Exploring the Effect of an Entrepreneurship Awareness-raising Intervention on ELT Learners’ Entrepreneurial Intention, Mindset, Self-efficacy and Outcome Expectations

Abstract

This experimental study aimed to explore the effect of entrepreneurship education among English language teaching (ELT) learners in Iran. To this end, an entrepreneurship awareness-raising intervention was designed and evaluated through a mixed-method explanatory sequential design with hypotheses rooted in social cognitive career theory. The effectiveness of the intervention was first investigated quantitatively through pre-test and post-test among 41 ELT learners. Then, semi-structured interviews were conducted among 15 participants to triangulate and further explain the quantitative findings. The results of repeated measures of MANOVA revealed that ELT learners’ entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, entrepreneurial mindset, and entrepreneurial outcome expectations improved significantly from pre-test to post-test under the effect of the intervention. Further, the findings of qualitative data analysis confirmed the quantitative results and revealed that all of the participants took great satisfaction in the course, and they believed that the effectiveness of the course was even beyond their expectations. Implications are discussed.