New Perspectives in Science Education

Social Innovation (SI) is considered as relevant element in all efforts to meet the grand challenges that advanced societies are facing today: scarcity of resources, shifting climate, recycling management, high levels of immigration, the rising costs of healthcare, elderly people, social exclusion, etc. As SI requires a commitment to the resolution of social problems, most of which involve complex interactions, numerous points of interventions, combine efforts of multiple disciplines, introduce solutions with manageable, if not foreseeable, long-term outcomes, universities are well placed to engender a commitment to SI. Universities are rich in resources that can be mobilized to contribute to solutions to social problems (Eichler and Schwarz, 2019). Nevertheless, to date, there is only limited evidence to demonstrate these relationships in the context of social innovation, and the particular contribution of higher education institutions (HEIs) (Cornet and Barpanda, 2020; Monteiro et al., 2021). Literature identifies numerous variables that can potentially influence the SI development of the organizations. Among the factors, human capital is a key capital factor significantly important to a new firm’s survival and early success (Beckman and Burton, 2008). Other crucial factor is social capital, which can lead the organization to high performance and growth, as social relationships are necessary for enhancing and improving entrepreneurial performance of the organizations, together the arrangement of innovative activities to deal with organizational concerns successfully. Therefore, with certain personal entrepreneurial competencies (kind of knowledge, skills and values), social entrepreneurs are likely to develop innovative products, processes, services or activities to solve issues for society. In this context, where the relevance of HEIs in promoting the development of competencies is a key factor to promote SI, we analyze how teaching-learning approaches affect the development of HE students’ competencies associated to SI. For that purpose, we use data from a survey, which collects university students’ opinion about how their study program contributes to the development of competencies and which teaching-learning approach are the best ones for that purpose. Preliminary results point to a lack of attention to entrepreneurial competencies associated to SI.