Entrepreneurial Education and Learning in Sweden: Teachers’ Thoughts and Views from a Bernsteinien Perspective

Author(s):

Monika Diehl(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

11. Educational Improvement and Quality Assurance

Format:

Paper

Session Information

11 SES 05 B, Entrepreneurial Educaion

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-09

11:00-12:30

Room:

IX. Előadó [C]

Chair:

Samuel Gento

Contribution

Entrepreneurial education and entrepreneurial learning has been on the agenda in the European and Western countries since the end of the 1990s (e.g. OECD, 1989, 1998; European Commission, 2002, 2004, 2012). The Government Office of Sweden (2009) presented a Strategy for entrepreneurship in 2009 and in 2011 entrepreneurship was expressed in the curricula for elementary school (National Agency of Education, Lgr 2011). The overall aim is to achieve domestic growth, and for this an early development of an entrepreneurial mindset is said to be crucial (Leffler, Svedberg and Botha, 2010). This in turn requires a teacher development- and school improvement process (cf. Scherp, 2014; Timperly, 2011).

It is common to make a distinction between a narrow and a broad approach to entrepreneurship (Johnson1988; Erkkilä, 2000). The first is connected to knowledge and skills needed to start and run a venture, the second is more towards attitudes and personal development, to gain an entrepreneurial mind-set and to be entrepreneurial in action. Thus it’s about to become an entrepreneur (narrow) or to become entrepreneurial (broad) (National Agency of Education, 2010; Fayolle and Gially, 2008; Mahieu, 2006). In the Swedish elementary school the focus is on the broad definition.

Entrepreneurial education and learning has been criticized and teachers have resisted these ideas, very much due to the connotations to the economic sector (From and Holmgren, 2005). Not all teachers that undergo professional development courses transfer their knowledge and experiences into practice (Leffler and Näsström, 2014; Sagar, 2013). Other obstacles mentioned by teachers are about organization, management, lack of inspiration and support, timetable issues as well as finding time for collaborative work and developing collegial coherence (Leffler and Näsström, 2014; Sagar, 2013). It is shown that school improvement and education is most successful if teachers have a driving force to learn themselves and together with others (Sagar, 2013; Timperly, 2011).

Researchers (eg Power, 1999; Ball, 2003; Biesta 2011) have observed that the current focus on effectiveness and student performance risk to jeopardize other essential qualities and values in education. Using Bubers’ (1923/2013) theory as a starting point, Aspelin and Persson (2011) discuss the importance of good relations between teachers and pupils in pedagogical practices. An aspect that is reflected in the abilities regarded as entrepreneurial, such as being able to communicate, cooperate, work in teams, to be curious, creative and courageous.

In this paper I want to explore teachers’ views on entrepreneurial education and learning and understand the “entrepreneurial” by using a coherent pedagogical theory. Basil Bernstein’s (1975, 1996) theory of power and control, classification and framing and collection- and integrated code provides a good and useful tool.

Power is about the creation, legitimation and reproduction of boundaries, it is used to establish changes into a given direction and acts between different groups/categories, (e.g schools or subjects). Control concerns legitimate forms of communication within different groups /categories. Classification describes the boundaries of different discourses and framing how these are realized. Classification and framing can be stronger or weaker and depending on this Bernstein identifies practices according to a collection code (strong classification and framing) or to an integrated code (weak classification and framing).

The aim of this study is to explore and understand lower secondary school teachers' views of entrepreneurial education and entrepreneurial learning from a Bernsteinian perspective. This is done using the following research questions:

• Is it possible to find and understand commonalities among the teachers, if so, which and how?

• Is it possible to find and understand differences between 1) the schools and 2) different subjects, if so, which and how?

Method

The study is a part of a three year school improvement program in Sweden partly financed by Ifous (an independent research institute: Innovation research and development in school). Out of 27 schools, 6 are elementary schools which are in focus in this study. Two schools were selected for the study, chosen for their similarities regarding size (rather small schools) and place (outside two major cities) and differences regarding pupils (all Swedish at school 1, 1/3 with other origin than Swedish at the other, school 2) and housing (almost everyone living in villas at school 1, mixed housing at school 2). Approximately 3 weeks were spent at each school and mainly three subject areas were focused: mathematics, science and social science. The first weeks, observations were made, these were followed by interviews (pupils and teachers) the second part of the time spent at the schools. The teachers whose lessons had been observed were the ones interviewed, and the ones that are in focus for this paper. All in all 8 teachers. The interviews were semi-structured (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2011) with and interview guide (Kvale, 1997) consisting of 13 questions. The aim with the questions was to explore and identify teachers understanding and use of, view on, and thoughts about entrepreneurial education and learning. The teachers were interview individually and the interviews were recorded and lasted between 45 minutes to 1,5 hours. The interviews have been transcribed, interpreted and analyzed. In accordance to the aim and research questions the answers are coded and categorized (Kvale, 1997) then analyzed and discussed in relation to Bernsteins’ theory. This implies to explore if teachers describe their understanding and practice as more of a collection, or integrated code, which in turn could be interesting regarding what impact this might have on the implementation of entrepreneurial education and learning in the schools. In the following I will give a picture of what the interpretation and analyze shows.

Expected Outcomes

The teachers all mentioned difficulties to spread their knowledge and achieve an entrepreneurial approach among their colleagues, which indicates that the schools practices operate in what Bernstein would call a collection code. Other commonalities was the struggling with the concept of “entrepreneurial” and its connotations to enterprise. To the question about what they experienced as successful work, they all mentioned things like pupils being engaged, getting the possibility to be creative, productive, seeing the wholes and experiencing good relations. These aspects are all desired in entrepreneurial learning, but do not seem to permeate the practice, perhaps because it requires for teachers to let go of some power and control. On the whole the teachers from the two schools express relatively different approaches concerning entrepreneurial teaching and learning. The teachers at school 1 were more concerned about how to achieve an entrepreneurial mindset throughout the entire practice, whilst they in school 2 pondered about how they themselves could be more entrepreneurial in their own teaching. Timetable issues were mentioned at both schools but, at school 2 teachers expressed them as immovable, while at school 1 they tried different ways to find solutions to enable interdisciplinary work and longer work shifts. In Bernsteinian terms this indicates that school 1 is trying to move towards an integrated code, whilst the teachers at school 2 try to be “entrepreneurial” within a collection code. Regarding the different subjects generally mathematics seems to be the most challenging subject for teachers to apply and entrepreneurial approach towards. Within the social science and science subjects it seemed to be more rewarding and easy to apply an “entrepreneurial” approach to (cf. Leffler, 2014). Thus, the classification between the subjects in general is rather strong, whilst the framing within science and social science in some cases is rather weak.

References

Aspelin, J. & Persson, S. (2011). Om relationell pedagogik. Malmö: Gleerups. Ball, Stephan (2003). The teacher’s soul and terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy. 18 (2) pp. 215-228. Bernstein, B. (1975). Class, Codes and Control, Volume 3, Towards a Theory of Educational Transmission. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy Symbolic Control and Identity – Theory, Research, Critique. Bristol: Taylor & Francis. Biesta, Gert (2011). God utbildning i mätningens tidevarv. Stockholm: Liber. Buber, M (1923/2013). Jag och Du. Dualis: Ludvika. Cohen, L, Manion, L & Morrison, K. (2011). Research Methods in Education. London: Routledge. Erkkilä, Kristiina (2000) Entrepreneurial Education. New York: Garland Publishing. European Commission (2002). Final report of the Expert Group “Best Procedure” Project on Education and Training for Entrepreneurship. Brussels: European Commission. European Commission (2004). Final report of the Expert Group “Education for Entrepreneurship”. Making progress in promoting entrepreneurial attitudes and skills through Primary and Secondary education. Brussels: European Commission. European Comission (2012). Entrepreneurship education at school in Europe-National strategies curricula and learning outcomes. Brussels: Eurydice. Fayolle, A. & Gailly, B. (2008). From craft to science – Teaching models and learning processes in entrepreneurship education. Journal of European Industrial training, 32, 569-593. Government office of Sweden. (2009). Strategy for entrepreneurship in the field of education. Stockholm: Government office of Sweden. Johnson, Clifford (1988). Enterprise education and training. British Journal of Education and Work 2(1), 61-65. Kvale, S. (1997). Den kvalitativa forskningsintervjun. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Leffler E. and Näsström, G. (2014). Entrepreneurial learning and school improvement a Swedish case. International Journal of humanities Social Science and Education (JHSSE). 1(11). 243-254 Mahieu, R. (2006). Agents of change and policies of scale: a policy study of entrepreneurship and enterprise in education. Doctoral thesis, Umeå University. National Agency for Education (2010). Skapa och våga. Om entreprenörskap i skolan. Stockholm: Skolverket. National Agency for Education (2011). Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet 2011. Stockholm: Skolverket. OECD. (1989). Towards an “Enterprising” Culture: Challenge for Education and Training. Paris: OECD/CERI. OECD. (1998). Fostering Entrepreneurship. The OECD Jobs Strategy. Paris: OECD. Power, Michael (1999). The Audit society: rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sagar, H. (2013). Teacher Change in Relation to Professional Development in Entrepreneurial Learning. Ph.D. Thesis. Department of Physics, University of Gothenburg. Scherp, H-Å. (2014). Lärandebaserad skolutveckling. Lärandeglädjens förutsättningar, förverkligande och resultat. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Timperley, H. (2011). Realizing the Power of Professional Learning. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Author Information

Monika Diehl (presenting / submitting)

Umeå University

Department of Education

Umeå

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