17–19 Sept 2025
Tehnical University of Moldova
Europe/Bucharest timezone

Attitudes toward entrepreneurship and digitalization: How they shape high school students’ readiness to start a business

19 Sept 2025, 10:15
15m
Room 4

Room 4

Technical University of Moldova
Paper presentation Networking in Education and Research Social Aspects of Networking Environment Today

Speaker

ROBERT FLORIN SIMILEA (Doctoral School of Sociology, University of Bucharest)

Description

This paper examines the association between students’ attitudes toward digitalization and their entrepreneurial readiness in Romanian technical and vocational high schools. We analyze 11th–12th graders (16–19) engaged in the Practice Firm (PE) or Firma de Exercitiu (FE) program, a pedagogical simulation of a real company. Using a sample of 700+ respondents, we combine descriptive statistics, contingency tables, and structural equation modeling (SEM) with a sociological reading to map links between pro-digital attitudes, understanding of how firms work, entrepreneurial capital, gender, and residence. Results show that girls report confidence in digital tools comparable to boys, and rural students view digitalization as a way to overcome geographic disadvantages. We frame these patterns as digital symbolic capital: pro-digital attitudes that convert into self-reported readiness within the educational “field” of PE, aligning with diffusion-of-innovation and EU AI/digital literacy agendas.

Author

ROBERT FLORIN SIMILEA (Doctoral School of Sociology, University of Bucharest)

Co-authors

Prof. Tatiana Țurcanu (Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications Technical University of Moldova) Prof. Mike Titterton (Quality of Government Unit, University of Gothenburg Gothenburg, Sweden)

Presentation materials

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