Entrepreneurial Education: The European Perspective
INTRODUCTION
The term Entrepreneur referrers in medieval French to “a person who undertakes”, in other words, a person who has energy to get something done – a very suitable description of today’s youngsters’ and their potential. The term actually only became attached to the business field between the 18th and 19th centuries.
By Audrey Stolze
The recent application of Industrial and Organizational (I-O) Psychology in Entrepreneurship research has led to a deeper understanding of the entrepreneurial-being and the particular mind-set. This individual has been defined by a set of skills and attributes which lead to certain behavior when faced with the uncertainties and challenges (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The Entrepreneurial Process: Behaviors, Skills and Attributes cf. Heinonen et al (2006)
The particular mind-set formed enables the individual to better cope with different environmental settings, having therefore greater chances of succeeding not only as entrepreneurs but in endeavors of any nature – ultimately increasing their odds of living a fulfilling life.
Thereupon, Entrepreneurship was recommended as part of the European Union Key Competence Framework for lifelong learning. Accordingly, the European Commission in its communication “Rethink Education: Invest in Skills for Better Socio-Economic Outcomes” (2012) emphasizes that “Member States should foster entrepreneurial skills through new and creative ways of teaching and learning from primary schools onwards. (…) All young people should benefit from at least one entrepreneurial experience before leaving compulsory education”.
Entrepreneurship education is, hence, essential not only to form the mind-sets of youngsters, but also to provide the skills, knowledge and attitudes that are key to develop an entrepreneurial and more inclusive Society. However, according to the special Eurobarometer Survey “Entrepreneurship in the EU and Beyond” (2012) only 23% of EU respondents affirmed they had taken part in an entrepreneurship course or related activity at school (Figure 2). Furthermore, in 2015, in a resolution from September 8th, the European Parliament recognized that “Some Member States have yet to develop a cross-cutting policy or a strategic approach to entrepreneurship education or entrepreneurial curricula and teaching methods; whereas not all teachers and education leaders in Europe are sufficiently trained in entrepreneurship education as a set of transversal key competences for personal and professional purposes”.
Figure 2: Percentage of EU respondents having participated in any course or activity related to entrepreneurship during school (2012)
BACKGROUND: ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION STATUS QUO - EUROPEAN OVERVIEW
It is important to contextualize entrepreneurship education through the different approaches and objectives as it varies depending on a country’s own context and corresponding understanding of it. As a general concept, the definition of Entrepreneurship Education states that: “Entrepreneurship Education is about learners developing the skills and mind-set to be able to turn creative ideas into entrepreneurial action. This is a key competence for all learners, supporting personal development, active citizenship, social inclusion and employability. It is relevant across the lifelong learning process, in all disciplines of learning and to all forms of education and training (formal, non-formal and informal) which contribute to an entrepreneurial spirit or behavior, with or without a commercial objective”. This definition reflects the common European understanding of entrepreneurship as a key competence in which the development of entrepreneurial attitudes, skills and knowledge should enable the individual to turn ideas into action. It is therefore not only related to economic activities and business creation, but more widely to all areas of life and Society. Currently, about half of EU countries adopt this definition, while a third has established their own national definitions and circa 10 EU countries have no commonly agreed definition of entrepreneurship education as base guideline.
PUBLIC POLICIES AND NATIONAL STRATEGIES FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION IN EUROPE
Since 2003 there have been developments in Education Policies in Europe related to entrepreneurship. These documents have influenced the landscape of entrepreneurship education and the development of European and national-wide strategies on the topic. An overview of the key reports released since is provided on Table 1.
Table 1: Key European policy documents influencing entrepreneurship education related strategy development
Throughout the years, policy developments has established a shared vision between policy makers across Europe and a common understanding based on a more holistic entrepreneurship key competence and skill-based learning model. As of 2015, 11 EU countries had already developed a specific strategy for entrepreneurship education; 18 had a broader strategy that incorporated it and 9 still had no relevant national strategy developed (figure 3). Tough it is important to highlight that this is linked to the level of autonomy in each country and some countries have good examples of entrepreneurial education implementation.
Figure 3: Most relevant central level strategies related to entrepreneurship education 2014/2015
The 2016 Eurydice report “Entrepreneurship Education at schools in Europe” identified seven topics that should be addressed by strategies related to entrepreneurship education (figure 3), being the most important ones to prioritize: curriculum, learning outcomes, practical entrepreneurial experience and teacher education. However, as illustrated on figure 4, only 6 countries cover both topic and action for these on their current strategies: Denmark, Estonia, UK-Wales, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Furthermore, the Eurydice report identified as success factors for strategies related to entrepreneurship education the following aspects:
- Work at all levels of education, as recent research has demonstrated there is significant impact of including entrepreneurship education from elementary level onwards;
- Include cross-ministerial cooperation to effectively engage a wide range of stakeholders;
- Build partnerships with stakeholders from education, business, NGO and community, as their engagements are a pre-requisite to form a link between entrepreneurship education and real life, through experiential learning; and
- Monitor progress and impact in order to assess and learn from progress, inform new policy developments and profile achievements and successes.
Figure 4: Strategy topics and corresponding actions linked to entrepreneurship education, 2014/2015
ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOL’S CURRICULUM
There are 3 broad approaches to integrate entrepreneurship education in schools, which are not mutually exclusive. Hence countries may have opted to apply all 3 approaches in different school types and levels:
- Cross-curricular approach: entrepreneurship education objectives are expressed as being transversal and horizontal across different subjects (i.e. an entrepreneurial education);
- Compulsory-subject approach: entrepreneurship education is a compulsory separate subject or its part of the curriculum of a compulsory subject;
- Elective-subject approach: Entrepreneurship education is offered as an optional subject or as part of an optional subject curriculum.
In this scenario, the European Commission has proposed a progression model that suggests “a shift away FROM entrepreneurship education as an add-on to the curriculum TO entrepreneurship education as an integral part of the curriculum in all levels. In other words, the provision of an entrepreneurial education, in the early years of education, from primary to lower secondary, that provides a foundation and motivation for students to take a separate subject in the topic on upper secondary level and beyond.
Nevertheless, in order to be effective, entrepreneurship education requires teaching and learning methods to be appropriately developed and delivered. However new teaching methods and cross-disciplinary content present challenges for teachers and institutions alike. In fact, it has been identified that many teachers are unprepared for this challenges and “train-the-trainer” efforts may be required.
The Eurydice report (2016) analysis of central guidelines on entrepreneurship education in European schools identified four types of teaching and learning methods commonly, but not exclusively, associated with entrepreneurship education. However not all countries provide central guidelines and in most countries teachers and schools have significant level of autonomy to make their own decisions regarding teaching methods (figure 5).
ISCED1: Primary-level; ISCED2: Lower secondary-level; ISCED 3 (general): General upper secondary-level; and ISCED 3 (IVET): Vocational specific upper secondary-level
Figure 5: Central guidelines on teaching and learning methods in entrepreneurship education 2014/2015
The European Commission has called for all member states to provide at least one practical entrepreneurial experience for all learners before they complete compulsory education. A practical entrepreneurial experience is understood as “an educational experience where the learner has the opportunity to come up with ideas, identify a good idea and turn that idea into action. It should be a student-led initiative either individually or as part of a small team, involve learning-by-doing and should produce a tangible outcome. The aim of such opportunity is for learners to develop the skills, confidence and capability to spot opportunities, identify solutions and put their own ideas into practice”. There are many examples of practical entrepreneurship experiences and what they have in common is a genuine entrepreneurial approach in their content and method, thus combining entrepreneurial learning objectives and entrepreneurial methods.
Some examples found in school curriculum across Europe are:
- Project-based work: there is a clear idea generation process and a specific end product;
- Practical Challenge: projects set by business or community organizations to address a problem they face at work;
- Community Challenge: ideate and develop innovative solutions to tackle local or community problems;
- Junior-Company: set up of a mini or junior student-led company to produce and/or sell a product or service and run it for a specific set period of time;
- Micro-finance: development of concrete ideas and crowd-funded projects to make a profit and/or have a social impact.
Figure 6: Practical entrepreneurial experience in the curriculum 2014/2015
A critical aspect to develop teaching and learning methods is to establish the expected learning outcomes, allowing teachers to structure and organize their teaching plans, paving the way for formal assessment and hence allowing students to know what is expected of them. However, Entrepreneurship Education can be considered a complex area as it is broad and multifaceted. Therefore, it can be linked to several specific learning outcomes. An European reference framework for the identified key competence “a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship” is currently being developed. Furthermore, the European project ASTEE has developed an assessment tool for entrepreneurial skills, which proposes categories of learning outcomes. At the moment there are three categories of outcomes that are commonly accepted and applied:
- Entrepreneurial attitudes (self-confidence and sense of initiative)
- Entrepreneurial skills (creativity, planning, financial literacy, managing resources, managing uncertainty/risk, teamwork)
- Entrepreneurial knowledge (how to assess opportunities, the role of entrepreneurs in society and entrepreneurial career options)
Entrepreneurship Education as a key competence is understood to be part of a lifelong learning process that encompasses transversal skills. Hence, beyond identifying learning outcomes, it is crucial to structure these to: (1) ensure continuity and progression and (2) provide for students’ assessment.
TEACHER’S EDUCATION AND SUPPORT TO DELIVER ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION
School teachers and prospective teachers play a key role in the effective development, implementation and delivery of entrepreneurship education programmes that enable and foster the previously mentioned outcomes (attitudes, skills and knowledge). According to the European Commission report “Entrepreneurship Education: Enabling Teachers as a Critical Success Factor” such competencies are acquired through people-led enquiry and discovery that enable students to turn ideas into action. Hence, they are difficult to teach through traditional teaching and learning practices, since learners tends to be a passive recipient. It’s therefore essential that active, learner-centered pedagogies and learning activities that use practical learning opportunities from the real-world are applied. However, these changes will require that the way teachers themselves are educated is changed.
Furthermore, according to the same report, teacher’s training institutions should provide rich contexts for learning ABOUT, FOR and THROUGH entrepreneurship, in order to enable the student teachers to explore and develop a range of pedagogical techniques that are suitable for the teaching and learning of entrepreneurship education and hence achieve the expected outcomes. A key challenge (or opportunity) is the fact that in almost half of European countries, teacher’s training institutions have autonomy to decide whether to include entrepreneurship education in their programmes of Initial Teachers Education as well as offers of Continuing Professional Development.
Teachers delivering entrepreneurship education in schools must be able to take an entrepreneurial teaching approach. This means a teaching approach where the teacher acts as a coach and helps students turn their ideas into actions and become the determining force in their own lives. This type of approach may apply to any subject teacher. In this scenario and according to a European Commission Thematic Working Group on the topic there are five key skills an “entrepreneurial teacher” must have in order to be able to engage students in an entrepreneurial approach to learning. These are the ability to:
- Use a project-based approach;
- Work on case-studies in addition to using text-books;
- Take an interdisciplinary approach;
- Manage group processes and interaction within groups;
- Act as a coach (rather than as a lecturer).
To conclude, it must be highlighted that according to Eurydice Report (2016) the provision for teachers seems to be the least advanced area in terms of entrepreneurship education development in Europe. The report affirms that “the integration of entrepreneurship education into Initial Teachers Education and Continuing Professional Development for all teachers, irrespective of the subject and the level of education at which they teach, is crucial if high quality provision is to be made for students”.
APPENDIX 1: GENERAL ASPECTS AND OTHER SPECIFICITIES OF EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS IN SOME EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
GERMANY / The German education system is composed of:
·Four-year basic education, preceded by a primary education
·Tripartite secondary school system dividing the pupils at an early age into scholars of (a) Gymnasium, (b) Realschule (vocational qualifications), (c) Mittelschule (vocational qualifications). Only the first school qualifies scholars for university access.
·Tertiary or higher education system of universities and universities of applied sciences
According to the GEM country report 2014, traditionally, school entrepreneurship education at Germany belongs to the absolute and relative chinks and weak points for a better performance as a founder and startup location. School education and out-of-school education both are seen as extremely weak compared to other countries.
Expert assessment of entrepreneurship education at universities and universities of applied sciences is disappointing. The assessment of entrepreneurship education and start up knowledge at management schools and in vocational centres leads to slightly more positive answers.
When it comes to secondary school levels, the GEM assessment experts are most negative. Overall, the exclusion of the topic from curricular events and programs is noticed. And at primary school, at the level of the young children those are most open in mind and eager to experience and learn about themselves and the world around them, children do not learn at school to be proactive, creative and self-reliant or autonomous.
Overall, experts and researcher see the German school system as inhibitive factor for the development of entrepreneurial aspirations and skills. In this scenario, is also relevant to point out that the Eurydice Report on Entrepreneurship Education in European School did not include the country on their analysis.
FINLAND / The Finnish education system is composed of:
- nine-year basic education (comprehensive school) for the whole age group, preceded by one year of voluntary pre-primary education
- upper secondary education, comprising general education and vocational education and training (vocational qualifications and further and specialist qualifications)
- higher education, provided by universities and universities of applied sciences
Students' opportunities to progress from one level of education to the next is safeguarded by legislation. Both general and vocational upper secondary certificates provide eligibility for further studies. Higher education is offered by universities and universities of applied sciences. Both sectors have their own profiles. Universities emphasize scientific research and instruction. Universities of applied sciences adopt a more practical approach.
Adult education is provided at all levels of education.
Finnish Ministry of Education has drawn up the guidelines for entrepreneurship education (Publications of the Ministry of Education 2009:9). It has been written in the guidelines paper Entrepreneurship education is part of lifelong learning; in it, entrepreneurial skills are developed and supplemented at different points in life. It is a question of life management, interaction, self-guided action, a capacity for innovation and an ability to encounter change. Education and training help entrepreneurship evolve into a mode of operation, in which attitude, will and a desire to take action combine with knowledge and advanced competence.
These guidelines for entrepreneurship education stress networking amongst different forms of education, business and industry, organizations, administrative and political decision-makers and pupils/students’ families. These networks develop the objectives and content of education, learning environments and an action culture which enhance the learner’s entrepreneurial skills and life management. In this fashion, learners develop their knowledge, skills and attitudes and mode of operation, enabling them to act in an entrepreneurial manner in their own lives together with others. All this facilitates the learner’s future operation in the labor market, either as an entrepreneur or in the employ of others.