Entrepreneurship education for students in early childhood and social education – potentials and barriers in the light of a performance culture

This paper explores the potentials and barriers of teaching social innovation and entrepreneurship in social education, based on two repeated experiences from carrying out a course with students from both early childhood education and social education in Denmark.
In the paper, I will first present the effectuation theory as an approach to entrepreneurship education, as formulated by Sara Sarasvasthy (2023) and the focus on promoting self-efficacy (Bandura 1997) adapted by Anne Kirketerp into the “push-method”, where students through small steps and actions experience and learn how to be entrepreneurial (Kirketerp 2012).
An effectual approach focuses on how to tackle uncertainty as a premise for navigating in the world and still be able to take action. “More importantly, it turns our attention to the fact that uncertainty is not a problem to be overcome. Instead, uncertainty is both ingredient and outcome of our best efforts to overcome it.” (Sarasvasthy, 2023: 12). Thus, innovation involves stepping into yet-unknown fields and solutions.
My analysis and reflections will be illustrated by small practice descriptions, drawing on observations from my own and colleagues' teaching practices, evaluations from students, supplemented with examples from other relevant empirical studies.
Teaching courses on social innovation and entrepreneurship ended with two very different experiences. Whereas the first course to a very high degree succeeded in providing safe spaces and yet “small pushes” for the students to work from an effectual approach, the second course was characterized by lots of frustrations and students not being willing to step into uncertain actions. In the paper, I reflect upon how this may also reveal a paradox in teaching an effectual approach in a societal and educational context that is goal-oriented and characterized by a culture of performance (Boysen, 2021; Petersen 2016).
I argue that the strategies to tackle uncertainty coined by the effectuation approach is not unsimilar to social pedagogical work and early childhood education, where the interactions between professionals and child/service user are characterized by unpredictability and yet taking action. Social pedagogical work can be seen as the skill of navigating in uncertainty, trying out different actions adjusted to the child or service user and situation, continuously reflecting upon process and outcome. Moreover, the actual context in Denmark is that there is a lack of educated staff in daycare as well as institutions for children and adults with special needs. Thus, students in early childhood education and social education face a reality, where their ability to find new solutions and involve users within limited available resources is key.