Nearly half of South Korea’s elementary, middle and high school teachers do not properly understand the concept of entrepreneurship, a survey showed, prompting calls to expand teacher training as the gap weighs on the quality of startup and venture education for students.
The Entrepreneurship Institute at the Federation of Korean Industries released the findings on the 8th from a survey titled “Teacher Perceptions of Economic and Entrepreneurship Education,” conducted by the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations among 1,078 teachers nationwide. Of the respondents, 46.2% said they did not know what entrepreneurship means, with 38.4% saying they were not well informed and 7.8% saying they had no knowledge of it at all.
The most common reason cited was a lack of opportunity to receive related training at school, at 51.4%. Teachers also pointed to a shortage of information and educational content on startups. Even among those who said they knew the concept, only 13.2% said they knew it well, while the remaining 40.6% said they had some understanding, indicating that comprehension is generally low.
The survey found the gap also affects startup education for students. Asked whether they would encourage students to start a business, 14.1% of respondents said they would not, and 31.1% were neutral, leaving only about half who said they would. Among teachers unwilling to recommend entrepreneurship, more than half, or 55.9%, said it was because they did not understand startups well enough to offer guidance.
The federation said the results point to a need for broader entrepreneurship training for teachers. Among those who had completed such training, 67% said they understood entrepreneurship, compared with 42.1% of those who had not. Teachers who had completed training were also more likely to say they would encourage students to start a business, at 64.9%, versus 45.9% of those who had not.
Demand for training was strongest in three areas: changes in future industries and the world of work, including artificial <a href="https://bitcomme.com/agentic-marketing-and-the-intelligence-ownership-problem/” title=”Agentic marketing and the intelligence ownership problem”>intelligence, at 53.7%; ways to apply entrepreneurship education in schools, at 48.4%; and teaching core skills such as identifying problems, solving them and thinking creatively, at 35.3%.
“For students to properly learn about the economy and entrepreneurship at school, systematic training must support teachers so they understand the changing industrial environment and can connect it to their lessons,” said Chung Chul, head of research at the federation and director of its Entrepreneurship Institute.
#Entrepreneurship#KoreaEducation#TeacherTraining#StartupEducation#FKI#AIEducation
Original reporting by Kim Yoon-soo for Seoul Economic Daily.
AI-translated from Korean. Quotes from foreign sources are based on Korean-language reports and may not reflect exact original wording.
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