“There is value in looking at teaching as social entrepreneurship, and at teachers as entrepreneurs. I am not claiming this is a general application of a best practice, yet here we explore “what are some positive outcomes of teaching as social entrepreneurship?”
As a context, during my 7 years of teachers’ training with many different European countries’ guests in Finland, there was a cultural shock to allow it space, as most guests would notice Finnish teachers would have some kind of entrepreneurship around education. They found it clashing with the purpose of education, hence the space to actually see what the limiting belief is that leads in so many cultures to teachers feeling they need to act outside of entrepreneurship. Before working with teachers in the Finnish environment, I worked as a social entrepreneurship facilitator for about 4 years and developed models of social economy in different European countries, mostly in Romania.
I will use the definition of Muhammad Yunus for social entrepreneurship for this article and will also mention that education, because of its scope, is always considered social entrepreneurship.”
“Social entrepreneurship is an initiative or enterprise that uses business methods to solve a social problem.”
Muhammad Yunus
Here is what I learned from being together with educational partners of ODDience2030 in the school hosting us in Albufeira, Algarve, Portugal.
Teaching as Entrepreneurship.
In most cultures, being a teacher allows space in one’s life to cultivate multiple interests and endeavors. This “having time” component has always been declared in countries, for example, Finland, as one of the reasons why young people want to be teachers; they perceive this occupation, this job, as an attractive one. The teacher as a social entrepreneur brings into the classroom a diversity of experiences, even just in an embodied, presence perception; students will pick up on it.
Being Local while Global comes with destruction.
We were surrounded by such famously declared beautiful beaches in the world that invited mass tourism and hence ecological devastation with it. Yet, Albufeira teachers, and students I met too, are very local as well; there is plenty of infrastructure for localization. By which I mean, locals are entrepreneurs, and schools educating in such a context empower students to truly care about the place. As I said to one of our teacher hosts, this is how you cultivate or educate a citizen that will happily continue to thrive there socially and economically while being very much aware of what the beaches mean and meant for generations before.
Embodying a Social-Economic Model for Students.
With teachers perceived as social entrepreneurs, students feel inherently motivated to be problem solvers. Education has the higher purpose of raising citizens able to make up their own minds in a democratic way, with respect to human and more-than-human rights. On a more local level, education connects to everyday local life, life learning (Adi Benea from Indigaia), which is referred to as a critical point: “what students and teachers do in the classroom matters” (mattering, as in creating reality). It is not disconnected and felt irrelevant or boring. And that is sustainable education in practice.
Higher Self-esteem.
As data shows, having a positive image of being a teacher increases the desire for this particular role in a community. It has shown to be an important factor for continuing to be a teacher during challenging times (like COVID, or when the school population with special needs exponentially increased, through unpredictable, ill-planned curriculum reforms, etc.). When teachers act as entrepreneurs, their presence in the room is felt as such. This is a way for teachers to act autonomously, and students mimic that model of autonomy; this is an indirect way of educating autonomous students.
I have the great opportunity to observe these three teachers, and I believe they all helped to see these points. I also easily got into conversation with local youth, and I am not usually chatty when traveling; I tend to be more contemplative. They all asked me, “Are we going to be okay?” “Is there still time to teach about sustainability?” They seemed genuinely aware, and I think that is because education there was very close to a model of social entrepreneurship.”
References:
- Oddience2030 project at www.oddience2030.com
- https://www.muhammadyunus.org/post/2113/social-business
- Documentaries Horizontes da Memória, O Caminho do Paraíso, Albufeira, 1998 at https://youtu.be/8TN4jVk7S68?feature=shared “Algarve: To the End of the World” (2023)
