The objectives of teaching about entrepreneurship will therefore include:Promoting the development of personal qualities that are relevant to entrepreneurship, such as creativity, spiritof initiative, risk-taking and responsibility.In addition to this entrepreneurship education should contribute to raising pupils’ and students’ awareness of selfemploymentas a career option. The message being that you can become not only an employee, but also an employer.Personal Qualities relevant to EntrepreneurshipA set of personal qualities relevant to entrepreneurship were also discussed and approved by the forum Training forentrepreneurship organised by the EU in Nice in October 2000. These are especially relating to the primary and secondarylevels. They include:Problem solving: Pupils and students should have the ability to solve problems and should be increasinglyencouraged, implying encouraging ability in the fields of planning, decision-making, communication and thewillingness to assume responsibility ·Cooperation and networking: Pupils and students should increasingly gain competence in fields such as theability to cooperate, networking, learning to assume new roles (Social competence).Self-confidence and motivation: Pupils and students should try to develop self-confidence and the motivation toperform, learn to think critically and independently and in particular achieve the willingness and ability to learnautonomously.Identifying good PracticeIn most EU countries, national initiatives already exist addressing the issue. A lot of information on good practice inentrepreneurship has been collected and some of it has been demonstrated here during this conference.The best practice examples can be identified within the following categories: entrepreneurship in primary and secondary school · training of teachers on the subject of entrepreneurship · cooperation between schools/universities and businesses aimed at the promotion of entrepreneurship ·entrepreneurship chairs and activities at university levelNational experts have assessed the best practice examples with the aim of policy change in the Member States, and inNorway. Ongoing activities and measures taken at national level by the EU Member States and Norway, have beenassessed and these show that entrepreneurship is neither integrated into the curriculum, nor part of a coherent framework.Initiatives are often isolated taken by individual institutions, partnerships or local authorities. Frequently they aredriven by external actors and not by the education system itself. Unfortunately, many would say, entrepreneurship ismore likely to be taught as a separate subject or seen as an extra-curricular activity.Entrepreneurship integrated in several Subject CurriculaIn Norway we have entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking at the basis of many subject curricula for primary andsecondary education and training. Examples from upper secondary education are topics like Social Sciences, Design,Arts and Crafts, Nutrition, Health and Food and from the preparation of local curricula in optional programme subjects.In upper secondary and vocational programmes entrepreneurship is integrated in Arts, Crafts and Design, Electro andElectrical subjects, in Media and Communication and in Programme for Agriculture, Fishing and Forestry and in Serviceand Transport. In the programme for General Studies entrepreneurship is integrated in Marketing and Management,Social Studies, Arts and Design subjects, in Sports subjects and in Business Economics.83Entrepreneurship Education in Europe: Fostering Entrepreneurial Mindsets through Education and Learning
Entrepreneurship as a separate subject curriculum in upper secondary schoolHowever, we do not only think of entrepreneurship as an integrated dimension in our education system. Work is currentlybeing done to implement entrepreneurship as a separate subject curriculum. From autumn 2007 a new programmesubject will be established within the education Programme for Specialization in General Studies, SocialSciences and Economics Studies. The programme is called Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development.Norway and the EUNorway participates in several fora on trade and industry policy under the auspices of the EU. Exchange of findings withother <strong>European</strong> countries provides useful information on public sector investment in entrepreneurship education.Norway has participated actively in the EU Leonardo da Vinci programme, in which one key activity has been to promoteinnovation in entrepreneurship in Europe through modification schemes linked to professional and vocational trainingin individual participant countries.Approximately 4,000 major projects for this purpose have been financed since 1995. Of these there have been about 100Norwegian-coordinated projects.Norway intends to strengthen its participation in EU cooperation on entrepreneurship in the new Life Long LearningProgramme to be launched in 2007.ConclusionWe are grateful of having been able to host this conference which has shown us the width and creativity in this field.I hope this conference will result in concrete initiatives for the future.Thank you for your attention.84Entrepreneurship Education in Europe: Fostering Entrepreneurial Mindsets through Education and Learning
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