Wealth Taking or Wealth Making?:What Does The Evidence Tell Us About Effective Practice In Financial Capability & Entrepreneurship Education?

M I K E B L A M I R E S , D I R E C T O R , R E S E A R C H I N I T I A T I V E S F O R P A R T I C I P A T I O N A N D P R O G R E S S W I T H I N L E A R N I N G E N V I R O N M E N T SE . E . E D I T O R M E S H H T T P : / / W W W . M E S H G U I D E S . O R G /

FINANCIAL EDUCATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP FORUM

http://www.meshguides.org/guides/node/436

CONF - Conference Proceedings: A conference may involve peer reviewed academic papers or might be for invited professionals and/or academics.

SURV - Survey: This may be a review of documents and data from a number of sources as well as interview or questionnaire data.

INSP - The report of the inspection of individual or a number of services or institutions based informed by inspection criteria.

EXPOP - Expert Opinion. The collated viewpoints of selected professionals and other experts.

SR - Systematic Review – A structured review that evaluates evidence according to established inclusion criteria for quality and relevance in order to address a question.

Review Headings

Title Authors: Date: Aim(s): Key Findings: Focus of Study Authority and Credibility: Implications & Comments: Bibliographic Information

Entrepreneurship …refers to an individual's ability to turn ideas into action. It includes creativity, sense of initiative, innovation and risk-taking, as well as the ability to plan and manage projects in order to achieve objectives.

The entrepreneurship competence includes therefore transversal skills and attitudes as well as more specialised knowledge and business skills.

Source: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/promoting-entrepreneurship/education-training-entrepreneurship/index_en.htm

Entrepreneurship education

..It should develop both general competences, e.g. self-confidence, adaptability, risk-assessment, creativity, and specific business skills and knowledge, It should no longer be just an extra-curricular activity, but instead be embedded in the curriculum across all educational levels/types.

To move entrepreneurship education from being an extra-curricular 'add-on' to an integral part of the curriculum involves:

• changes in teaching methods: greater use of experiential learning and a new coach/moderator role for teachers which helps students to become more independent and to take the initiative in their education;

• changes in the education context, which takes students out of the classroom into the local community and real businesses, and which establishes less hierarchical relationships within schools;

Source: Mini Companies in Secondary Education: Final Report of the Expert Group. P III

Financial Capability

…is concerned with the personal management of money. Developing an understanding of earning, spending and saving in order to distinguish and prioritise between needs and wants thus making informed decisions as a consumer.Source: http://www.pfeg.org/planning-teaching/introduction-what-financial-education

What is meant by Financial Education?

“Financial education is a programme of study that aims to equip young people with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to manage their money well. High quality teaching ensures that learners grow to understand their attitude to risk, and become aware of their own behaviour and emotions when making financial decisions. It is also achieved through applied learning, for example as a context for teaching mathematics, where students grasp mathematical concepts through real-life scenarios”Source: http://www.pfeg.org/policy-campaigning/personal-finance-education-what-it

Enterprise Education:

“Economics, business and enterprise education is about equipping children and young people with the knowledge, skills and understanding to help them make sense of the complex and dynamic economic, business and financial environment in which they live. It should help them leave school well-informed and well-prepared to function as consumers, employees and potential employers”.

Source: Economics, Business and Enterprise Education June 2011, No 100086

System Wide:Framework for policy developmentThis political backing of EE by establishing a common EU framework integrated into existing EU monitoring, the launch of national and regional strategies, ensuring coherent funding and recognising career structures. Source: The Oslo Agenda

…Entrepreneurship education needed to become more commonly treated as a key competence across subjects rather than a business related and or separate subject. Individual teachers were seen as central key but the evidence shows that they also need external support.

Develop national strategies based on a share vision of the teacher as facilitator and coach. Make E.E. a mandatory part of the curriculum with minimum standards in quality frameworks and labelled recognition for innovative practice. Put in place assessment measures that are sympathetic to the advocated teaching approaches for E.E.

Ensure that there are incentives for entrepreneurial teachers including rewards, tool kits, resource centres and recognised centres of expertise.

Develop communication channels between all stakeholders and establish communities of entrepreneurial teachers. Source: The Budapest Agenda Item 2: Entrepreneurship Education: Enabling Teachers as a Critical Success Factor

System Wide:For public authorities:These recommendations include:• Developing an overall strategy for entrepreneurship education in schools. In this

strategy, student company programmes should be highlighted as one important option within the established curricula.

• Setting up regular cooperation between different ministries, business associations, non-governmental organisations, educational institutions, municipalities, with the objective of further promoting activities based on the student company methodology.

• Cooperating in particular with those organisations (such as NGOs) that are widelydisseminating these programmes, and involve them in national plans forentrepreneurship education.

• Endorse, and actively promote student company activities to schools, heads of school and teachers.

• Ensure that legal and administrative barriers to the setting up and implementationof mini-companies are removed;

Source: Best Procedure Project: Mini-Companies in Secondary Education

System Wide: At Regional and Community Level:These programmes can represent an important instrument within regional development policies. ….especially in less developed or more isolated regions, activities may have positive effects in increasing the number of school leavers to remain in the area by building direct links with the local community. Source: Best Procedure Project: Mini-Companies in Secondary Education

Building links and opening education to the outside worldThis includes enhancing the contribution of intermediary organisations dedicated to the dissemination of entrepreneurship activities within schools and universities, and to building links between education and the business world, as part of their corporate social responsibility and supporting research to improve the educational contribution of businesses within schools.

This would include the development of pedagogical abilities of entrepreneurs and business partners.

Centres of Educational Expertise in E.E. should be recognised.Source: Oslo Agenda

Whole School IssuesWhen primary schools taught and reinforced concepts across different curriculum areas pupils gained appropriate levels of understanding about money, including earning, spending and saving and the distinction between wants and needs. Source Economics, Business and Enterprise Education June 2011, No 100086

… improved integration of E.E. programmes into the curriculum and their inclusion in Primary schools, encouraging curricular reform through piloting, comparison and sharing of practice based pedagogies and sustainable funding for activity in this area. Establishing university centres and research to access impact using common frameworks derived from successful programmes.Source: Oslo Agenda

Entrepreneurial schools…have a dedicated and committed school management which supports entrepreneurship education for all students based on a forward looking ethos willing to embrace change and a vision of how entrepreneurship education fits into the broader curriculum and development plan. Transversal, creative and entrepreneurial skills are nurtured by the regular use of activity based learning and student centred methods in teaching. Source: Entrepreneurship Education - A Guide for Educators

Assessment: 1 of 2

Regular evaluation of the activities are carried out including student feedback using concrete learning outcomes that are also defined and assessed as part of formal exams. Positive student feedback is seen as a driver for the development of entrepreneurial learning.Source: Entrepreneurship Education - A Guide for Educators

Student assessment methods are also needed which evaluate them against appropriate criteria related more to the essential features of entrepreneurship such as learning from mistakes, risk taking, innovation and creativity, rather than knowledge acquisition. If such methods don’t change, the job of the teacher as facilitator will be impossible to realise fully in practice Source: Entrepreneurship Education: Enabling Teachers as a Critical Success Factor

Assessment: 2 of 2 Entrepreneurial learning outcomes most often referred to in primary education are those linked to attitudes, specifically entrepreneurial attitudes of ‘taking the initiative and risk taking, critical thinking, creativity and problem solving’. At this level of education, no country defines learning outcomes linked to practical entrepreneurial skills despite the widespread support for experiential learning.

In secondary schools, the most widely applied category of learning outcomes for entrepreneurship education is for attitudes ‘taking the initiative and risk taking, critical thinking, creativity and problem solving’. The number of countries promoting learning outcomes linked to entrepreneurial knowledge increases with the level of education.

Source: Entrepreneurship Education at School in Europe: National Strategies, Curricula and Learning Outcomes

Course Management ..Entrepreneurship education has tended not to be treated systematically in the curriculum. Instead, it is typically an extra-curricular activity, added at the margins of mainstream education, reliant on the enthusiasm of individual teachers and schools. Source: Towards Greater Cooperation and Coherence in Entrepreneurship Education Report and Evaluation of the Pilot Action High Level Reflection Panels on Entrepreneurship Education

Create development plans in schools that communicate a vision of E.E. and have clear objectives and action plans that fully involve the potential contribution of students, alumni, businesses and the local community. Support the development of E.E. with leadership roles including the appointment of a coordinator for E.E.

The E.U, should foster E.E. developments in schools whilst school to school level co-operation should be facilitated. Source: Budapest Agenda Item 4: Entrepreneurship Education: Enabling Teachers as a Critical Success Factor.

Classroom Pedagogy 1 of 2

In primary schools, the activities and tasks to be performed are simpler, and programmes have a shorter duration than found in secondary schools (for instance 2-3 months, or just the time needed to develop a specific project).

The methodology will be more oriented towards learning by playing, through experimentation and games. Emphasis will be rather on attitudes (team working, initiative etc.) than on business skills.

Activities already existing inside the school will be often used (like organising a bazaar, raising money for a school trip, etc.), or the student company may be organised around a certain event (like selling products at a school or community Fair). Source: Best Procedure Project: Mini-Companies

Classroom Pedagogy 2 of 2

Key features of an ‘Effective Entrepreneurship Education Environment’• Quality exposure to enterprising individuals;• An understanding amongst the students of the motivation and objectives behind the

exercises that they are taking part in, e.g. to develop competences related to creativity and initiative, and the skills needed to take risks, as well as to run businesses effectively

• Experiential and hands-on learning to enable students to have fun, retain the outcomes of the learning experience and gain a sense of accomplishment that builds their self-confidence;

• Tasks which give learners responsibility and ownership of activities in order to promote the emergence and implementation of innovative approaches to problem solving; and

• Teachers with 'know-how' of enterprise principles, of how to communicate and enthuse people about the central issues and of how to support students' self-directed learning

Source: Towards Greater Cooperation and Coherence in Entrepreneurship Education Report and Evaluation of the Pilot Action High Level Reflection Panels on Entrepreneurship Education Section 4.4.4

Teacher Education & Professional Development

For Teacher Educators:….a need to develop an environment that enables innovation in teacher education by overcoming negative notions of ‘entrepreneurship’ and recognising social entrepreneurship. This is supported by concrete and tangibly defined learning outcomes for entrepreneurial teaching with developed and quality assured assessment methods for entrepreneurship education pedagogy informed by student feedback.Source: Entrepreneurship Education - A Guide for Educators

Entrepreneurial teacher training programmes should utilise entrepreneurial methods to address the teachers’ own potential for entrepreneurial capacity, not as an isolated skill, but as a concept that requires key competences such as creativity, technological awareness and project management.

Training programmes should show how, in every curriculum, there are starting points for entrepreneurial teaching and learning that can build on existing entrepreneurial activities of teachers, demonstrating how their existing methods already fit to the concept..Source: Entrepreneurship Education - A Guide for Educators

Research

Most studies focus upon a case study that promotes a particular method rather than comparing or evaluating processes and methods within a holistic framework. . P.20

Further, research needs to be more evaluative, longitudinal and contextual to examine the link between entrepreneurship education and graduate entrepreneurship. p24

Research should also consider the broader societal impact of entrepreneurial education rather than focus upon narrow instrumental policy goals so that the justification for E.E. is not just based upon economic utility. p24Source: Entrepreneurship Education: A Systematic Review of the Evidence

Models

Traversing the Transversals

Creativity

Positive Behaviour

Citizenship

Arts & Culture

Inclusion & Diversity

ICT

Other Traditional Subjects

Entrepreneurship Education

Teachers need to be supported to be entrepreneurial about their subject.

VocationalAgenda

A traditional model of Entrepreneurship Education can focus upon what has been termed a long time ago as the ‘Myth of the Hero Innovator’ (Diogenes & Philimore, 1975) but without an infrastructure built on society, economics, technology, science that rely equally in turn on good will. A simple model of Entrepreneurship will lionise or celebrate the identification of potential sources of profit and the personal accumulation of wealth as a reward for locating an opportunity and taking a financial and perhaps personal risk.

It is then hoped that some of the wealth accumulated will then trickle down and benefit new and smaller businesses as well as communities.

Such a model has been questioned in that the ‘Hero Innovator’ may be reluctant to share their expertise or new found wealth and ‘stick around’ in their original community. The classic critiques of the disparity. The Hero Entrepreneur model may ring hollow and upon analysis and is unlikely to rattle if you shake it but it still holds sway as individuals who identify themselves as such cast their beneficence to those they consider to be the deserving poor.

The wealth that has been created may not ‘trickle down’ to those seen as ‘bit players’ in relation to the one identified as the ‘Hero of the Enterprise’. It has been suggested that instead of the precarious ‘trickle down’ notion alternative models of Entrepreneurship can be implemented focused on opportunities for wealth creation that are more collaborative and permeable to community needs, enriching the local infrastructure so that there are, in turn more opportunities for this form of Entrepreneurship.

Coda

UNESCO (2008) UNESCO Inter-Regional Seminar On Promoting Entrepreneurship Education In Secondary Schools ED/BAS/STV/2008/RP/1 Bangkok, Thailand UNESCO ParisUrl accessed 11/03/2015http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0016/001600/160087E.pdf

This report presents the conclusions from a UNESCO inter-regional seminar and it provides some potential useful findings that illustrate the difficulties for developing countries that provide a counterpoint to European perspectives. These findings may guide a European approach that is more responsive to the needs of immigrants and refugees and possibly North African countries :

Take into consideration different cultures, customs, experiences and expectations of various target audiences in relation to established key success factors

Bringing awareness of the benefits of Entrepreneurial Education to the full attention of INGOs and donors Identifying and coordinating sources for implementation taking into consideration the challenges of the existing curriculum to establish viable starting points

Ensuring that autonomy, flexibility and commitment is built in to course organisation and teaching approaches. The importance of impact studies and networking

Responding to the new circum

stances

Credits Graphics used for illustration purposes have been repurposed from the EU document Entrepreneurship: A guide for educators

The document was produced by the MESHguide Entrepreneurship Education editorial group. Mike Blamires, Research Initiatives for Participation and Progress in Learning Environments, UK Andre Mostert, University of East London, UK Michael Ochieng, Masomo Kwa Ajira (MAKA) - (Learning for Self-Employment) Project at CO-OPERAID, Niarobi Kenya Babajide Oluwase, Focus, Lagos, Nigeria, Sarah Younie, De Montfort University, Leicester, U.K. Contact: Comments regarding the content and structure of this guide are very welcome. Please direct them to the MESH Editor for Entrepreneurship Education : Mike.Blamires@ripplesinlearning.comwww.ripplesinlearning.eu

Citation: Blamires, M., Mostert, A., Ochieng,M., Oluwase, B. & Younie, S. (2016) Mesh Guide for Entrepreneurship Education: Iteration One, Leicester, www.MeshGuides.org

http://www.meshguides.org/guides/node/436