Our students are lacking something very important, and they don’t even know it. They’re not getting educated in a discipline that could change their lives. It’s something that has taken up a great deal of educational research space over the past decade but hasn’t really made much of a dent in getting into our high school classrooms. It’s called Entrepreneur Education and it’s something that our students need desperately!
For many, this author included, this is not a new concept. Though it’s been around for over a decade it’s not something that gets talked about a lot in regards to K-12 education. The European Union made it a priority in a 2002 report about the generation of instruction, but that was more for higher education than for K-12. Just recently, several programs have come out to teach entrepreneurship in grades 7-12 but they focus more on building a business and don’t all cover some of the more important elements.
WHAT IS ENTREPRENEUR EDUCATION?
Entrepreneur Education, also called Enterprise Education, is directly tied to the skills that people need to succeed in the job world. Taught almost exclusively at the post-secondary level, its purpose is to help young entrepreneurs develop the skills and mindset necessary to create and run their own businesses. However, the research now shows that it’s something that everyone should know. And know sooner than later.
An Entrepreneur Education curriculum is designed to give students the tools necessary to generate ideas, and the behaviors, attributes, and competencies to put those ideas into practice. It’s not just about knowledge but goes into a wide range of emotional, intellectual, social, cultural and practical skills and know-how that all students need. These are factors that can increase their chances of employment and enhance their ability to succeed.
Entrepreneur education is built around a set of behaviors, attributes, and competences. The research says that these can include:
Entrepreneur behaviors can include:
- taking the initiative
- making things happen
- reflecting
- communicating
- pivoting and adapting
- storytelling
- taking responsibility
- networking
- personal effectiveness
- managed risk taking
Entrepreneur attributes can include:
- open mindedness,
- proactivity
- curiosity
- self-efficacy
- flexibility
- adaptability
- determination
- resilience
Entrepreneur competencies can include:
- intuitive decision making
- identifying opportunities
- creative problem solving
- innovating
- strategic thinking
- design thinking
WHY DO WE NEED ENTREPRENEUR EDUCATION?
The National Business Education Association has recently created a set of standards in the areas of Entrepreneurship Education competency because they believe that they are crucial for the success of any student in becoming a successful employer, employee and citizen. And so do we!
We feel the aim of Entrepreneur Education is to produce high school graduates who graduate with an awareness, mindset, and the capability to generate original ideas. In today’s world it’s more important than ever that students be able to identify needs, opportunities and shortfalls and be able to act on them, even if circumstances are changing and ambiguous. They need to be able to see what’s in front of them and act accordingly.
It’s essential that our students have these characteristics before they hit the job market. It’s important that they be put in environments that foster:
- autonomy and independence
- creativity and originality
- risk-taking
- confronting challenging objectives
- self-confidence
- endurance
These qualities, while a big part of entrepreneurial skills, are also the types of abilities that will serve students in any endeavor they undertake.
Right now, we aren’t giving students these attributes. There are programs that focus on some of these things that are available to high schools. There are entrepreneurial programs around the country, mostly in more affluent districts or private schools. However, they’re not available to everyone, regardless of their educational focus, economic status, or geographic location.
CTE PATHWAYS and ENTREPRENEUR EDUCATION
As schools move more towards implementing the CTE pathways to help direct students towards career choices that are more aligned with their strengths, it’s also essential that they add enterprising skills to all the core curricula. Giving them the skills they need to succeed in a specific job without also giving them the skills they need to succeed in the world is not setting them up for real success.
Employers are no longer just looking for candidates who can do the job, they want candidates who are able to:
- problem-solve,
- work in a collaborative environment
- are looking for ways to make positive change in the workplace
They want workers who think above the level of just an employee but see themselves as stakeholders in whatever job they are doing.
This type of thinking empowers workers. It allows them to effect change in ways that make things better for them. The days of sitting back and letting others determine their situation are over. Today’s workers want a workplace that is aligned with their values, and they want to be able to feel that there is a definite path to improvement and advancement. Coming out of high school with these types of enterprising skills is the best way to jump start their journey.
EMPLOYABILITY and ENTREPRENEUR EDUCATION
An effective approach to Employability and Entrepreneur Education has a significant impact on learning to learn, and therefore the future success of the individual student. It prepares them for a rewarding professional life and acts as a significant vehicle to deliver against the institutional aims for graduate employment, employability, and future success.
Employability support covers a vast array of interventions and activities, both in the curriculum and beyond. This can include activities such as:
- placements
- CV workshops
- careers fairs and
- support with job applications
These interventions may also support entrepreneurship. However, an effective approach needs to go much deeper than these kinds of activities alone and we need to develop a broader more coordinated range of activities that build year on year.
The diagram below illustrates the relationship between entrepreneur and employability/entrepreneurship. Career paths may reflect these interconnections.
HOW CAN WE GET ENTREPRENEUR EDUCATION INTO OUR SCHOOLS?
Perhaps the reluctance to embrace Entrepreneur Education is because these seem like difficult things to teach. Because we’ve put so much emphasis on standardized testing in this country, we’ve lost a focus on the attributes that make a person successful, including soft skills. There is a definite lack of innovation and collaboration in our current school system.
It takes a lot for today’s teachers to bring these things into their daily teaching. Unless they’re specifically teaching a class in one, or all, of these skills, it’s very difficult to incorporate this into a predetermined curriculum that’s built specifically for attaining a certain level of performance on yearly standardized tests.
One way of introducing Entrepreneur education programs into the curriculum is to include them as extracurricular activities, run through external companies or offered as intensive ‘projects’ over a set amount of time (a day or week, for example).
In 2016 SFEDI created standards for Entrepreneur Educators. Examples of entrepreneur education programs that are already available in some schools include:
- Tasks that ask students to come up with a creative solution to a problem or put together a proposal for a new product.
- Student-run businesses, stalls and events.
- Excursions.
- Community service initiatives.
- Career programs that allow students to interact with industry professionals.
- Real-world applications for basic numeracy and literacy skills
- Financial units focused on teaching students about budgeting, loans, interest rates, investment, calculating profit and loss, and so on.
The delivery of entrepreneur education needs to encourage cross-disciplinary approaches in both learning strategies and assessment to develop realistic and relevant high engagement, and high impact, simulations and programs. These should enable students to interact with the people who are instructing them and expose them to the people who are already doing things in the arenas they’re studying.
ENTREPRENEUR EDUCATION IS THE PATHWAY TO SUCCESS!
The goal of entrepreneur education is for students to develop an awareness of and understanding of the things necessary to navigate a professional situation, whether as an employee or an entrepreneur. They need to be able to explore the relevant underpinning theories and then consider the skill in relation to employment opportunities, especially in the world of small business.
Developing an enterprising mindset is essential to success in the modern working world. They need to become:
- self-aware of personality and social identity
- motivated to achieve personal ambitions and goals
- self-organized, flexible, and resilient
- curious of new possibilities for creating value
- responsive to problems and opportunities by making new connections
- able to go beyond perceived limitations and achieve results
- tolerant of uncertainty, ambiguity, risk, and failure
- sensitive to personal values, such as ethical, social, diversity and environmental awareness
That’s why Career Day has identified Entrepreneur Education as a focus for our course offerings both on our platform and for Virtual Instructor Led Trainings (VILT). We have started with Financial Literacy to get students thinking about the way that money affects their lives in more ways than just as a consumer. Finance, credit, debt, and entrepreneurship are subjects we cover deeply.
Our courses bring in experts and guests on all the subjects who can impart their knowledge to show the students real world applications. It’s only by seeing things in action that people really get an understanding of concepts and their practical applications.
The research is very clear that what students need now, more than ever, is a place where they can learn entrepreneur skills, develop their high-level innovation and ideation, and then see the kinds of opportunities where they can put these new skills to work. A place like Career Day.
Citations:
https://www.qaa.ac.uk/quality-code/enterprise-and-entrepreneurship-education
https://www.aeseducation.com/blog/entrepreneurship-lesson-plans-for-high-school
https://startupstatus.co/entrepreneur-education-in-high-schools/
https://www.educationandemployers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Enterprise-education-in-schools.pdf
https://entrepreneurhandbook.co.uk/enterprise-education-about-for-or-through/
http://www.consult-ice.com/2017/05/enterprise-education/
