E-Magazine
Richard Beresford
Enterprising young people have never been more important than today. So the potential for enterprise in education aligned to the government’s ambition of enterprise for all, has never been greater. Yet despite much rhetoric, we are still focusing enterprise in particular subjects, for particular students and related to particular career contexts, usually business start up. There are numerous reasons why this is the case but this article focuses on one example to illustrate how such a narrow interpretation is maintained, and places the potential remedy with teachers and lecturers.
Think about the enterprising role models you use in your teaching? Do they relate to non business as well as business subject areas and contexts? Do they span a full range of possible career options? Is the teaching profession for example one of these career options? Are you or a colleague a role model? Where the answer to the last two questions is no, ask yourself why not. Is it because you don’t think that you are entrepreneurial, or that the teaching profession isn’t. Or coming back full circle, is it that you associate being entrepreneurial solely with starting up a business?
Enterprise and being enterprising is not a one size fits all concept. It is a way of being, seeing, and thinking (differently) and is therefore applicable across a whole range of learning and employment contexts. Which role models would be best suited to illustrate this? Where we relate enterprise to wider employment contexts other than self employment we begin to address policy objectives associated with the development of a more entrepreneurial economy whether as employees in the public sector or as employers for example. This critical understanding starts with you, the enterprising teacher and the contexts within which you consider enterprise.
The idea of the teacher as a critical entrepreneurial role model underpins the approach developed by the Centre for Creativity and Enterprise Development at Oxford Brookes University. Working with schools and colleges we focus on tapping into the latent creativity and entrepreneurial talents of teachers and lecturers as a prerequisite for the development of empathy, and as the basis for the exploration of innovative teaching and learning strategies. We recognise that for these teaching strategies to be successful they need wider acceptance and so we also explore practical approaches for embedding enterprise within wider institutional practices and norms. This holistic approach emerges from an understanding that if enterprise is to flourish amongst young people it needs to be something the teaching profession embrace: in a non prescriptive way we build on the professional status of teachers.
To date CrED has developed two programmes which adopt this approach. The first is a Masters Certificate in Advanced Educational Practice (Enterprise) developed for school teachers. The second a CPD programme ‘Enterprising Colleges’ targeted at senior colleagues within FE. The CAEP is currently subsidised by the DCSF. The Enterprising Colleges project is supported by NESTA and SEEDA and is a free programme for all FE colleges in the South East.
Richard Beresford, Director, Centre for Creativity and Enterprise Development, Oxford Brookes University