The Influence of Pedagogical Entrepreneurship in Teacher Education

Abstract

Pedagogical entrepreneurship is a teaching and learning approach that emphasizes means and possibilities within school subjects, in opposition to reproductive, transmissible, and goal-oriented approaches. Political and education research voices strongly argue for implementation of pedagogical entrepreneurship in all school subjects, due to its lifelong learning perspective. This implies that students of today and tomorrow must be trained in the didactic of possibilities, how to explore and investigate, and how to create value for themselves and others. This calls for an epistemological transformation of subject-specific content knowledge that allows interpretation in many ways and development of a growth mindset. Pedagogical entrepreneurship is recognized by being innovative and explorative, whether it is about economic growth, values, scientific approach, or making a difference. A narrow definition of entrepreneurship (or enterprise education) includes emphasis on establishing and running a business of some kind. Pedagogical entrepreneurship calls for a broader definition of the entrepreneurship area, since it frames priority of practical, problem-based, research-based, and lifelike activities for the students, cooperation with local businesses, organizations, and life outside school. Pedagogical entrepreneurship allows the students to gain understanding of the complex nature of real-life issues, influence teaching practices, and experience strong relevance of the learning goals, which is likely to increase students’ inner motivation and their experience of holistic learning of content knowledge. Therefore, pedagogical entrepreneurship can appear as a leader philosophy, a way to organize teaching, and specific student activities. Implementation of new approaches to teaching and learning is always associated with issues and teacher concerns and requires continuing teacher profession development, for instance through attention in teacher education programs and students’ experience with pedagogical entrepreneurship during their teacher education. A way to meet this scenario is to vitalize the broad definition of pedagogical entrepreneurship in teacher education programs in such a way that the teacher education students may operate as change agents when they start to teach after they have graduated. The development, mapping, and introduction of entrepreneurial teaching resources in teacher education will establish the foundation for a didactic of possibilities—an entrepreneurial didactic that may influence students’ motivation and in-depth learning of school subjects.

A Review of Entrepreneurship Education in Teacher Education

“…It can be said that, until recently, entrepreneurship education has not become widespread in the general context of education (Haara & Jenssen, 2016). However, the increasing importance of entrepreneurship in the education sector is becoming widespread (Haara & Jenssen, 2016). One of the priority efforts in the EU has been to develop entrepreneurship education in teacher education (GHK, 2011).…”

“…Emphasis on entrepreneurship education has increased in compulsory education at both national and international levels (European Commission, 2011; The Ministry of Education, 2017). The compulsory education situation directly affects in-service teacher training (Haara & Jenssen, 2016). Pre-service teacher training also plays an important role in creating change in the future (Borasi & Finnegan, 2010).…”

A review on use of escape rooms in education – touching the void

“…Finally, some studies have underscored that an escape room activity used for educational purposes is an activity that emphasises student activity and how students may be encouraged and challenged to create an escape room for other students (Rosenkrantz et al, 2019;Veldkamp et al, 2020). The latter example shows that it is possible to use an escape room to integrate work with curriculum content and facilitation for active work with the content in a way that may prove valuable to others (Haara & Jenssen, 2019). This will help to pave the way for learning from two perspectives: the creator's perspective and the participant's perspective.…”

Teaching for Entrepreneurial Learning

“…When the term pedagogical entrepreneurship is used in a lifelong learning perspective, it is understood to be the formation of a life cycle in which creative and active methods of learning form a central part. A focus on entrepreneurial learning thus becomes a prioritisation in terms of processes, products and working methods in school subjects (Haara & Jenssen, 2016).…”

“…Entrepreneurial learning has much in common with other pedagogical approaches with a long tradition in schools, such as problem-based learning and project work, but also has some unique characteristics such as prioritising the ability to see opportunities, work innovatively and demonstrate a certain willingness to take risks (Lackéus, 2015). Entrepreneurial learning can be prioritised both in and across subjects, both by employing known working methods and developing new ones (Sagar, 2014;Haara & Jenssen, 2016), and is thus a perspective for the work in schools, which addresses many of the challenges highlighted both by sociopolitical parties (European Commission, 2010, 2013European Council, 2000) and research into creativity and education (Dweck, 2006;Sawyer, 2012). Against this background, we ask: How can schools develop an entrepreneurial didactic?…”