The spirit of Valencia Aula Emprende in the heart of the Hauts de France
In September 2018, a delegation from the Hauts-de-France participated in the Aula Emprende camp in Valencia. Among them were present Olivier Mazade, Director of Lille North of France Pepite (LNF Pepite) wishing to set up teacher entrepreneurship training in our region and, Lily Gros, educational engineering consultant from Enactus Organizations, commissioned to develop and facilitate this training.
LNF Pepite finally managed to mobilize a group of teachers, entrepreneurial referents and entrepreneurship project managers of Universities and to set up a two days training in February 2019, called “Entrepreneurial project management and management of student entrepreneurs".
The training made it possible to acquire a methodology and tools for entrepreneurial project management (coaching postures, design thinking, creativity...). In addition to these theoretical and practical contributions, this training was an opportunity to exchange and expose the different entrepreneurial practices of the participants (teachers and support staff). This moment was defined by the participants as being unifying and motivating.
The exchanges were an inspiring source and reinforced our desire to set up inspiring and motivating training sessions within our Universities for teachers who would like to get involved or improve their practices in the field of entrepreneurship.
At the school level, during the second quarter of 2019, the Regional Authority for Education was inspired by our Aula Emprende test training to offer 3 workshops on empathy, the coaching posture and project-based pedagogy to school headteacher assistants, in charge of supporting teachers in their career development, profession, training, etc.
Reforming the universities' training plans
In France, we are entering a period of reform of school and university curricula. The national orientation normally provides for the integration of entrepreneurship into these new training models. Still on the second quarter of 2019, an official letter from the Regional Council was sent to Vice-Presidents of the Universities to support them in this reform with the resources and good practices at our disposal.
At the end of the 2018-2019 academic year, the Aula Emprende training test in Hauts-de-France convinced the Picardie Pepite to set a teacher training for the Universities and teachers of the Hauts-de-France south part; the maintenance of training activities in corporate culture and entrepreneurship at ULCO, Artois and Université Catholique de Lille and; the writing of a new plan for integrating entrepreneurship into the student's training path and into the training plans of university staff at the University of Lille.
The Hubhouse of the Lille University has prepared a project on entrepreneurship trainings for students and teachers as part of the curriculum reform. Project will be implemented in 2020: Initiation and learning of entrepreneurship for students, trainings to develop the entrepreneurial spirit of conference lecturers, teachers, research teachers, and administrative staff, and International scientific symposium “Educate the entrepreneurial spirit”.
May 2020 in Lille – Colloquium - Entrepreneurship Education, Entrepreneurship Training? Issues, questions, transformations
As the continuation of effort, an Entrepreneurship Education colloquium is organised in Lille on 13th-14th and 15th of May in 2020 by the Inter-University Center for Research in Education of Lille (CIREL). The CIREL is a French research team that has developed research on policies, practices, actors and systems aiming at developing the entrepreneurial spirit.
The colloquium aims to spark, on the one hand, an interdisciplinary discussion between researchers interested in educational entrepreneurship and, on the other hand, a discussion with the professional fields involved in entrepreneurship education (EE), the support and training intended for entrepreneurship's project leaders. The ambition, on this basis, is double : to set up a dialogue between the actors of this strongly emerging and evolving field; to cross the views, answers and questions that the researchers may bring in a view to lay the foundation for a scientific project to continue.
Further information : entrepreneurship-education2020.univ-lille.fr/en/
This story is brought to you by Hauts-de-France Innovation Development.
