Entrepreneurial educators: vital enablers to support the education sector to reimagine and respond to the challenges of COVID-19

This article examines the experiences of the educator as a key actor in entrepreneurship education. Since the 1990s, the education sector has been called upon to create more ‘entrepreneurs’ to find solutions to global problems leading to entrepreneurship education. The educator is a key participant in the process of entrepreneurship education, but too little is known or understood about their experiences. Employing an interpretative phenomenological approach with ten UK-based higher education entrepreneurship education educators, this article sheds light on their experiences. The article concludes by proposing a conceptual model of the essence of entrepreneurship education educators’ experiences which identifies shared values, multiple identities and innovative practices. It finds something personal and inherently ‘good’ about entrepreneurship education, beyond the knowledge of entrepreneurship, which attracts certain educators. These educators are found to be entrepreneurial with a need for change, distinctiveness and action which at times can lead to marginalisation from the traditional educational establishment. They are found to be highly efficacious entrepreneurial employees (Lackéus et al., Bacigalupo (ed) The entrepreneurial employee in the public and private sector—what, why, how. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2020) and, it is argued, could act as significant enablers for wider educational systems change required to respond to the challenges of COVID-19 (WHO in Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, 2020. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019).