Monday 26 August 2013

German ADEPTT Pilot : “I really feel encouraged for changing my teaching style. This is so necessary.”

“I really feel encouraged for changing my teaching style. This is so necessary.”
A teacher after the ADEPTT pilot in Germany



“How to enhance self-initiative and learning motivation of your students” was the title of the ADEPTT pilot seminar in Germany. For several reasons: As a counseling partner of schools, the German Children and Youth Foundation (DKJS) knows: This is a question which bothers many teachers in this country – in all school types, but especially in lower secondary public schools. Students often do not see why they should engage for learning about subjects they often are not interested in. How can teachers motivate their students? We believe that entrepreneurial teaching is the way students can become owners of their own learning process.

Teachers of all school types and all specialisations were addressed in the announcement of the course. So the scope of participant teachers was very diverse. They were teaching at primary, lower and upper secondary, but also VET schools. Their specialisations varied from natural sciences (maths, physics, etc.), to languages, social sciences (history, ethics, geography) and economics. Only 3 out of 9 teachers had any experiences in Entrepreneurship Education (e.g. supporting a mini company at school). 


Learning outcomes and remarks of the participants show that the course concept has been as more successful, as the participants have not been experienced in any kind of Entrepreneurship tutoring. The participant teachers reflected that the ADEPTT course showed them how to change their teaching attitude: How to allow and enable students to develop self-initiative and creativity. And, as one of the teachers said, by developing an own project, ADEPTT pushed the teachers to be initiative and creative themselves.


Some of the comments after the course :


  • “CPD courses should always be with diverse participants: I learnt so much in our exchange between teachers of different school types.” 
  • “Thank you for the opportunity to learn new methods I really can use in my teaching.”
  • “I’ve never experienced a CPD-course like this: I had the opportunity to realise at once what I had heard in theory. Thank you!”
  • “What was really amazing: the exchange of feedback and ideas between us and the motivation of all participants.”
  • “First of all our own self-initiative and motivation was fostered!”


Thursday 8 August 2013

The Norwegian Pilot

The Norwegian pilot targeted teachers (upper-secondary) in Technology & Research from all over the country. We decided to invite teachers to a course in creativity, rather than in entrepreneurship. The reason is that entrepreneurship has a poor reputation among some Norwegian teachers, in particular among science teachers.

In some upper-secondary schools groups of teachers work with entrepreneurship-related initiatives, like gründer camps and student enterprises/business. The problem is, in most cases, that those groups of teachers work more or less on their own and quite isolated. At many schools, there seems to be little collaboration and exchange between those who are involved in entrepreneurship education and those who are not. There seems to be a boundary between groups of teachers at the same school. We wanted to challenge that.

There is a potential when it comes to science teachers: science teachers are easily engaged in inquiry-based approaches, and such approaches are closely related to entrepreneurial approaches. In particular, when taking the entrepreneurial pedagogical perspective, there seem to be many connections. We have started a project, together with the National Resource Centre for Science in Education, where we wish to explore how to connect modern science teaching practices and entrepreneurial approaches to teaching.  We decided, first of all, to pilot this idea with teachers in Technology and Research, because this school science subject in its self is the closest you can come entrepreneurship.  If this shows to be successful, we will broaden our work to other science teachers.

Our intention with the course we designed for this purpose was to introduce the teachers to creativity as being the core concept when trying to explore the connections between science teaching and entrepreneurial approaches in general. Creativity, thus, was our focus during the course. In a plenary session on the last day, in a dialogue with the participants, we summarized the ideas about creativity and teaching put forward by the participants. The summary resulted in a model, drawn on the black board,  in which all elements of the CRCL-model were present. In fact, the participants had, themselves, constructed their own CRCL model. That gave us a opportunity to explicitly link creativity to innovation and entrepreneurship.  Looking back, we think that we made a good decision. The teachers were easily engaged in discussions about creativity, and to us that seemed to form a solid base for thinking and reflecting on their own teaching practice. For many this may lead to further thinking, more explicit towards entrepreneurial teaching. 

Wednesday 7 August 2013

Iceland: Master Tradesmen story

Date: January 2013
Number of participants: 24
Venue: University Of Iceland

In Iceland there were two pilots for the course. One was with 24 master tradesmen studying for a teaching certificate at the University of Iceland. This was a p
art of a larger course (5ECT) called The connection between school and world of work. This group got two lessons (2x40 min) on 17th January, and Moodle collaboration on reading and discussion work for four weeks and on 23.rd February four lessons and finally students presented their ideas on 26.March. Svanborg R Jónsdóttir and Rósa Gunnarsdóttir taught the course.


Master tradesmen learning to be teachers listen to Rosa´s input about Solar-Demi and his Hand Made Solar Plastic Bottle Light Bulb

The emancipatory pedagogy identified in Icelandic research as the core of entrepreneurship education was applied in this course, focusing on enhancing participant creativity and action competence through the innovation process (design approach). Participants were encouraged to find and analyse problems and seek opportunities based on their own interests and experience, supported idea generation and development and encouraged actions with presenting their ideas.  The CRCL model influenced the content and approach of the course and the Business Model Canvas was used.

Only a minority of the group had already students to teach so they were not able to try out the ideas introduced. The evaluation of the course showed that it had given them considerable understanding of EE and some confidence in supporting entrepreneurial attributes in their students. Most of the students in the group mentioned that they needed more contact hours with teachers and only a couple of them had the opportunity to try out their entrepreneurial learning in practice.
The main output of the course was a development of an innovation or a new educational approach or course and introducing it within the frame of the Buisness Model Canvas. Some examples of the ideas the students developed were:

1.      Transferable puppet show – information and entertainment, handling issues related with divorce of parents, sensitive issues and explanations. A talk between a child and a wise Owl answering the most common questions children have about their parents divorce. Need: 20% of children in Iceland age 9-12 have divorced parents, step- or foster parents.

2.      The Guesthose Loner – a gesthouse in the community Skagaströnd.- a restoration of a big old house near the seaside. In the municipality Skagströnd there is no guesthouse or a hotel just some services for travellers such as a coffee house and a Arts and crafts workshop-store.

3.      Houshold goods and food in subscription. A website – ordered online, delivered to the door.

4.      Orthodontist educational model: A course and teaching materials to get students in fourth year of Orthodontist studies to learn the hidden and virtual curriculum of the rules of conduct and handling of tools and cleanliness – and on communication with patients using the emancipatory pedagogy of IEE.

5.      Supervision and organization of the operation and maintenance of cars and machinery of  the Icelandic Coast Guard: A web-based interactive registration of all vehicles and machines of the ICG where staff registers incidents, use and location of those and the condition and location of each can be quickly checked and responded to as needed.

6.      Key-less three point lock for the front door. A lock that allows you to enter your front door without using a key – is secure and locks the door properly.

7.      The rights and obligations of master tradesmen towards apprentices. A short course for MT taking apprentices.

8.      Látrabjarg and the auk – sales cart. A sustainable added value. sLátrabjarg is the largest cliff bird colony in Europe attracting thousands of guests every year – no services on location. A cart with salesproducts related to the cliff and eggs of auks, maps, stories of the farming and information of the birds –  cart removed in the autumn.

9.      Special course on location for apprentices in cooking, restaurant waiters to become restaurant managers.

10.  A special vaccuum blackhead cleaner – a development of an older invention.

11.  Make the Wolf hours pleasant: a course for parents to understand the challenges that make the Wolf hours (evaryone irritated and hungry in the afternoon after school – before dinner) – and how to deal with it constructively

12.  The steeringwheel heater. An improved heater for the stearing wheel – ice cold in the winter, remote controlled.

13.  Reflect-sense. An internetbased service providing special ordered reflectors to put on your outer clothing when walking, jogging or cycling in the dark. The use of reflectors stop more or less with adolecence. The service is meant to appeal to young people and grownups with supplying popular looks of reflectors. These might be sports igns, fashionsigns, carsigns, tribal signs and other.

14.  Streamlining buisiness capacity – application. This is an application for ipads and smartphones to order stocks for industry service firms (builders, elctritians, plumbers ect) – directly linked to the bookkeeping of the firm and supplier. It would be designed in collaboration with suppliers and industrial companies and adjusted to their needs. This would save valuable time of emploees that can see which companies have which items available and could put in an order instantly.

15.  Elf-World in Northern Iceland. A centre for elf- knowledge and recreation. The creation of a kind of an adventure world built on Icelandic heritage on elfs, and other exotic creatures that exist in Iceland, with sculptures, visuals and versatile forms of information in Icelandic and English.

16.  Less mess with baking: Mixer with built in scales. You can weigh the ingredients as you put them in the mixer bowl.

17.  Substitute: Child care – babysitting. A qualified service for different child care/babysitting needs, longer time or shorter. Older children and youngsters. Available 24 hours.

18.  Designing E-books: a course in AdobeIndesign. Teaching materials for graphic designers to design e-books with AdobeIndesign.

19.  Any time day or night order app for hotels and restaurants. Application for ipads or smartphones. Wholesales with products for hotels and restaurants make list of their available products and the users can buy the app or access to it and with it can see exactly what is available. The order is registered immediately and the order is processed the following morning.

20.  Beauty parlor to your home. The services of beauty parlors brought home to clients.

21.  Caring: The Cuddly Beauty Parlor Sheet. A specially designed sheet to wrap beauty parlor customers in, formed to make a kind of a bag and with easy closings (french zipper).