Research topic/aim

Ever since the late 1980s entrepreneurship has been part of the school debate in EU (e.g. Counsil 2007, 2009; European Commission 2001, 2011,2013) first promoted by the OECD (1989) and later introduced into national strategies and curricula from preschool to the upper secondary level. Entrepreneurship in schools is both about the narrow aspect linked to starting and running a business, and the broad aspect linked to developing an entrepreneurial mindset akin to 21^st century skills allowing the students to prosper in an uncertain and dynamic world (Erkkilä, 2000; Jones & Iredale, 2010; Dweck, 2015). As the narrow aspect of entrepreneurship is most clearly present in curricula for upper secondary school, while the broad aspect is part of all levels, we will focus on the broad aspect, which we label pedagogical entrepreneurship. In the Nordic countries there have been several initiatives launched implementing pedagogical entrepreneurship in schools as a response to new curricula (Dal et al., 2016).  However, in teacher education entrepreneurship is generally not part of the program curricula even though the graduates are to abide to curricula stating that they should provide teaching that promotes entrepreneurship. Still, there are teacher education programs that do work with this in different ways. As there are few guidelines for this more than the text in the national curricula, the design of these entrepreneurship modules are likely to differ substantially. Based on this our research questions are:

To what extent is pedagogical entrepreneurship present in Nordic teacher education? Where is it present – how is it designed? Are there differences between the five Nordic countries?

Theoretical framework

After a review of how entrepreneurship has found its way in the school system we review studies investigating entrepreneurship at teacher education colleges. Based on this we put forward a framework for pedagogical entrepreneurship in teacher education

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