On entrepreneurship, in a different voice? Finnish entrepreneurship education and pupils’ critical narratives of the entrepreneur

Abstract

This study set out to explore the narratives of entrepreneurship that 15-16-yearold pupils in their last grade of comprehensive school produced in the Finnish annual writing competition Good Enterprise! We focused on narratives that can be categorized as tragedies, satires, comedies, and crime stories (N = 219). In these stories, the pupils challenge the political ideal of the risk-taking entrepreneur by arguing for sustainable development and social justice as bases for entrepreneurship. On the one hand, the critical representations of entrepreneurs arise from the Protestant work ethic, and thus the values constructed in these stories are close to stories that can be characterized as romances of the modest entrepreneur where the motive for entrepreneurship was not the accumulation of material wealth. On the other hand, these critical stories represent "entrepreneur and consumer pathologies," and hence make a mockery of the core neoliberal values of autonomy, competition, and choice.

Governing the entrepreneurial mindset: Business students’ constructions of entrepreneurial subjectivity

“…In this study, we question the taken-for-granted necessity and neutrality of this endeavour by using the theorizations of governmentality (e.g., Foucault, 1991;Dean, 1999;Miller and Rose, 2008). In accordance with previous critical examinations of the topic (e.g., Peters, 2001;Holmgren and From, 2005;Davies and Bansel, 2007;Brunila, 2011Brunila, , 2012Korhonen, 2012;Dahlstedt and Hertzberg, 2013;Komulainen et al, 2013;Bengtsson, 2014), we acknowledge EE as being connected to neoliberal rationality in its attempt to educate autonomous, self-responsible and self-guided citizens who possess an entrepreneurial mindset and who contribute to the economy. EE may be seen as a particular kind of governmentality, connecting students and their subjectivity to the rationality of the market (Dahlstedt and Hertzberg, 2012: 259).…”

Do ‘good students’ make better entrepreneurs than ‘bad learners’? Ninth-grade pupils’ perceptions of entrepreneurial abilities within the school’s discursive practices

“…Finnish/Nordic education system in our previous studies (see, e.g., Komulainen et al, 2013;Korhonen et al, 2012b). 2.…”

“…The student perspective is virtually missing. In the policy of EE, young people are treated as somewhat passive targets of EE without any urge or readiness to resist its ability ideals (Komulainen et al, 2013). They are also represented as a homogeneous group, not as representatives of the different social/student positions into which they are placed in the practices of the school.…”

“… 1. We have discussed the confluences and tensions between the ideals of EE and the traditional values of Finnish/Nordic education system in our previous studies (see, e.g., Komulainen et al, 2013; Korhonen et al, 2012b). …”

Identity work in entrepreneurship education: Activating, scripting and resisting the entrepreneurial self

“…We argue that attending to identity work as practice deepens our understandings of how the imperative of becoming entrepreneurial is enacted among teachers and students when they develop practices to negotiate, modify or resist the entrepreneurial self in the education context (Komulainen et al, 2013).…”