The Future of Education

The extant concepts around school leadership mostly encompasses the transformative and instructional roles of school leaders in managing, mobilizing and supporting teachers for student achievement. However, school leadership has not focused strongly on promoting innovation and risk-taking for schools in a knowledge economy. As a timely promising response to the increasingly demanding and competitive school context, teacher entrepreneurial behavior (TEB), which emphasize teachers’ willingness to take risks and be daring, has started to gain recognition in the school leadership literature, yet a nuanced understanding of TEB’s potential impacts on schools is lacking. Based on a combined consideration of institutionalized recognition and expert judgement, this study identified three innovative entrepreneurial teachers/teacher groups who had won the most competitive teaching award in Hong Kong. Employing a multiple-site case study design, this study conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 informants and collected supplementary school documents and records. This study found that TEB enables the implementation of innovation and promotes cross-subject alignment. It cultivates trusting and coherent relationships among teachers. Teacher with TEB scales up more innovation among teachers. Furthermore, entrepreneurial teacher enhances school attractiveness by creating competitive advantages in school. This analysis showed that TEB enables formal and informal school leaders bring forth critical school outcomes. This study elaborates how TEB enhances teachers’ professional capital through building trusting and coherent relationships. It also adds to the research on school innovation by demonstrating that TEB fosters teachers’ capacity for bottom-up innovation in the community.

Keywords: Teacher entrepreneurship; Teacher entrepreneurial behaviour (TEB).

References:
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[2] Hayat, N., & Amer, I. (2015). Entrepreneurial orientation - A key to unlock teacher's potential in higher education: a case of Finland and Pakistan. Revista Romaneasca Educatie Multidimensionala, 7(2), 67-77.
[3] Neto, R. D. C. A., Rodrigues, V. P., & Panzer, S. (2017). Exploring the relationship between entrepreneurial behavior and teachers' job satisfaction. Teaching and Teacher Education, 63, 254-262.