What it Takes to Inspire: A comparative Role Model Analysis of Students in Entrepreneurship and Teaching

According to career education and learning research, role models can significantly influence others’ decision-making processes and career choices. Such effects may be particularly relevant for potential entrepreneurs and future teachers, as much learning in these professions relies heavily on role models. Thus, educating students who desire to work in these fields might profit from a more role model-centered approach. However, research has shown that university educators rarely serve as role models, and few studies have investigated further into the subject of role models in higher education. Further, the generic discourse on role models has only examined differences according to sociocultural factors (e.g., gender or ethnicity), and these findings have not been empirically substantiated. This article aims to fill this research gap by providing a deeper insight into students’ role models. Through a questionnaire survey of 186 entrepreneurship students and student teachers in Germany, we sought to identify the relevance of having a profession-specific role model for those student groups as well as what constitutes this role model in terms of critical role model attributes. We found that it is more important to student teachers than to entrepreneurship students to have a profession-specific role model that actively works in the field. To both groups, personality-related attributes appeared to be more important than skills- related attributes, while the personality-related attributes revealed a lot about the students’ image of their aspired profession. Based on those and further results, didactical implications for teaching at higher education institutions are discussed.