Entrepreneurship Education and Finnish Society

Abstract

The discussion between entrepreneurship and education strengthened towards the end of the 20th century due to the increasing impact of small businesses on societies. It is therefore reasonable to as¬sume that present-day students may soon experience the small business context in some form as their future work environment. The supply of entrepreneurship courses is, in fact, one of the fastest growing themes in university teaching in both sides of the Atlantic. The Finnish government has also taken this fact as one of the key issues in its policy programme and committed to entrepreneurship education throughout its school system. The dilemma will be faced however when it comes to the current contribution of the education to the educational theories. The discussion of how to learn entrepreneurship and develop pedagogy for it has only taken very preliminary steps. So far the focus has changed from the trait theories of biological heritage, i.e. assuming that we are born to be entrepreneurs, towards the belief that we learn to be en¬trepreneurs and we learn how to behave like entrepreneurs. This education-oriented focus has, how¬ever, generated studies in entrepreneurship research rather than attracted education researchers. This article suggests that the lack of this contribution appears as an apparent shortage of pedagogical dis¬cussion. In order to encourage this debate as an interplay between these two sciences, this paper deline¬ates some elements of entrepreneurial pedagogy, compares them to the available learning paradigms and thus gives some ideas for further enhancing entrepreneurial learning in different levels of school systemEntrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial learning, Educational system in Finland, Finnish Society, entrepreneurial qualities, learning paradigms, entrepreneurial learning paradigm