Bernal-Guerrero, A. (Ed.) (2021). Educación emprendedora. Fundamentos y elementos para la transferencia e innovación pedagógica [Entrepreneurship education: Foundations and elements for pedagogical transfer and innovation] (Roberto Sanz Ponce).

Authors

Roberto Sanz Ponce

Commentarios | Comments

Bernal-Guerrero, A. (Ed.) (2021).

Resumen

Contemporary society is character­ised by volatility, uncertainty, complexi­ty, and ambiguity (VUCA), as defined by Zygmunt Bauman, and requires citizens to possess a collection of requisite skills, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour in order to confront the problems, chal­lenges, and obstacles of the twenty-first century and so be able to interpret, com­prehend, and transform social reality. Accordingly, from the Lisbon European Council (2000) to the present day, a series of policies, conventions, regulations, and programmes have been implemented and delivered both nationally and interna­tionally, in which entrepreneurial culture is promoted as one possible response to this set of challenges posed by the knowl­edge society. The need to implement en­trepreneurship education is a result of these initiatives. At the level of education in Spain, this need is embodied in the inclusion of the entrepreneurial compe­tence in Spain’s most recent education acts (the Organic Education Act [LOE, 2006] and the Organic Education Im­ provement Act [LOMCE, 2013]), which display a growing concern with the intro­duction of this practice in the basic and obligatory education of all students. ,

The authors of this work present an understanding of the entrepreneurial competence as something broader than mere development of the economic and/ or business dimensions. It is a new the­oretical educational focus approached from a humanist perspective. Therefore, this vision also considers the develop­ment of a series of personal and social values directed at the construction of life projects, values that enable the con­struction of a true entrepreneurial iden­tity. It is a matter of bringing school and educational practice closer to entrepre­neurial culture, the world of trade and business, by creating joint learning com­munities where certain personal quali­ties are developed in students: self-con­fidence, leadership, handling failure, creativity, innovation, optimism, initia­tive, autonomy, responsibility, and per­sonal maturity. Qualities that indicate a clear concern for entrepreneurship edu­cation understood as a project of human­ising education. ,

In this work, the phenomenon of en­trepreneurship is approached from a holis-tic perspective in which the aim is not just to develop a repertoire of skills and a body of knowledge around the subject, as noted above. Instead, it pursues the im­plementation of an ethical, civic, cultural, social, and personal vision of the entrepre­neurial phenomenon, taking education at non-university levels as a foundation and springboard for the construction of an en­trepreneurial culture. Therefore, an edu­cation that improves students’ personal development and has an impact in the so­cial sphere is pursued. ,

To put this entrepreneurship ed­ucation in place, the authors note the importance of teachers having training in entrepreneurship, taking four funda­mental principles as a basis: applicabil­ity, the constructivist view of learning, interdisciplinarity, and transferability. In addition, a methodological training is required for undertaking this type of teaching. A teaching that is practical, active, experiential, and close to experi­ence. One where students undertake the fundamental role in their own learning process, becoming the main figure and centre of the educational process. The teacher training that the authors call for is a response to two aspects: on the one hand, there is a need to provide teachers with suitable pedagogical and methodological resources for teaching the entrepreneurial competence, and on the other hand, there is a need to turn them into educational entrepre­neurs. A training, both theoretical–con­ceptual and practical–methodological, that takes into account methodological principles that are close to observation­al learning, cooperative learning, pro­ject-based learning, experiential and ex­ploratory learning, and problem-based learning, among other types. ,

To carry out all of these initiatives and tackle the topics listed, this book, edited by Professor Antonio Bernal, contains a number of chapters written by a varied group of academics from public and pri­vate universities in Spain (Universidad de Sevilla, Universidad Internacional de la Rioja, Universidad de Burgos, Uni­versidad Complutense de Madrid, ESIC [Business & Marketing School], and Uni­versidad de Castilla-La Mancha). In these chapters, the topic of entrepreneurship education is analysed from a variety of different perspectives. Consequently, the aim of this work is clearly holistic. The chapters and authors are distributed as follows: Chapter 1, by Antonio Bernal, provides an extensive conceptual foun­dation for the meaning and scope of en­trepreneurship education, defining the concept of entrepreneurial identity as the basis of educational activity. Chapter 2, by Arantxa Azqueta, presents an analy­sis of the different policies and measures from different international institutions, locating entrepreneurship education in the framework of an international per­spective. Chapter 3, by Margarita Núñez, describes the future of entrepreneur-ial competence in a society marked by a digital economy and the role schools and teachers must play in this new education­al focus. Chapter 4, by Inmaculada Jaén, Joaquín Obando, and Francisco Liñán, examines the impact of local sociocultural context on economic development and on entrepreneurial capacity. This situation leads the authors to reconsider the use­fulness of entrepreneurship education as a tool for the development and growth of the youth population. Chapter 5, by Car­olina Fernández-Salinero, considers the curricular dimension of entrepreneur­ship education, its role in Spain’s educa­tional system, and the need to implement active and participatory methodologies as a mechanism for social, personal, and economic development. Chapter 6, by An­tonio Cárdenas and Elisabet Montoro, examines the complex world of teacher training. It considers the need for spe­cific training for teachers in entrepre­neurship education, analysing the areas associated with training and the princi­ples that should govern it. Chapter 7, by Isabel Rico, Tamara de la Torre, Cami­no Escolar, Ascensión Palomares, Diego Jiménez, and Alfredo Jiménez-Eguiza­bal, considers the concept of social entre­preneurship for what it describes as the changemaker concept. It proposes an ed­ucation that develops a new citizenship, developing a citizen ethos among stu­dents that can promote transformation, turning the citizen into an agent of social change. Chapter 8, by Antonio Bernal and Antonio Cárdenas, evaluates entre­preneurship education taking the opin­ions of students and teachers, obtained in research carried out in secondary schools as its reference. It also analyses entrepreneurship education programmes in the opinion of the teachers of this sub­ject. Finally, Chapter 9, again by Antonio Bernal and Antonio Cárdenas, sets out a series of instruments for evaluating en­trepreneurship education in secondary students and analyses the pertinence and relevance of each of them. Ultimately, this work has a clear pedagogical charac­ter and a new theoretical focus on edu­cation approached from a humanist per­spective that can become a key element for researchers and teachers in the field of education who are interested in a new educational outlook that can combine realism and humanism, two approaches that are sadly all too often in opposition. ,

Roberto Sanz Ponce ■

Citación recomendada | Recommended citation

Ponce, R. (2023) . Bernal-Guerrero, A. (Ed.) (2021). Educación emprendedora. Fundamentos y elementos para la transferencia e innovación pedagógica [Entrepreneurship education: Foundations and elements for pedagogical transfer and innovation] (Roberto Sanz Ponce).. Revista Española de Pedagogía(1). https://www.revistadepedagogia.org/rep/vol0/iss1/28