Ways of Seeing the Entrepreneurial Education Debates in the United States, the United Kingdom and Finland.

Overview & Synopsis

This paper on entrepreneurial education compares positions in three national debates. It identifies different ways that formal and informal texts define entrepreneurial education and gives rationales for it--in comprehensive schools or K-12 education--in different contexts. The study was guided by three questions: (1) What is understood by entrepreneurial education in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Finland? (2) How do rationales for entrepreneurial education in the U.S., the U.K., and Finland differ? and (3) How can the discovered ways of seeing be patterned as intertextual spaces of debate? Data for the study were selected from texts in all three countries, representing a wide array of positions. Following overviews of entrepreneurial education in each of the three countries, the results of the study are presented. The findings indicate that in all three countries a free-market economy was the dominant metaphor underlying new developments in education. The educational reforms in these countries were connected to the same pressures that drove economic competition. This was particularly true in the U.S. and the U.K., where education has been blamed for failing in its mission. The report uses maps or "social cartographies" to represent each country's educational climate. (Contains 23 references and 4 figures.) (RJM)