analyzed to explore the contribution of various types of skills and characteristics to the construction of an entrepreneurial mindset, in preparation for entrepreneurship education. The findings revealed that several skills, characteristics and habits contribute to the development of positive entrepreneurial mindsets. These included several references to the ‘Habits of Mind’ proposed by Costa and Kallick (2008). Subsequent comprehensive analysis was conducted to explore the pertinence of the Habits of Mind for developing teachers’ entrepreneurial mindsets as part of their preparation to facilitate entrepreneurship education. A recommendation was made for the inclusion of all the Habits of Mind to contribute to fostering positive entrepreneurial mindsets as part of teacher training for entrepreneurship education.