Comparative Approach of Smart and Non-Smart Schools in Promoting the Entrepreneurial Thinking of Students

One of the most important missions of education is the balanced education of researching and creative students with entrepreneurial spirit and thinking. In this regard, the vision and fundamental transformation document of education emphasizes the importance of cultivating creative and innovative individuals who possess the necessary skills to contribute to science, technology, and entrepreneurship. Based on this importance and emphasis of upstream documents, therefore, schools should play a pivotal role in developing features such as creativity, self-confidence, futurism, risk-taking, and the tendency towards success (entrepreneurial spirit) in students. Promoting entrepreneurial thinking in schools leads to responsibility, increased creativity in achieving goals and discovering new opportunities, and academic and entrepreneurial skills in students. The present research investigated the role of smart and non-smart schools in promoting entrepreneurial thinking among students.

The present study was applied in purpose, quantitative in approach, and comparative causal. The statistical population includes 690 female students from smart and non-smart high schools in Qazvin city. Using the cluster sampling method, 266 students from each group were selected as the research sample. To collect the data, the researchers used a questionnaire consisting of five main components and 20 items. The formal and content validity of the questionnaire was verified by three experts in the field of study. The reliability of the questionnaire was calculated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and was obtained as 0.779. The data were analyzed using Shapiro-Wilk Test, one-way multivariate of variance test and Levene's test.

The findings indicated that female students in smart schools had higher levels of entrepreneurial thinking in five main components: creative thinking (7.243), independence seeking (6.059), opportunity seeking (7.642), risk-taking (6.473), and internal control locus (5.513) compared to non-smart schools. In general, schools that used modern smart technologies have developed competencies such as creative thinking, independence seeking, opportunity seeking, risk-taking, and internal control locus in students. As a result, students in smart schools felt more successful, motivated, and confident in creating new ideas, ultimately leading to the promotion and emergence of entrepreneurial thinking.

Since the entrepreneurial thinking as the basic power of the human mind is one of the main goals of schools and educational centers, therefore schools should be able to provide a suitable platform for the flourishing of characteristics such as; It provided students with creativity, self-confidence, foresight, risk-taking and entrepreneurial spirit. Because, global competition and the need of future jobs for skilled and efficient people show the necessity of creating an entrepreneurial culture in schools. To achieve this goal in the country, it is necessary to raise awareness, promote the culture of entrepreneurship and provide the necessary infrastructure in education. To promote entrepreneurial thinking among students, schools should implement practical teaching methods, team-based and active participation teaching methods, electronic content development of entrepreneurship in multimedia format, periodic feedback on student performance, delegation of school responsibilities, limited options for students, independent problem-solving, and entrepreneurial internships for students.