Polytechnic teachers’ perspectives about entrepreneurship : a Portuguese case study

Higher education institutions are more and more engaged in strategies to promote entrepreneurship among their students and teachers. They have been implementing different instruments to attain that aim: from business incubation centers to start-ups support, from academic entrepreneurship contests to coaching methodologies. The studies about this field of activity are mainly concerned with the role students can undertake to initiate business projects based on innovation. Less attention, on the contrary, has been put on the teachers’ side, their perceptions about entrepreneurship, and the way higher education institutions are addressing this important group - what remains unknown is how higher education institutions are preparing teachers for these entrepreneurship opportunities. This paper is dedicated to the analysis of the perspectives regarding entrepreneurship of Portuguese polytechnic teachers on the context of their institutions, the types of entrepreneurial profile teachers possess and the skills they think they should acquire to empower them for supporting entrepreneurship education. The empirical data results from a questionnaire “Perspetivas sobre o empreendedorismo dos docentes do Ensino Superior Politécnico" (“Polytechnic teachers’ perspectives about entrepreneurship”) are presented, analysed and discussed in the context of the Portuguese reality