TOWARDS
AN ENTREPRENEURIAL CULTURE FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
PART- II
Entrepreneurship:
A challenge for secondary education
Secondary education comes centre stage
As markets, forms of work organization and technologies change around the world, knowledge, and particularly skills, are coming to be seen as the basis for national competitiveness, employability, livelihoods and well-being. Those with low skills levels, outdated skills or no employable skills are less likely to get a foot-hold in local labour markets and are more likely to miss out on opportunities in the economic and social mainstream of their communities. In fact, irrespective of country or region, having the right mix and type of knowledge and skills is now critical for young people, especially those living in rural and economically distressed urban areas.
According to the World Declaration on Education for All:
Every person shall be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their basic learning needs. These needs comprise both essential learning tools (such as literacy, oral expression, numeracy, and problem solving) and the basic learning content (such as knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes) required by human beings to be able to survive, to develop their full capacities, to live and work in dignity, to par-ticipate fully in development, to improve the quality of their lives, to make informed decisions, and to continue learning. The scope of basic learning needs and how they should be met varies with individual countries and cultures, and inevitably, changes with the passage of time.
In the years following the World Education Forum (WEF, Dakar, Senegal 2000), there has been unprecedented commitment among governments, donor agencies, intergovernmental organizations, professional associations and civil society to programmes designed to ensure free access to basic education for all learners as part of a long-term strategy for human development.
The scope of the issues that secondary education now has to address is very broad, and the population it covers has multi-faceted needs. Some are the changing role of teachers and head teachers, the new orientations for learning contents, the use of ICTs and distance education, youth counselling and guidance, life skills, bridges between general secondary and vocational education, the transition to higher educa-tion, and quality assessment.
The immediate task for the EFA movement has been to assist countries to develop or revise EFA National Action Plans or strengthen EFA components in existing sectoral development plans. The commitment of the international com-munity to EFA implies that national governments may obtain the fi nancial and intellectual resources necessary for reinvigorating General Secondary Education. Certainly, the time has come for the sector to be updated to reflect the reality of life for young people in the twenty-fi rst century.
One of the continuing paradoxes of the present situation is that, while many countries badly need qualified human resources to support their development ini-tiatives, there are very limited avenues for secondary students to directly participate in development strategies. Meanwhile, due to permanently escalating educational requirements to enter waged employment, there may be even fewer job opportu-nities in the modern sector for those who have not completed twelve years of sec-ondary education. Rates of poverty and joblessness are thus extremely high among secondary school leavers in several countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The informal sector has become the main source of employment.
How can youngsters be drawn into active civic engagement in their commu-nities while at the same time being better prepared for entrepreneurial self-employ-ment once school is over? There is an overwhelming need to show young people who look at the future with anxiety that there are different paths to the future, different options based on positive actions and values.
In recent decades, some countries have introduced entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial skills development within general secondary education as part of efforts to respond to the changing needs of society. The following sections take a closer look at some of the factors behind this trend.
During the crucial years of secondary education, young people are beginning to make decisions on how they should channel their talents, skills and energy, learning to assume the responsibilities of adulthood and preparing to enter the world of work and society.
Most countries, at some intermediate age between 11 and 15, channel stu-dents into education streams that emphasize either academic or vocational skills. The academic stream usually prepares young people for tertiary education and entry to university and has relatively little job-related content, while the vocational stream includes a wide range of programmes with various levels of work-based content.
These streaming decisions, which generally involve some form of individual assessment, have traditionally been immutable, but they are becoming increasingly permeable. Education systems increasingly facilitate new pathways and progress between various types of education and training.
This trend reflects Goal 3 of the Dakar Declaration on Education for All:
Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes.
… as well as the recommendation of the Peking Secondary Education Expert Meeting (2001) that an effective secondary education in the twenty-fi rst century must provide a good balance between academic education and skills development including technical and vocational education at the secondary level.
The situations now facing young people in today’s world clearly show that acquisition of knowledge through academic education is not sufficient to prepare adolescents to cope with life issues and to make choices which could have important impact on their future life as workers and adult citizens.
UNESCO is therefore promoting a holistic and integrated approach to the renewal and reform of learning approaches and contents through…
i) Skills for dealing with changing economies and work patterns
In today’s work place, young people need to meet the demands of new work patterns that reflect the transition from industrial and manufacturing economic bases to knowledge-based, high technology and/or service-oriented economies. Individuals may need to be flexible and adaptable in order to engage in a variety of occupations during the course of their lives. The emphasis on lifelong learning reflects concerns about skills obsolescence and need for re-skilling in times of rapid technological and workplace change.
Against this background, the relevance of knowledge about facts is dimin-ishing, while the need to learn how to access, analyse and exploit information and transform it into new knowledge is increasing. This ability is based on critical ena-bling and core work skills. The fi rst includes literacy and numeracy, listening and oral communication skills, problem-solving skills and creativity, personal effective-ness (self-esteem, goal-setting and motivation, skills for personal and career devel-opment), group effectiveness (interpersonal, teamwork and negotiation skills) and organizational effectiveness and leadership skills.
Core work skills are seen to include so-called labour market “navigation” skills, including job search skills, skills to identify career options and opportunities and identify further education and training opportunities, as well as familiarity with the Internet as many jobs, career opportunities and guidance services are increasingly available online.
ii) Skills for living in society
We learn from a young age that the development of positive, engaging and equitable relationships is critical to our success as human beings. Basic social skills enable us to interact in the community, as well as to understand the meaning of citizenship. Sound social skills allow us to understand both social rights and claims, as well as obligations and responsibilities. But imagination and emotional engagement are as important as social skills. More than ever, there is a need to actively engage young people in fi nding creative solutions to improving the welfare of their communi-ties, while contributing to collective prosperity in ways that do not damage natural resources. Intelligence should include the ability to envisage alternative futures, to resolve open-ended problems with more than one way of doing things.
Life skills and the United Nations Literacy Decade
The 56th session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted on 19 December 2001 Resolution 56/116 “Literacy Decade: education for all” in which it proclaimed the UN Literacy Decade for the period 2003-2012 towards the goal of Education for All. The Resolution recognized that “literacy is crucial to the acquisition, by every child, youth and adult, of essential life skills that enable them to address the challenges they can face in life, and [literacy] represents an essential step in basic education, which is an indispensable means for effective participation in the societies and economies of the twenty-first century…” (Preamble).
Since 1990, the breadth, range and depth of reforms in secondary education around the world are helping to increase its quality. Such reforms relate to educational plan-ning, management and administration, the fi nancing of the system and personnel. They also include the design of completely new types of curricula, including envi-ronmental science and HIV/AIDS prevention.
But still in many developing countries, a complete basic education for all remains rhetoric rather than reality. Distribution remains skewed towards the lower levels, and those who do reach secondary school sometimes do so without adequate basic literacy skills that are essential for learning, trainability, employability and access to decent work in today’s world.
In many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, there are inade-quate fi nancial resources to generate internal efficiency at primary level, or to create sufficient school places for the increased number of learners completing primary schooling. Expanding secondary education in low population-density rural areas is particularly costly, while the cost of curriculum renewal and instructional materials remains prohibitive for many governments. Qualified teachers may also not be avail-able in sufficient numbers.
In middle-income countries, there is usually uneven access to different educa-tion and training streams. For example, Arab youth do not benefit sufficiently from vocational training, even if some countries such as Algeria, Egypt and Jordan have tried to develop vocational training programmes to ‘absorb’ out-of-school youth. Here, the challenge includes offering flexible schooling alternatives to young adults and recent drop-outs who are already engaged in some income-generating activities, but who need secondary education to secure fi xed employment.
Even in western countries, where secondary education and training systems once paved the way to higher education or steady employment, millions of young people are now entering a less predictable adult world, one in which traditional ref-erence points are shifting or have changed completely. In many contexts, education provision now seems irrelevant to the situations that young people fi nd themselves in and more and more students look at the future with uncertainty.
Local economic realities are often not taken into account. Rural secondary schooling in particular has suffered the tendency for provision to reflect national education planning that focuses on traditional higher education pathways rather than taking into account the dominance of the informal economy and local agri-cultural sector as the most likely option once students leave school.
Too many students around the world now feel that the traditional structures of schooling, and many of the approaches embedded in them, are not working. They can’t see the connections between their academic training and the wider economic and societal developments around them. Employers complain of skills mismatch while students become disconnected. The frustrations of teaching are also plentiful, and the challenges faced by teachers of at-risk students even more overwhelming. Students often bring obstacles in their home lives into the classroom, and have low motivation due to repeated cycles of failure. This can sometimes create an unspoken belief in pre-determined failure within these students.
Moving ahead
Far-reaching reforms are now being introduced that lead to a fundamentally dif-ferent kind of secondary education system, involved not just with traditional schooling, but connecting with students in ways that inspire them, instilling the value of education through knowledge, skills and tools that are relevant in different local economic, social and cultural contexts.
Those delivery models that are having the greatest impact try to balance the fos-tering of an entrepreneurial approach to career development with preventative strategies for combating youth vulnerability, poverty and exclusion. They aim towards increasing self reliance, reducing the potential for educational failure and tackling community issues. They also try to adopt a life-cycle approach to secondary education policy
– one that takes into account the inter-generational aspects of youth vulnerability. In this light, different interventions are emerging that specifically target stu-dents in precarious circumstances, where parents may have low socio-economic status, be affected by HIV/AIDS, involved in substance abuse, or even in jail. Focusing on the youth with special needs is at the heart of inclusive education – an approach that recognizes each child to be a unique learner and requires ordinary schools to be capable of educating all children in their community regardless of physical, intellectual, social, emotional, linguistic or other differences. A very special marginalized youth group is those with disabilities. In some countries around the
world, their number has increased as a result of armed conflicts.
The use of Information and communication technology (ICTs) both as a vehicle for accessing and learning from existing curricula and teaching methodologies for different circumstances is yet to be fully exploited. And even though access to this powerful medium is constrained by the lack of financial resources, infrastructure and connectivity in many regions of the world, education planning that takes into account the possibilities for sharing experiences and resources through modern communications networks could nevertheless trigger synergies in the delivery of secondary education.
In practical terms, there is still also a need for greater flexibility of educational delivery at secondary education, scaling up innovative strategies that recognize the diversity of learning circumstances and human needs. Ministries of Education will have to look more closely at how they can work collaboratively with civil society, and particularly the private sector, to create valuable outcomes for everyone involved.
How does a young person acquire entrepreneurial skills and attitudes and develop further his entrepreneurial vision?
Different countries around the world seek to integrate entrepreneurship and enterprise education into schools at secondary level through a variety of modali-ties and at different speeds depending on the availability of expertise and resources. There is no single pathway or approach.
For the purposes of clarity, it is however important to make a distinction between the two different types of programming. It is also important not to con-fuse these types of programmes with economics or business education. Busi-ness courses generally address the competencies of a learner in a business setting. Sometimes the courses assume that the student is developing skills to be some type of manager or advance up the career ladder in a large business. Rarely have business courses assumed the students will be ideas generators, business creators and/or owners.
It is also important to underline that even those programmes that focus on fostering business-oriented behaviours, attitudes and skills usually stimulate learning opportunities against the background of, and with sensitivity to, the wider socio-economic and cultural context of the communities in which the schools are located. In many cases, they also reflect and incorporate the principles described in enterprise education.
Entrepreneurship education has been defined as “a collection of formalized teachings that informs, trains, and educates anyone interested in participating in socioeconomic development through a project to promote entrepreneurship awareness, business crea-tion, or small business development”.
The importance given by the European Community to entrepreneurship education was recently underlined in the European Charter for Small Enterprises (adopted by the General Affairs Council, 13 June 2000, and welcomed by the Feira European Council, 19/20 June 2000) which stated:
Europe will nurture entrepreneurial spirit and new skills from an earlier age. General knowledge about business and entrepreneurship needs to be taught at all school levels. Specific business-related modules should be made an essential ingredient of education schemes at secondary level and at colleges and universities. We will encourage and promote youngsters’ entrepreneurial endeavours, and develop appropriate training schemes for managers in small enterprises.
Enterprise education (also called entrepreneurial education) on the other hand, is usu-ally conceived more broadly, seeking to foster self-esteem and confi dence by drawing on the individual’s talents and creativity, while building the relevant skills and values that will assist students in expanding their perspectives on schooling and opportunities beyond. Methodologies are based on the use of personal, behavioural, motivational, attitudinal and career planning activities.
As far back as 1988, the OECD educational monograph, Towards an Enterprising Culture 1, stated that, Changes in educational method are needed […] to foster competence in ‘being enterprising’ as a vitally important qualification needed by the young as they enter society.
What this implies is that:
… people will need to be creative, rather than passive; capable of self-initiated action rather than dependent; they will need to know how to learn rather than expect to be taught; they will need to be enterprising in their outlook and not think and act like an “employee” or a “client”. The organizations in which they work, communities in which they live, and societies to which they belong, will, in turn, also need to possess all these qualities.”
Foundation for Small and Medium Enterprise: University of Durham
The University of Durham’s (United Kingdom) approach to enterprise education shows that there are a number of different objectives and outcomes that can be achieved:
i) to develop enterprising skills, behaviours and attitudes through any curriculum sub-ject at every phase of education to provide a wider preparation for autonomy in life. That is in work, family or leisure.
ii) to provide insight into and help young people understand about the entrepreneurial and business development processes through business education in secondary schools and in further and higher education allowing young people to work more effectively in a fl exible labour market economy or working in a small business.
iii) to develop awareness of, and capability for, setting up a business now or sometime in the future. This approach can be used in vocational and professional education.
Thus enterprise education is very much concerned with the development of the “enterprising” young persons rather than the sole development of entrepreneurs who might set up and run a business. In this version, schools should support the process of developing a culture of enterprise within society in contrast to one of dependency.
Entrepreneurship and enterprise as a dimension of quality education
Entrepreneurship and enterprise education can support further increases in the quality of secondary education because…
(i) T eyhare in line with many national governments stated education objectives. For example, the mission statement formalized by the Ministry of Education in Malaysia in 1995 reflects the Ministry’s commitment to the goals of Vision 2020: “To develop a world class quality education system which will realize the full potential of the individual and fulfil the aspirations of the Malaysian nation.”
(ii) They stimulate or act as a catalyst for thinking and acting in various dimen-sions of the education process, from goal setting to management processes, from teacher training and recruitment to classroom teaching styles.
(iii) They inject creativity into the learning experience. Schools are adopting innovative ways of making the learning experience more relevant, often by adopting non traditional teaching styles, creating new working arrangements and seeking out new implementation partners.
(iv) They recognize that youth are a diverse group, with diverse qualities, talents, motivations and learning objectives. Programmes help to open up possibilities in the curriculum that considers students’ different capabilities and needs.
(v) They continuously generate progress in developing curriculum and appro-priate pedagogy. As the programme examples show, entrepreneurial schools are helping to modernise curricula of general subjects by making more explicit the connections and real life applications and providing more defi nition to what the learning should be for.
(vi) They support education success and school-to-work transition. Programmes challenge learners’ attitudes and assumptions about what is possible, accept-able, or even expected in different contexts. By retaining the learners’ attention and motivation, programmes are helping to even out inequalities in educa-tional achievement and securing post secondary pathways, particularly for women and marginalized young people.
(vi) Through the use of ICTs and a variety of educational tools, programmes are increasing responsiveness to technological changes, making it easy to integrate these changes in the system.
(vii) Because the local private sector and communities are directly involved in pro-gramme implementation, schools are securing the active engagement of civil society and commitment to the achievement of educational goals.
(viii) Teaching staff themselves are being trained to display the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, that is, to be enterprising in the ways they overcome resource constraints and teaching difficulties in the classroom and encourage their students to be enterprising so that the ultimate result is a forward-looking school environment.
Creativity, the arts and education
Arts and creativity are very important to a child’s development. Arts encourages creativity, a key ingredient of entrepreneurship. Imagination and creativity, or the ability to visualize images and ideas and create things that are unique and have value in society, are capacities that can really make a difference in the lives of children.
The concept of imagination has been defined as the capacity to think of things in terms of possibilities, and is a conscious and intentional act of mind, as well as the source of new and useful ideas and things in a particular context or discipline.2 In an educational context, ‘Arts education’ is a critical channel for drawing out the imagi-nation of students, particularly those for whom the worlds of education, training and work have little meaning or connection with their everyday lives. When a child is given the space and tools to share their inner vision and creativity with their peers, parents or others, they are given the opportunity to express their reality in different forms as they understand, apprehend and appreciate it, as well as to offer alterna-tives. This validates and gives a voice to their aspirations and is part of the process of overcoming disaffection.
From a purely cognitive and learning point of view, according to Dr. Maria Montessori:
… artistic activity is a form of reasoning, in which perceiving and thinking are indi-visibly intertwined. A person who paints, writes, composes, dances … thinks with his sense…[but] genuine art work requires organization which involves many and perhaps all of the cognitive operations known from theoretical thinking.
Ten key lessons
According to Elliot Eisner (Lee Jacks Professor of Education, Stanford University), there are 10 key lessons that arts teach:
1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.
3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fi xed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.
5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor number exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not defi ne the limits of our cognition.
6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.
7. The arts traffic in subtleties. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.
9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.
Thus in following a process to realise their vision, children learn the skills to ‘deconstruct’ or reduce the complexity of certain tasks, particularly tasks with a creative and/or technological dimension.
In the long term, a focus on creativity and the arts within the curriculum can lead to developments in personal and social skills, including an enhanced sense of purpose and direction, an increase in self-esteem related to the ability to realise one’s potential and improved relationships between tutors and students. Changes can also be noticed in students’ self-confidence and motivation for fi nding a job, especially resulting from a sense of enjoyment of, and interest in, creative industries and communication skills.
Ultimately, through the interplay of the imagination and rational learning proc-esses, it is possible for young people to visualize and imagine a different reality for themselves and their communities, as well as take into account the reality of others.
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