Page 40 - guidance-supporting-europe-s-aspiring-entrepreneurs-policy-and-practice-to-harness-future-potential

Guidance supporting Europe’s aspiring entrepreneurs
Policy and practice to harness future potential

entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education in Europe. Approximately 250
publications were reviewed and examples of good practice were selected.
The primary research stage began with a survey of entrepreneurship
education experts. This included a round of semi-structured telephone interviews
with entrepreneurship education experts from VET and HE sectors, in addition to
representatives from associations of entrepreneurs and/or chambers of
commerce. A small number of European level experts and stakeholders were
also interviewed. In total, 71 expert interviews were carried out and three
thematic databases were created to store the interview and the literature review
findings.
The findings from the literature review and sourced through the interviews
were used to select examples and themes for case studies: 26 were prepared on
different themes. The case studies took on different formats: some were in-depth
case studies of individual projects or practices within specific IVET or HE
institutes, while others were composite case studies into specific themes. In-
depth case studies were prepared from 10 countries, including Belgium, Bulgaria,
Finland, Ireland, France, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK. The
thematic case studies explored a variety of issues:
• the guidance value of the mini-company approach;
• guidance for women and migrant entrepreneurs;
• the role of PES in supporting entrepreneurship;
• business idea/plan competitions;
• entrepreneurial awareness-raising activities;
• online career assessment tests for aspiring and novice entrepreneurs;
• business incubators;
• the capacity of VET teachers to deliver entrepreneurship learning.
The composite case studies include shorter project and practice descriptions
from most of the study countries and a special case study of the European wide
entrepreneurship programme, Erasmus for young entrepreneurs, was also
undertaken.
To investigate the views of policy-makers and practitioners with a guidance
remit, an online survey was launched on IVET and HE. The members of the
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European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network ( ) (ELGPN) and the

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( ) The European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network aims to assist the EU Member States and the
Commission in moving European cooperation on lifelong guidance forward in both the education
and the employment sectors. The ELGPN was established by the Member States and the
Commission is supporting the activities of the network in 2007-2010 under the Lifelong learning
programme. Available from Internet: http://ktl.jyu.fi/ktl/elgpn [cited 30.9.2010].

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