TOWARDS AN ENTREPRENEURIAL CULTURE FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Part - IV
Impact
There seems to be a general consensus that, ultimately, the outcomes of entre-preneurship or enterprise education programmes at secondary level should not only be to stimulate employment opportunities, but to prepare young people for the complexities of life in today’s urban and rural communities. Through the acquisition of practical learning, work and life skills, programmes should improve the ability of
students to anticipate and respond to changes in society more easily.
Measuring the success of entrepreneurship and enterprise education pro-grammes, however, is still a major challenge. Unfortunately, there are few tracer studies available, i.e. tracing graduates of enterprise education and self-employment programmes to assess whether they have successfully been integrated into the social, cultural and economic mainstream of their communities. More importantly, it is extremely difficult to isolate the impact of a particular intervention without consid-ering the interaction among different cultural, institutional and family influences on entrepreneurial behaviour in any given local or country context.
Much of the evidence is anecdotal, but still valuable. Beyond quantifi able indicators, the success of youth entrepreneurship interventions could therefore be measured in terms of contribution to learning, contribution to teaching practice, to the community and poverty reduction and to more joined-up decision-making. The following section takes a brief look at these areas.
Contribution to learning:
changes in skills, attitudes and behaviours
Most programme designers and implementers believe that the potential effective-ness of such programmes should be measured not just in terms of the acquisition of entrepreneurship skills, but in increased motivation, engagement, self-esteem and self-confidence in different aspects of school life and in preparation for post sec-ondary pathways, the world of work and beyond. In many programmes, the linkage between the learning taking place and its immediate application has been shown as a motivating factor with regard to attendance and staying in secondary school. When skills have an immediate relevancy to prospects for developing a sustainable livelihood, families are more likely to encourage their children to stay in school.
The acquisition of practical life skills, such as critical thinking, problem solving, communication and behaviour management skills, enables students to anticipate and respond to societal changes more easily. Indeed, they are better pre-pared for postsecondary education, careers and the new economy.
Contribution to teaching practice
Different projects suggest that teachers working in enterprise education have valued opportunities to work in new and different relationships with their colleagues, stu-dents and the community. Many of these opportunities enable them to exercise responsibilities they may not have previously encountered. Most will have had no particular knowledge about or skills in the enterprising activities.
In Australia, some of the teachers interviewed as part of the “Action Research Project in Enterprise Education” perceived this as a strength, as the approach required them to engage with their students outside traditional relationships of knowledge pro-vider and receiver. The manner of engagement of teachers with the learning frame-works produced for this Project indicates growth of professional understanding.
Contribution to business employability or self-employment
Determining the ability of young people to work more effectively and be more mobile in flexible labour markets requires a long-term trajectory and a good deal of interaction with employers. Tracing the effect on business start-up would also be a long-term goal since opportunities or aspirations often take many years to come to fruition.
South Africa: Techno girl project
A five-day Science, Mathematics and Technology camp at Lydenburg High School in South Africa gave a group of young girls from Mpumalanga time to discover career opportunities in previously male-dominated sectors of science, engineering and tech-nology. The 75 girls in Grades 10 and 11 were chosen from the three regions in Mpu-malanga to participate in the camp, which was facilitated by Technology for Women in Business (TWIB), an initiative of the Department of Trade and Industry, in partnership with the Mpumalanga Education Department.
After the career guidance workshop, the girls were taken to various mines where they were shown different engineering applications and the chemicals used in the industry. The girls were also exposed to the various technologies used in mining plants. The teenagers responded well to the camp and its activities throughout the educational journey. Entertainment was also part of it!
A process engineer in the solid state reduction of chromite ore, Karishma Fewtersad, said the learners are open-minded and this helped them assimilate everything they were taught at the camp. “They were very receptive, got involved in conversations and showed great enthusiasm. However, in the fi eld of maths, science and technology, a lot is dependent on one’s determination” she said.
Girls who previously succumbed to society stereotypes and socialisation, which are barriers for them to move into science and technology-based careers, said the camp opened their minds to new things and motivated them to tackle the challenging industry of science. Mapule Lebotse (15), a Grade 10-learner at Pine Rich Secondary School in Witbank, said: “The camp was an experience of a lifetime. I did not know there was so much to follow in industry. I was initially interested in entertainment, but my mind was changed at the camp and I realized I am into architecture and drawing. I was already interested in science-related studies and I had planned that I will be doing my medical studies at Medunsa.”
“The camp provided motivation to keep focus on my dream to be medical prac-titioner,” said a Grade 11-learner, Xolisiwe Mashaba, from Bonginhlanhla Secondary school in Nelspruit. “I experienced a lot, including the knowledge that girls can make it in science,” she said. Veronica Mngidi, an educator who accompanied the learners to the camp said, “It was interesting to see the children recognize what they want to do in industry. These careers were mainly for men, but things are changing.”
Daphney Mashamaite, TWIB Project Manager, explains more about the Techno-girl project: “The plan is to invest in girls with a passion for science-based careers and who are thus more likely to succeed. Techno-girls are assisted to discover their in-born or acquired attributes, giving them an advantage to do well in science, engineering, technology and entrepreneurship careers. The immediate impact is a good self-image, where girls who have been reserved suddenly open up and talk about their back-grounds with confidence.”
Most pupils whom are thinking about starting their own business may wait a period of 5-10 years before doing so. Even so, there are few studies tracing graduates of entrepreneurship education to see whether they have become business owners in the formal or informal sectors or gone into self-employment. Perhaps more importantly, it is extremely difficult to isolate the impact of a particular intervention without considering the interaction among the different social, cultural and economic influences on entrepreneurial behaviour in any given regional or country context.
Nevertheless, evidence suggests that students in participating schools are gaining a tangible set of skills and competencies and often change their outlook on economic opportunity and education after participation in an entrepreneurship or enterprise activity. More importantly, students display a deeper understanding of the relationship between enterprise and society. Many start out with the widely shared belief that entrepreneurship and enterprise education are only about busi-ness activity and making a profit, but learn quickly about the importance of the context of enterprise and the connections to community well-being and environ-mental sustainability.
As far as business skills are concerned, students gain an understanding of abstract concepts such as innovation, quality, and networking and are better equipped to examine critically the different processes in their simulation firms and consider areas for improvement. They are now aware that production methods, quality control, and continuous improvement involve every process in the firm and cannot be addressed through isolated interventions. Familiarity with the language of enterprise not only gives students deeper meaning to the activities in which they are engaged, but enables them to describe, monitor, and assess their enterprise learning against wider learning outcomes. Enterprise Australia reports that students regarded as recalcitrant in one secondary school described their learning in enterprise educa-tion in terms so sophisticated that their language was regarded by teachers as incon-sistent with broader school assumptions about their literacy levels.
Contribution to local community development
Beyond quantifiable indicators, the success of youth entrepreneurship interventions can also be measured in terms of impact on the economic vibrancy of the commu-nity, building innovative structures for resolving community problems and commu-nity optimism. Entrepreneurship education contributes to a much more dynamic development framework by assuring that there are sufficient numbers of people with the ideas and competence, and moreover, sufficient ambition and skills to put ideas into practice.
The case of YES in Ireland has shown that entrepreneurship education serves as a foundation for the economic and business development on a regional and local level. In the United States, the Academies of Entrepreneurship in the New Orleans area are helping to regenerate the local economic environment. With the collapse of local industry in some areas, participating schools have taken the initiative to identify and target alternative industries and give priority to the development of
United States: The Rockefeller Foundation provides assistance
to students in impoverished urban areas
The aim of the Rockefeller Foundation is to transform impoverished urban neigh-bourhoods into working communities by improving the quality of all urban schools, increasing the amount and quality of employment, and increasing the infl uence and voice of the poor who are excluded from political decisions that affect their lives. The Foundation provides funding for research and policy analysis, as well as grassroots initiatives to improve employment access and income-generation opportunities for low-skilled urban residents.
In the past, the Foundation has supported initiatives such as the School Develop-ment Programme (SDP), an education reform initiative targeting America’s worst hit urban public schools. To date, 700 schools in 18 states have benefi tted.
Since the early 1990s, this initiative has demonstrated several key components to improving the quality of public schools in low-income communities. The SDP has pio-neered the comprehensive “whole school reform” model that emphasizes the importance of concentrating on the emotional, cognitive, physical, social and academic development of children and youth. The programme also fosters committed partnerships between administrators, teachers and parents to address children’s social and academic needs.
“… schools can change and improve when there is an enabling environment for col-laboration”, said Dr. James P. Comer, founder of the SDP at the Yale Child Study Center. “SDP’s partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation has helped us to demonstrate the critical need to focus on both the whole school and the whole child. We’ve been able to show that a positive school culture can promote good development, social growth and academic achievement among students from all backgrounds.”.
The Rockefeller Foundation has released a CD-ROM that provides in-depth per-spectives on education reform topics. These include observations that:
• Despite a major growth in the immigrant population in the United States, many schools have not adapted themselves to meet the needs of immigrant children. They added that attacks on bilingual education threaten to hinder efforts to help immi-grant students.
• There is a need for greater public support for a combination of standardized tests and performance-based tests that capture students’ imaginative and critical thinking abilities.
• Closer ties between schools and communities are needed. Many schools have become more isolated from their communities and neighbourhoods over the past 30 years and closer partnerships can help to reverse this trend.
student skills for, and understandings about that industry. Environmental sustain-ability is served by using solar energy instead of fossil fuels, and by collecting rain-water instead of drawing on groundwater for drinking.
Beyond commercial or environmental interests, many schools report shifts in community attitudes towards troubled youth based on the improvements they have seen in participants, and communities have become more supportive of young people in general. This helps to create a “culture of care” for young people who may have otherwise become further marginalized and excluded.
Programmes, often instrumental in coordinating the activities of a range of other services, have to more effectively support young people in their education and employment transitions. In effect, services for youth have become more ‘joined-up’ in local communities. Different partners understand the goals and operations of each other’s agencies more clearly, which allows for more seamless and holistic methods of service provision between providers, regardless of whether or not a school is implementing a programme.
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