Teacher 2020: Entrepreneurial Education: Initiatives and Guidelines: TEACHER 2020. On the Road to Entrepreneurial Fluency in Teacher Education.Erasmus + Project

Abstract

This handbook represents the culmination of the work of the Erasmus+ project Teacher 2020. The project was aimed at enhancing entrepreneurial fluency among teachers. Entrepreneurial fluency can be understood as a way of working and learning, an attitude towards the surrounding world, a pro-active mind-set, a will to change and a drive to take initiative and risk. The reasoning for generating entrepreneurial fluency among teachers is based on an argument that traditional approaches to teaching and learning are inadequate for 21st century education of our children and young people. Instead, the European Commission has argued that, ‘students need authentic, practical experiences and realistic learning environments as essential parts of active learning’ (Entrepreneurship Education, 2011). Furthermore, the Commission argues that, in order to understand entrepreneurship and be able to teach students how to be entrepreneurial, teachers must first develop their own entrepreneurial competency and skills through hands-on, real life experiences, preferably in collaboration with the wider community and local businesses (Entrepreneurship Education: A Guide for Educators, 2013). It should be noted, however, that the concept of entrepreneurship is not limited to a narrow focus on creating new businesses but is based on a broader vision that entails developing a collaborative pedagogy that is creative, imaginative and based on real-life experiences. This mirrors current developments in education systems throughout the world where learning is moving away from subject based curriculums to become interdisciplinary, active, learner-centred and related to issues in the wider world. The task of the Teacher 2020 project, therefore, is to explore and analyse entrepreneurial projects in the partners’ own contexts in order to develop resources for teachers and students throughout Europe. The project’s work method included vertical and horizontal organisers. The intersection of these organisers ensured the creation of the resources and documentation needed to produce the project’s outcomes. The vertical organiser operated to structure all project phases and all project activities that produced strong coherence along the project, and informed the framework for the key project outcomes. The horizontal organiser ran through the project clusters, increasing the complexity of the activities and results, including building on the increasing capacity of the projects and their participants through accumulating knowledge, experiences and resources