The Change Laboratory for Teacher Training in Entrepreneurship Education

Front matter

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUCATION

The Change Laboratory for Teacher Training in Entrepreneurship T Education

A New Skills Agenda for Europe

Foreword

In the last three decades, entrepreneurship education has taken off as a subject of interest worldwide. It has developed from being a minor interest in business schools in universities to being an important consideration for educational policy makers at national and supra-national level. Entrepreneurship education has spread across the university and has become embedded in other subjects, such as engineering and the fine arts. It has grown across the educational system and today programmes can be found in elementary and high schools in many countries. Entrepreneurship education has also spread, from being an almost uniquely North American phenomenon, to being of critical interest to European nations and has become important within the educational policy agenda of many. For example, it has been growing rapidly as a subject of concern across the Chinese tertiary sector. Today in the United States universities are even building significant infrastructure to support activity at a level noticeable to the New York Times which claimed that, “Where once the campus amenities arms race was waged over luxury dorms and recreation facilities, now colleges and universities are building deluxe structures for the generation of wonderful ideas. They and their partners in industry are pouring millions into new buildings for business, engineering and applied learning that closely resemble the high-tech workplace, itself inspired by the minimally partitioned spaces of the garage and the factory” (NYT 08/07/2016). The skills agenda in entrepreneurship is a unique and significant phenomenon that has gained considerable momentum. The trend towards promoting entrepreneurial training and development within educational systems would appear to be driven by consequential changes to the nature of work and employment. Many countries now recognise the need to promote and support self-employment, small business management and technology innovation and have developed policy to encourage education in these careers.

Consequently, this book by Daniele Morselli is timely. The book begins by highlighting the development of the entrepreneurial skills agenda with a specific focus on the European context. In the first chapter, the author explains the skills agenda in Europe and highlights the European perspective on ‘enterprise skills’. Identified within these skills are the current competences recognised by the vi Foreword

European Union as contributing to the development of an ‘enterprising mindset’. He explains these competences and then progresses to discuss how this perspective of entrepreneurship education fits in to the prevailing research on entrepreneurship education. In the next chapter, he focuses more on how to assess enterprise and entrepreneurship competencies within educational contexts. He provides some examples on assessing initiative, particularly within the vocational training context, and considers the literature on the assessment of entrepreneurship education. From this base, he introduces the Change Laboratory, which looks in depth at Cultural Historical Activity Theory and how this approach facilities expansive learning. He argues that that learning theory needs to drive our underlying frameworks for research in entrepreneurship education and presents in an effective way this theoretical construct as a basis for a deeper understanding about learning through experience. He, in subsequent chapters, moves to introduce his research using the Change Laboratory as an approach to explore enterprise skills education in vocational training in schools with a particular focus on surveying. Remaining chapters in the book present the outcomes of his research exploring a change project through the eyes of teachers, students and other participants and explaining the validation of the work and reflecting on the process as a researcher. The final chapter in the book provides a deep appreciation of how enterprise skills can be developed through the Change Laboratory method and explains the challenges and opportunities encountered when implementing the method, as well as, explaining the training outcomes for students.

This book provides an excellent read for any educator in entrepreneurship education and it should be of particular interest to educators and researchers studying entrepreneurship education in schools. The concept of the Change Laboratory and the method of Cultural Historical Activity Theory should be of interest to researchers in entrepreneurship education more generally, even where the focus of their work is the tertiary sector. His work is insightful into many areas and provides a good basis to explore the European agenda in entrepreneurship education. It allows for a better understanding of the skills agenda and the competencies that have been developed by the European Union to guide educators in the development of programmes and associated funding requests. The particular research topic provides much depth focused on how to engage schools in real change projects while also allowing the researcher to conduct research. In my view, therefore, this book has much to offer the reader interested in the topic of entrepreneurship education.

Entrepreneurship, Ohio University

USASBE Entrepreneurship

Educator of 2018

The original version of the book frontmatter was revised: For detailed information please see correction. The correction to the book is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02571-7_8

Contents

1.1 A New Skills Agenda: A Policy View on Entrepreneurship 1.3. Why the Theory of Expansive Learning for Entrepreneurial

The Assessment of Entrepreneurial Education Examples of Best Practices in Entrepreneurial Education . .

2.5

Introduction

These words attributed to the ancient Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro enjoy a widespread popularity and are often interpreted as instructing how fortune favours the bold. Modern education systems are confronting the issue of how to educate students to be creative, innovative, autonomous and able to take calculated risks when necessary. These are the attitudes concerning a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, a European key competence for lifelong learning, which is defined as the ability to turn ideas into action. The literature argues that the teachers educate for a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship only when they are entrepreneurial themselves. How to the make the teaching staff entrepreneurial through in-service training is the question leading this book. The answer lies in the Change Laboratory, a type of formative intervention, where the participants discuss problems that are salient for them and their organisation. This process subsequently involves the participants collectively finding a new model or concept, progressively implementing it and then making these adjustments the new customary way to do things. This series of steps is the essence of expansive learning, a relatively new theory of learning, and this book shows how such theory can support entrepreneurial education.

At first sight, it may look contradictory that a Change Laboratory can lead to a precise objective, that is training teachers for a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. As a matter of fact, formative interventions are opposed to linear intervention because the outcomes cannot be planned ahead, and the participants— not the researcher—are in charge of the intervention. However, the Change Laboratory for in-service training is expected to create the conditions for teachers to act with a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship within their organisation. Cultural Historical Activity Theory, the framework used in this research, argues for an enlargement of the unit of analysis from the individual to the organization and its network. Within this paradigm, the teaching staff engage in Change Laboratory workshops to question their present practices, analyse their activity, generate new ideas or concepts and collectively implement them, thus creating value for their school and community. It is maintained that the definition of entrepreneurship is xi xii Introduction expanded beyond business creation towards an entrepreneurial mindset that each of us should own to turn ideas into actions, a key competence for lifelong learning. Such a mindset is also necessary for teachers to deliver their subjects in an entrepreneurial way and acting as role model for their students.

The research questions explore the extent to which a Change Laboratory as in-service training can be useful for promoting a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship among the teaching staff. The argument is that the Change Laboratory has a double impact. The first type of impact is in the outcomes: the highly mediated environment of the Change Laboratory helps to generate a new concept or idea, which is then used to ensure purposeful implementation. The literature argues that teachers see entrepreneurship education as a method of pedagogical renewal and personal development; the Change Laboratory promotes pedagogical renewal and new teaching practices. The second type of impact this formative intervention has is in the process: by implementing the new solution the teaching staff develop their collective transformative agency and turn ideas into action. The conclusion is that with the Change Laboratory for teachers in-service training, new ideas of pedagogical practices are transformed into collective action and value for the school and the students. The students and the teaching staff learn through entrepreneurship rather than about entrepreneurship.

Besides the encouragement to be bold in life that was promoted in both ancient Italy and modern globalised societies, Virgil’s maxim characterises this research since he was born in a little city in the Lombardy region, which is a similar context to where this empirical research was carried out. For a decade previous to this study, a course in surveying in a technical institute had seen a progressive drop in enrolments. In first semester 2016, a bold “gang” of teachers and workshop assistants engaged in a Change Laboratory to analyse the causes that led to such disastrous circumstances and find a shared solution. They cultivated an interdisciplinary project to be implemented during the 2016-2017 school year in two Grade 5 classes with active didactics. In school year 2017-2018, the interdisciplinary project was repeated and expanded, leading to more teaching hours within the subjects, a wider variety of subjects spanning from technical to humanities disciplines, better coordination between the teaching staff, and better didactics towards a fully competence-based approach. Additionally, the teaching staff started educating for the new type of surveyor as it has been called for by both the school reform and the changes in the job market which took place in Italy from 2007 to 2008. They did so by acting in an entrepreneurial way, with the impact on the students being that they developed initiative and entrepreneurship, so they can transition into a workforce calling for self-employed professionals to be able to self-organise and effectively work in teams.

The book is characterised by a double thread: the tensions between formative and linear interventions, and the tensions between policy documents on entrepreneurship, and how entrepreneurship is actually enacted and taught by educators. It has been written not only for a target audience of policy makers, scholars in entrepreneurship and in the Change Laboratory who want to know more about the methodology. It has also been written with the people responsible for the

Introduction xiii implementation in mind: for teachers, school directors and other educators who wonder how the teaching staff can teach for a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship in an entrepreneurial fashion. Effort has been to provide the theoretical underpinnings, so it reads as a manual for this form of pedagogy, in the clearest and most accessible way possible. Although a professional facilitator is needed to organise and conduct a Change Laboratory, with this book the intention is to help the schools who would like to implement the Change Laboratory to know more about this methodology and the results they can expect. Moreover, on Open Aire database the interested reader will find all the transcripts of the workshops.

The book is structured in seven chapters. Chapter 1 makes the case for this research. Within the new policy paper ‘A New Skills Agenda for Europe’, the European Commission has launched a revision of key competences, and special interest will be given to the promotion of entrepreneurial and innovation-oriented mindsets. The policy literature considers the positive side of entrepreneurship without questioning the concept and how it is enacted and taught by educators. Given the variety of interpretations of entrepreneurship, the chapter defines the closely related terms, especially entrepreneurial education, entrepreneurship education, enterprise education, a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. The first chapter also explains why expansive learning, a relatively new theory of learning, is needed to back entrepreneurial education. This part of the book outlines the research hypothesis, the historical and cultural context of the research, as well as the problems that the group of teachers was confronted with.

Chapter 2 tackles assessment of entrepreneurial education. Given the paucity of assessment in the research literature, this component can be read as stand-alone chapter. Assessment plays a fundamental role in teaching, as it is the assessment and not the curriculum that characterises what and how students learn. The chapter draws on both literatures of competences and entrepreneurial education, and the key message is that assessment cannot be a “one size fits all” process, but should be tailored to the institution and environments, with the active collaboration of the stakeholders. The final part shows three examples of courses in entrepreneurial education with aligned learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities and assessment practices. This section of the chapter also reflects on how to evaluate the way teachers educate for a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship inside and outside the classroom. These conclusions are in part based on the SIE questionnaire that was experimented on the teaching staff who later joined the Change Laboratory workshops.

Chapter 3 gives an overview on the Change Laboratory, the model of workshop used in this study. Its theoretical underpinnings come from Cultural Historical Activity Theory, which enlarges the unit of analysis to activity systems and sees the possibility for expansive transformations. This is the theory of expansive learning, a theory specific for innovation and change of social practices. Formative interventions, especially the Change Laboratory, are workshop models designed to trigger cycles of expansive learning. These structures are based on two principles, double stimulation and ascending from the abstract to the concrete. During Change Laboratory workshops, interactions are often recorded, and expansive learning is xiv Introduction later studied for the generation of concept formation and collective transformative agency. The chapter then focuses on what is needed to prepare and conduct the workshops, with an examination of the tasks to promote the specific expansive learning actions.

Chapter 4 describes the workshops to make the readers understand the impact of the research. The aim is to thoroughly and accurately describe the relevant contextual circumstances such as the context of the study, participants and connected experiences. A special focus is devoted to the tasks to trigger expansive learning actions. The chapter illustrates the field research and how the course in surveying was selected for the Change Laboratory. It then describes the seven Change Laboratory workshops where the participants modelled an idea of an interdisciplinary project. Finally, it documents the follow-up workshops that reflect on and evaluate the new idea, thus showing how the new practice can be consolidated.

As an activity system is object oriented, a better understanding of the interdisciplinary project must come as a result of drawing from the words of the people involved: teachers, students and workshop assistants. For each of these types of participant, Chap. 5 discusses the features of the interdisciplinary project, its potentials and its challenges. Furthermore, it takes advantage of the teachers’ longstanding experience within their educational context to understand the degree of change that the Change Laboratory affected in relation to its historical background.

Chapter 6 continues the analytical focus that was introduced in chapter five. It concentrates on the interdisciplinary project, which is analysed with the words of the participants, whose views are discussed during a follow-up workshop. The participants also evaluate the extent to which the interdisciplinary project has been delivered according to a competence approach. The aim of these tasks is twofold: validating the research findings with a participant validation strategy and triggering the expansive learning action of reflecting on and evaluating the process, to comprehend what else needs to be learnt to address these areas. In the next school year, the interdisciplinary project will be better implemented by resolving tensions between the old and the new; this change, in turn, will help train the new figure of surveyor that the school reforms and the job market have called for.

Chapter 7 explains how the methodology of the Change Laboratory can educate teachers for a collective sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. The research recently published by the European Commission suggests that teachers will educate for entrepreneurship only when they will be entrepreneurial themselves. This chapter contends that a Change Laboratory educates teachers to be entrepreneurial in the outcomes and in the process. Moreover, by showing how an idea is being turned into action, the book has shown the participants’ collective sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. The Change Laboratory has an impact on the teaching staff, the students and the organisation, the role of the management being key in sustaining the change effort. All in all, with the shift of the unit of analysis from the individual to a collective activity system, the Change Laboratory brings new insights into entrepreneurship education; entrepreneurship cannot merely be seen as an individualistic and economic phenomenon, but becomes a collective and social

Introduction XV phenomenon where individuals face a problem that threatens their community. They take the lead and find a solution that creates value for themselves and their community. This view of entrepreneurship emphasises the dimension of the sense of initiative—while entrepreneurship is the key competence for participation, citizenship and personal fulfilment—for a new skills agenda in Europe.

Finally, I want to acknowledge the Horizon 2020 Marie Curie project is financed by the European Union (project number 654101). I also want to acknowledge the many people who helped me in this endeavour. I thank Yrjö Engeström, the principal investigator of this project, and Annalisa Sannino, his wife, for their precious advice. I praise the bold teaching staff who participated in the workshops and year after year strive to implement and better their interdisciplinary project. I am grateful with Jaakko Virkkunen and Anna Maria Ajello for their reflections and for having followed the organization of the workshops. I thank Massimiliano Costa and Umberto Margiotta for their fresh insights into the organisation of the book contents. Although I am the only author responsible for the contents, I feel grateful towards the ‘thought partners’ who, by reviewing the chapters, contributed to the dialogical engagement with my study and data, these are Professors Luke Pittaway (who also wrote the introduction) and Andy Penaluna, Liubov Vetoshkina, Hongda Lin, Terhi Esko, Juhana Rantavuori and Antti Rajala.

Chapter 1 A) The Research Hypothesis get

Abstract This chapter demonstrates that for the effectiveness of entrepreneurship to be realised, the teachers must model initiative and be entrepreneurial themselves, so their students can acquire this skill. It starts by outlining A New Skills Agenda, with the European Commission launching a revision of the key competences with a special focus on to the promotion of entrepreneurial and innovation-oriented mindset. There is currently a need for a broader view of entrepreneurship beyond business creation. A sense of initiative and entrepreneurship represents a European key competence. It is part of a mindset for turning ideas into action which is transferrable to many contexts as well as being a lifelong learning perspective. Given the polysemy of entrepreneurship, the chapter defines the terms closely related to it: entrepreneurial education, entrepreneurship education, enterprise education, and a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. Although entrepreneurship can be learned, research about how teachers should be trained and how they can teach in an entrepreneurial way is an underdeveloped area. Among the learning theories used in research to support entrepreneurial education, the theory of experiential learning has been the most extensively used. However, expansive learning is a learning theory of innovation and collective change of practices that is most suitable for entrepreneurial education. The Change Laboratory is a type of formative intervention useful to promote cycles of expansive learning, and it was challenged in the context of an Italian secondary school with a course in surveying that had been suffering a dramatic loss of enrolments after 2008. This study explores the extent with which a Change Laboratory as inservice training can be useful to promote a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship in the teaching staff.

Keywords Entrepreneurial education - Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship Research hypothesys - Change Laboratory - A New Skills Agenda

The first section shows the European policy agenda with a renewed interest in entrepreneurial education. Within the policy paper A New Skills Agenda, the European Commission launched a revision of key competences with a special focus on to the promotion of entrepreneurial and innovation-oriented mindset. While psychological research has failed to find specific personality traits characterising the

© The Author(s) 2019 1 D. Morselli, The Change Laboratory for Teacher Training in Entrepreneurship individual entrepreneur, the literature suggests that entrepreneurship is a skill that can be learned. Research in entrepreneurial education has not yet shown which didactics are most effective with the associated learning outcomes. Beyond didactics, in entrepreneurial education it is important that teachers act as role models to educate their students to have a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. However, teacher training in entrepreneurial education—as well as how to train teacher to teach entrepreneurship in an entrepreneurial way—is an underdeveloped topic in research.

The second section shows the debate around the terminology and the concept of entrepreneurship itself. A common agreement on the terminology is absent, and the risk of misunderstanding and confusion is substantial. This book will use: (1) entrepreneurial education as general unifying term; (2) entrepreneurship education as functional view of entrepreneurship, that is venture creation; (3) enterprise education as broad educational view, a mindset to help turn ideas into action in many contexts and in a lifelong learning perspective; (4) a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship is the outcome for entrepreneurial education.

The third section explains why a new theory of learning such as expansive learning is necessary to underpin entrepreneurship. While experiential learning has been extensively used in entrepreneurial education, there are issues with its application, for example learning is considered a process internal to the individual, and it is not clear how the four phases follow each other. By way of contrast, expansive learning is a theory of innovation and collective change of practices that is more suitable to support entrepreneurial education. It focuses on communities as learners, transformation and creation of culture, horizontal movement and hybridisation and the formation of theoretical concepts. The Change Laboratory is a type of formative intervention useful to promote cycles of expansive learning, thus change and innovation. Its results can be evaluated against the development and implementation of new ideas and concepts and the development of the agency of its participants.

The third section also describes the context of the research—an Italian technical school—and why a Change Laboratory was needed. The course in surveying had suffered from a dramatic fall of enrolments for 10 years, with the reduction of the classes from four to one. The teachers did not know what could be done to revitalise the course, but knew that a collective effort would be necessary. The research questions explore the extent to which a Change Laboratory intervention as in-service training can be useful to promote a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship in the teaching staff.

1.1 A New Skills Agenda: A Policy View on Entrepreneurship

Skills, a term used to indicate what an individual can do, understand and know, are a path to prosperity and employability (European Commission, 2016). In a global and fast-changing economy, it is the skills which determine the ability to drive innova-

1.1 A New Skills Agenda: A Policy View on Entrepreneurship 3 tion and competitiveness. Not only are the skills key for investments, but they also contribute to the virtuous cycle of growth and job creation. Yet there is the danger that vast parts of the European population are left behind and marginalised by the digital revolution and globalisation, thus threatening social cohesion. The European situation calls for help: 70 million EU citizens have limited writing and reading skills, and even more individuals lack basic numeracy and digital skills, putting these individuals at risk of joblessness, social exclusion and poverty. More than half of 12 million long-term unemployed individuals can be regarded as poorly skilled. Skills mismatches and ability gaps are also evident. While many individuals have jobs that do match their qualifications and skills, 40% of European employers find it difficult to find the skilled people they are looking for (European Commission, 2016). Less than a third of the European citizens have a university degree against 40% of the USA and 50% of Japan (European Commission, 2010). Too few individuals have the entrepreneurial skills and mindset necessary to start a business. Dealing with these skills challenges calls for important reforms and policy efforts in education and training.

A New Skills Agenda is one of the most significant work programmes at the European Commission. It focuses on three areas (European Commission, 2016): (1) improving the relevance and quality of skills training; (2) making qualifications and skills more comparable and visible; (3) advancing knowledge about skills and intelligence about what level constitutes competence, to enhance career choices. The acquisition of skills is a lifelong process which takes place in formal and informal environments starting when individuals are very young. Beyond the technical and specific skill set, employers are increasingly looking for transversal skills like the capacity to work in teams, solve problems and thinking creatively. The same skills, which are useful when considering starting a business, are often neglected in school curricula and are seldom evaluated formally in member states. To help more individuals to obtain better key competences, the European Commission in 2017 will launch a revision of the key competences framework.

The European Framework for key competencies represents the political agreement on what a learner should able to know and do at the end of compulsory education (van Woensel, 2008). Its main objectives are (European Commission, 2007): (a) identifying and defining a set of key competences useful for active citizenship, personal fulfilment, employability and social cohesion in a knowledge society; (b) supporting the member states and ensure that, by the end of compulsory education, learners have achieved a level of mastery over key competencies helping them in the progression for further learning and working life in a lifelong learning perspective; and (c) providing tools for policy makers, employers and education providers; and (d) to present a framework for further action at the European level.

Competence is defined as a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes that are relevant to the context. The Reference Framework establishes eight key competences (European Commission, 2007): (1) communication in the mother tongue; (2) communication in foreign languages; (3) mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology; (4) digital competence; (5) learning to learn; (6) social and civic competences; (7) sense of initiative and entrepreneurship; (8) cultural awareness and expression. These key competences are all relevant since each contributes to personal fulfilment in a knowledge society. Many of them interlock, overlap and support each other. Within the A New Skills Agenda, the European Commission (2016) has launched a revision of key competences with a special focus on to the promotion of entrepreneurial and innovation-oriented mindset, including the encouragement of concrete entrepreneurial experiences.

One of the most important changes in the transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century has been the emergence of the knowledge economy (OECD, 2010) with a returned centrality of the small and medium enterprises (SMEs). New companies and SMEs are the most aggressive agents of innovation and change in the economy, since they introduce new products and services, more effective ways of working, but they also represent the major source of new jobs. Compared to large companies, SMEs have become key players for innovation since they can better recognise and exploit not only the opportunities coming from market, but also the technological and competitive changes. These changes can all be considered as part of the transformation that has occurred from managed to entrepreneurial societies. The managed society enjoyed mass production and stable employments in big companies, while the government—in partnership with employers and unions—would play a major role in regulating society and economy. Such contracts comprised a controlled labour market and a robust welfare state. The decreased influence of unions and large firms, the lowered ability of governments to raise taxes at times of fastmoving capitals, and an enhanced turbulence of the labour market culminated in the withdrawal of the welfare state.

The entrepreneurial society rewards a proactive search for opportunities, a propensity for creative adaptation, and a drive to turn ideas into action (Bahri & Haftendorn, 2006). In the near future, most job opportunities will come from the growth of new businesses, and young individuals will be asked to generate their employment opportunities. Inside companies, workers will have to be able to take responsibility and decisions, carry out tasks autonomously, act creatively and flexibly, and to constantly update their competencies. Beyond business, entrepreneurship will be pivotal for communities to solve the problems that the globalisation has brought.

Internationally, North America plays a leading role in entrepreneurship education and in high-growth enterprises (Volkmann et al., 2009), and entrepreneurship is considered the main creator of economic growth (Draycott & Rae, 2011). The huge economic contributions of companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft are unquestionable. Compared to other countries, America enjoys one of the most entrepreneurial friendly cultures and environments, as well as the longest tradition in entrepreneurship education, the main goal being implementing and commercialising research, innovation or knowledge linked to generation of income (Volkmann et al., 2009). The definition of entrepreneurship aligns with its role: “we define entrepreneurship education as developing the mindset, skill set, and practice necessary for starting new ventures” (Neck & Corbett, 2018, p. 10). In China entrepreneurship education is still in its infancy, but progresses are rapidly being made, with more and more courses at the university level.

1.1 A New Skills Agenda: A Policy View on Entrepreneurship 5

In Europe, the emphasis of entrepreneurship education lies on fostering entrepreneurial capabilities and mindset, and on recognising the social importance of entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship has been a top priority since the Lisbon agenda in 2000. New enterprises, especially SMEs, are thought to represent the backbone of Europe and the primary source of new jobs. To restore jobs and growth in Europe after the financial crisis, more entrepreneurs would be necessary. While in 2010 45% of European citizens were keen on becoming self-employed, this figure plummeted to 37% in 2012 against 56% of China and 51% of USA (European Commission, 2013). In Europe 2020 three out of seven flagships for a smart, inclusive and sustainable growth are specifically dedicated to entrepreneurship (OECD & European Commission, 2013). In compulsory education a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship should be taught across the curriculum both horizontally and vertically, to provide advancement throughout the education levels (European Commission, EACEA, & Eurydice, 2016).