The increasing number of academic courses, faculties, or journals for entrepreneurship indicates its growth as an educational subject and branch of science [35]. Educational measures to facilitate entrepreneurship exist today in educational settings from primary school to doctoral programs [36]. This broad reception is fostered by the notion that entrepreneurship is a driver of economic and social development [37].

To date, there is no uniform definition of the term entrepreneurship [38]. This heterogeneity is reflected in research on entrepreneurial education, a discipline spread over divergent fields [39] covering different definitions. One side of the continuum is “enterprise or enterprising education”, which includes European research and is oriented towards a wider definition of entrepreneurship, according to which it is about the personal development of an entrepreneurial mindset and life skills [40,41]. On the other side of the continuum is “entrepreneurship education”, which includes North American research and is oriented towards the narrower definition of entrepreneurship, which is about the creation of ventures [42]. Acknowledging the narrower and wider perspective in the review, the expression “entrepreneurial education” is used in this paper as in [43] to refer to education in entrepreneurship.

Contemporary research on entrepreneurial education is moving away from the narrow start-up perspective [44] focused on a target audience of students interested in an entrepreneurial career [45] towards a wider perspective addressing all students to foster entrepreneurial competences regardless of future self- or dependent employment [46]. In the context of the wider enterprising perspective, entrepreneurial education is not limited to business programs and can be integrated across the curriculum [47].

The term competence is interpreted and defined differently depending on the field of application or initial discipline, and country [48], so that even within entrepreneurship research a recent literature review on 32 key publications identified 12 different definitions [18]. Discussing the body of entrepreneurship literature, Tittel and Terzidis [18] define “entrepreneurial competence as the specific set of domain competences, social competences and personal competences needed to generate entrepreneurial action”. They further specify the following subcategories within the framework of domain competence: “opportunity recognition, organizational and strategic and management competence” [18].

Pedagogy in entrepreneurial education has evolved, like pedagogy in general, from traditional teacher-guided instructional approaches in the 1980s towards learner-centered constructivist approaches to date [39]. According to the systematic review by Hägg and Gabrielsson [39], pedagogy in entrepreneurial education research today is mainly influenced by six theories and approaches: constructivist educational philosophy [49], experiential learning theory [50], situated learning [51], action learning [52], and problem-based learning [53]. Thus, the theoretical framework of modern entrepreneurial education is experiential and constructivist in nature.

The use of these modern experiential approaches enables the facilitation of innovativeness and creativity among learners [54]. Meta-studies have confirmed the empirical evidence of the impact of entrepreneurship courses and programs on entrepreneurial competences and skills [55,56], while at the same time criticizing the methodology [57]. The evidence of impact of entrepreneurial education regarding intentions towards entrepreneurship is less clear, as pre-educational intentions are little affected by education programs [28]. The empirical evidence of entrepreneurial education is also dependent on the age and gender of the learners [56,58].

The content of entrepreneurial education developed from learning about to learning in or through the experience of entrepreneurship [39] e.g., [59,60]. Typical entrepreneurial education content relating to different stages of the entrepreneurial process range from developing ideas or discovering opportunities and writing business plans, to creating a venture and manage related activities [44]. Current methodological contributions to the design of entrepreneurial education include for example effectuation [61] e.g., in Cowden et al. [62] or lean start-up [63], e.g., in Harms [64]. The worldwide homogeneity of used methods like business model canvas, mini-companies, entrepreneurship competitions, and start-up pitches is labeled as “McDonaldization” of entrepreneurial education and criticized as lacking variation acknowledging aspects like gender, or cultural background [65].

Contemporary research on entrepreneurial education is focused not only on the individual but increasingly on the environment and the individual’s interaction with it, e.g., [26,66]. Global crisis such as the economic crisis of 2008 or the ongoing destruction of livelihoods, the question of the ethical responsibility of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial education is gaining importance [39] and interest in concepts such as social entrepreneurship or SE is growing, e.g., [45,46].

Papenfuss et al. [67] highlight the 1960s with widely recognized publications on socially induced environmental disasters, such as Silent Spring [68], as the beginning of the emergence of sustainability education. While the focus was initially on environmental problems and the concept of environmental education [69], in subsequent years, issues of development, social justice, and economics arose and the discourse transitioned to the concept of sustainability education [70]. The notion of ESD, a United Nations initiative, was introduced in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 [71] and since then internationally explored by a growing number of scholars [72] and politically promoted, for example, by the United Nations Decade of ESD [73]. Other terms used synonymously with the United Nations terminology for ESD are, e.g., sustainability education or education for sustainability [72].

In 2015, following the Decade of ESD, the United Nations [74] adopted the Agenda 2030 to further enhance sustainable development that “meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future” [75] (p. 51). The political agenda defines 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) comprising a total of 169 environmental, social, and economic interconnected targets corresponding to sustainability concerns, such as the exploitation of natural resources, environmental pollution, and social injustice [74]. ESD was now included in goal four “Quality Education” [76] and seen as an essential element to achieve all goals [77].

According to the UNESCO, ESD is a ‘holistic’ approach that addresses all levels of education across all disciplines and requires the consideration of sustainability issues in every aspect of teaching and learning [78]. Pedagogy discourse in ESD has evolved analog to the development of pedagogy in general from content-focused and teacher-guided learning about sustainable development issues to learner-centered transformative and action-oriented pedagogy [67,79] integrating learners in the solution of real-world sustainability challenges [80,81]. Accordingly, innovative teaching-learning methods are often applied in which learners work collaboratively (e.g., service-learning), imagine an alternative to current practices and foster creativity (e.g., story-telling), or work in an interdisciplinary way to analyze complex sustainability challenges from all sides (e.g., community research) [82,83]. Emerging trends in the ESD research literature identified by Grosseck et al. [72] are e.g., referring to education on alternatives to the linear economic system [84] or the broad area of digitalization. Research regarding the latter lies in three main areas: content-related, (e.g., in the effect and handling of fake news [85]), medium-related, (as shown by Carrión-Martínez et al. [86] in mobile learning, e.g., massive open online courses [87]), or interactive learning environments, (e.g., serious games [88], augmented reality [89]).

The central subjects of ESD are the fundamental topics for sustainable development on a local and global level [61]. The 17 SDGs relevant to sustainable development are again condensed by UNESCO [78] into four key areas: climate change, sustainable consumption and production, biodiversity, and disaster risk reduction. As early as 2006, PISA revealed that almost all learners in OECD member countries attend schools where these and other issues such as pollution and environmental degradation are part of the curriculum [78].

To contribute to solutions for these environmental, economic, and social challenges of the present and the future, and thus contribute to sustainable development of societies, ESD aims to enable learners to make informed decisions and act responsibly as ‘sustainability citizens’ [74,75]. ESD thus becomes a means of facilitating a range of essential competences necessary to successfully act when facing the complexity and uncertainty of sustainability issues [22]. Among a plethora of different competence concepts like “shaping competences” by de Haan [90], “sustainability literacy” by Stibbe [91], different “key competences in sustainability” by Wiek et al. [33,34], or “key competences for sustainable development” by Rieckmann [92], “sustainable skills” by Wals [93] including so-called “core competences” by Glasser and Hirsch [94] following Redman et al. [95] there is agreement on these key competences: anticipatory or futures-thinking-, collaboration or interpersonal-, values-thinking or normative-, strategic-, and systems-thinking [33], and integrated problem-solving competence [34], as well as following the UNESCO [22] and Rieckmann [82] furthermore: critical thinking and self-awareness competence. Increasingly, there is interest in assessing the impact of ESD interventions on learning attainments and the resulting behavioral and decision-making changes in order to identify elements of the pedagogical reality that are effectively fostering competences [25,79].

Often, learners in ESD are limited to the role of  “consumers and lifelong workers rather than [as] empowered producers and life-long learners”, as Wals and Lenglet call for​ [96] (p. 56). However, individuals can also contribute to achieving the SDGs as innovative, sustainable producers and service providers [97].