Mats Westerberg

My current focus in research, teaching and development is how entrepreneurship can be applied in the education system. I especially focus on how entrepreneurial competences (such as courage, responsability and creativity) can be developed to strengthen traditional subject material and how an entrepreneurial pedagogy can bolster motivation and make schools more relevant.

Background

Defended my thesis in December 1998. Worked as Assistant professor in management control from 1999 to 2005. From 2006 at the entrepreneurship and innovation unit. Full professor since 2012.

Research focus

My research started with a focus on the small firm and its development and performance.  Later, the network around the firm has received more attention, where strategic SME networks and Triple Helix systems have been under study. Here, the role of cooperation among different actors and its effect on development is of interest. More recently, I have shifted focus to study how entreprenurship in its broad sense affects the education system.

Teaching

I have taught multiple courses related to entrepreneurship and management control at all levels, both inside the university and in external programmes. I have extensive experience with PhD supervision

CEL - Center for Entrepreneurial Learning

I lead the Center for Entrepreneurial Learning (CEL), which is a competence center at LTU with purpose to support entrepreneurial processes in society with a special focus on the education system. CEL have operated since 2014 and have the following areas of operation:

Research and development - that mainly is performed in interactivly in close collaboration with municipals. The project "Building competences and knowledge through entreprenurial learning in mathematics K-6. An action research project in collaboration with rural schools" running 2014-2016 and funded by the Kamprad foundation is a good example. Here the CRITICal competence model was developed and tested. Here you find an article testing the model. Below you can download a short text where the CRITICal model is conceptualized. Other articles on the theme of entrepreneurship in education is found in the publication list below.

Education - both on campus and using distance learning, on a regular basis and on comission. At the moment all formal education relating to entrepreneurial learning is given in Swedish.

Competence development - from inspirational lectures to longer programs. We focus on the Swedish education system where the goal is to provide tools for teachers to be able to develop their own and their students entrepreneurial competence without loosing focus on the subject knowledge. The last years CEL have been involved in international competence development activities linked to EIT Raw material and EIT Health and is part of a consortium that bids on developing entreprenurship education for university staff in the entire EU.

Network node - CEL is a partner in several networks that aims to develop entrepreneurial education. In Sweden, we lead a network of eight HEIs (Chalmers, Linné, Linköping, Lund, Stockholm, Umeå, Mälardalen and Luleå) that with funing from Vinnova and TIllväxtverket have learnt from each other and started to collaborate more. CIE (Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship) Norden is a Nordic network of partners that have a link to teacher education at their universities, having a symposium at the annual NERA conference. At the Europan level we are central actors in the 3e conference network and chaired the conference 2019 in collaboration with Chalmers. 

Some current activities:

• Development of  Entretime - a "train-the-trainer" program in entreprenurship for educators in all disciplins at European universities commissioned by the European Commission
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