Digital entrepreneurship in initial teacher education: a systematic review of curriculum integration and implications for teacher preparation

Abstract

Digital entrepreneurship has emerged as one of the most transformative forces reshaping economies, labour markets, and educational expectations globally, yet initial teacher education (ITE) programmes have been conspicuously slow to respond. This article reports a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature published between 2015 and 2025, examining the extent to which digital entrepreneurship has been integrated into ITE curricula and what implications that integration, or its absence, carries for curriculum design. Searches were conducted across ERIC, Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and SciELO, yielding 312 initial results. Following rigorous inclusion and exclusion screening, 37 sources were retained and thematically analysed. Four interrelated themes emerged: the conceptual ambiguity surrounding digital entrepreneurship as an educational construct; the persistent gap between policy ambition and ITE curriculum reality; the inadequacy of pre-service teacher preparation for teaching digital entrepreneurship across conceptual, pedagogical, and technological dimensions; and the structural, cultural, and resource-related barriers that impede meaningful curriculum reform. Drawing on the EntreComp and DigCompEdu frameworks, the review concludes that ITE has not yet arrived at the destination its own policy documents have signposted. Fundamental redesign is required, not the incremental addition of technology modules, but a rethinking of what it means to prepare teachers for a digitally entrepreneurial world. The urgency of this task is compounded by the rise of generative artificial intelligence, acute youth unemployment across the Global South, and new evidence that pre-service teachers consistently underperform on precisely the digital competence dimensions most relevant to entrepreneurial practice. Five evidence-grounded curriculum implications are advanced: conceptual clarity before content delivery; integration rather than addition; the modelling imperative; assessment alignment; and structural partnership with the digital economy.