Do ‘good students’ make better entrepreneurs than ‘bad learners’? Ninth-grade pupils’ perceptions of entrepreneurial abilities within the school’s discursive practices

Introduction

Well, for me at least, the word ‘entrepreneur’ brings to mind somebody that has read a lot or has been good at school, something like that.

It all depends on the person’s character, of course; you’re not gonna start a business just because you got good grades.

The above quotes illustrate two ninth-graders’ divergent views of entrepreneurial ability. The quotes were drawn from our qualitative interview study that explored entrepreneurship education (EE) from a discursive and actor-oriented point of view by focusing on pupils’ perceptions of entrepreneurial abilities and outlooks. It is worth asking the following question: What is the point of studying the school’s discursive practices of EE from the point of view of ability conceptions and pupils’ meaning-making? To explore this question, let us first consider the spirit of EE in European and Finnish education and training policy.

Contemporary European policy for education and training emphasises the importance of enhancing creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training (see, e.g., European Commission, 2005). This has led various European countries to increasingly launch EE programmes in their schools, vocational education institutions and universities. The overall goal of EE is to enable pupils/students, firstly, to develop entrepreneurial attitudes, including self-awareness and self-confidence, that is, discovering and trusting one’s own abilities, taking the initiative, taking risks and creativity and problem solving; secondly, to acquire knowledge of career opportunities, economic and financial literacy and business organisation; and, thirdly, to develop social skills, such as communication and team work (European Commission, 2009). The policy discourse of EE can be seen as a process of reimagining the entrepreneur so that it fits with the enterprising self, attitudes and possibilities in order to arrive at a version that functions well in educational contexts (see, e.g., Berglund, 2013; Dahlstedt and Hertzberg, 2012).

Finland has been one of the pioneers in the field of EE; EE has been included in the curricula at different levels of education since the early 2000s (Komulainen et al., 2009). In 2004, the Finnish Ministry of Education published an Action Plan, related to the Finnish Government Programme, which outlines the policy for EE and represents entrepreneurship themes in education in different levels of education (Finnish Ministry of Education, 2004). EE in the Finnish comprehensive school, which is the context of this study, seeks to promote an enterprising attitude and ‘an outlook of internal entrepreneurship combining flexibility, initiative, creativity and independent action’ among the young. It also encourages them to become self-employed (external entrepreneurship) (Finnish Ministry of Education, 2009). In line with the European policy of education and training, entrepreneurship is introduced in Finnish comprehensive schools by listing desirable individual traits, characteristics, attitudes and abilities.

In 2009, the Finnish Ministry of Education published yet another action plan – a Guideline for Entrepreneurship Education. It stresses networking amongst different forms of education, business and industry, organisations, administrative and political decision-makers and pupils/students’ families (Finnish Ministry of Education, 2009). The action plans have encouraged the implementation of EE in the Finnish education system as a whole, as they manage to merge EE into a larger policy strategy of education, training and economy. In line with the action plans, efforts have been made, for example, for developing curricula, promoting regional and national cooperation with different actors, promoting multidisciplinary research, creating social and research networks of EE and developing teacher training and new learning environments. We can only speculate other possible reasons for the strong commitment to EE in the Finnish education system. ¹

EE then focuses on such general attitudes, motivation, personal attributes and non-theoretical abilities that can and should be developed among all students. The school is regarded as a neutral environment occupied by students with equal possibilities and opportunities to develop their entrepreneurial competencies. The school’s role of selecting and categorising pupils according to their ‘natural’ talents has not been acknowledged or discussed within the political and scholarly accounts of EE. Until recently, the reception of the ideas of EE in schools has been perceived from the point of view of individual attitudes and learning, not as socially negotiated meanings that are construed in a specific institutional context (see Korhonen, 2012). The Finnish comprehensive school’s traditional values and practices are seen as a problem in the light of the aims of EE (e.g. Seikkula-Leino, 2007). However, previous studies have not explored the ways in which the traditional values and practices shape the implementation of EE in schools.

Considering the substantial presence of EE in Finnish schools and wide-ranging experiences of it among the school’s micro-level actors, the research on this topic is still quite uniform with the primary aim of enhancing the implementation of EE in schools. The aims, practices and outcomes of EE appear to be unquestioned and self-evidently valued. The perception of entrepreneurial attitudes and ability manifested in the policy discourse of EE and in the mainstream research is very consistent, whereas the social constructions of the entrepreneur within European (Anderson et al., 2009; Leffler, 2009) and Finnish (Korhonen, 2012) schools are actually much more divergent and ambivalent.

Finally, previous studies on the implementation of EE in the European (and especially Nordic) education systems have mostly investigated how teachers perceive and negotiate the aims and methods of EE (see, e.g., Backström-Widjeskog, 2010; Leffler, 2009; Ruskovaara et al., 2011; Seikkula-Leino et al., 2010). The student perspective is virtually missing. In the policy of EE, young people are treated as somewhat passive targets of EE without any urge or readiness to resist its ability ideals (Komulainen et al., 2013). They are also represented as a homogeneous group, not as representatives of the different social/student positions into which they are placed in the practices of the school. These are the main reasons why research on pupils’ perceptions of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial abilities is needed.

Our study stems from the arguments illustrated above: the presumed neutrality and progressiveness of the aims and values of EE, and a lack of explorations of the multi-voiced micro-level reception of EE in schools. We will reflect on these arguments by approaching EE and the pupils’ accounts of entrepreneurial abilities through the school’s discourse of abilities. We suggest that the reception of EE should be studied within the framework of the school’s discursive practices and the related conceptions of intelligence and abilities. How do pupils who have participated in the school’s practices of EE interpret entrepreneurial abilities? Do they deploy the school’s conventional notion of abilities in their accounts of entrepreneurial abilities, and if so, in what ways? The article is a continuation of our earlier study of the ways in which comprehensive school teachers negotiate the aims of EE and the related student abilities (Korhonen et al., 2012a; Korhonen et al., 2012b). What are the similarities and differences between the pupils’ and the teachers’ accounts? Furthermore, what does the school ultimately count as ideal entrepreneurial abilities? The results are discussed in relation to the trait approach to entrepreneurship, the new ability ideals of EE and the proposed inclusive entrepreneurial pedagogy.

Ideals of entrepreneurship education and the school’s discourse of abilities

We argue that EE, with its ideals of internal and external entrepreneurship, is part of a long historical continuum, within which the comprehensive school system (in Europe and in Finland) has articulated its conceptions of student subjectivities through the discursive frame of the good student. At school, the good student is marked on the one hand by characteristics such as obedience and eagerness to learn (Räty and Snellman, 1995; Youdell, 2006). On the other hand, the good student is construed in a context where individual academic achievements and abilities are compared and ranked; that is, the good student is one with academic talent and theoretical abilities. This interpretation of the good student reflects the meritocratic discourse of abilities and the psychometric notion of intelligence (Danziger, 1990). This notion includes the ranking of students according to the normal distribution expressed in such categories as ‘bright’, ‘mediocre’ and ‘poor’; the definition of intelligence as a mainly cognitive capacity, with an implied distinction between theoretical and practical skills and the corresponding school subjects; and an implicit distinction drawn between male and female abilities and the corresponding school subjects (Räty and Snellman, 1998).

Objectified through everyday practices, the meritocratic discourse of abilities represents relative continuity in the school organisation, from primary school to adult education (Räty and Snellman, 1998; Siivonen, 2010). Despite all criticism, this discourse has maintained its central place because the routines and principles of the school make diversity among individuals an issue that can be conveniently addressed through a differential notion of intelligence (Räty and Snellman, 1998). This is one important reason why educational reforms in Europe have failed to challenge the conventional notions of intelligence (see, e.g., Hart, 1998). The discursive framing of the good student and the differential notion of ability, in particular, are relatively important in the context of EE because of their notable influence on pupils’ learning motivation and how they position themselves and are positioned at school (e.g. Dweck, 1999; Kärkkäinen, 2011; Kasanen, 2003). Moreover, the discursive framing of the good student in EE creates gender and class differences at school (Korhonen, 2012).

Although EE pursues the school’s historical understanding about innate abilities, the conceptions of abilities and intelligence arising from EE shift the emphasis to abilities that have been devalued in formal education so far (Korhonen et al., 2012a). Instead of focusing on academic competences and convergent performance, the aim is to foster multiple forms of talent, such as practical and innovative intelligence (Kourilsky, 1990), and to develop diverse aspects of the individual student’s personality. In a previous study we analysed interviews conducted with a group of Finnish comprehensive school teachers, exploring what they counted as ideal ability and student subjectivity when looking at their pupils from the points of view of EE. We explored whether the teachers’ interpretations intertwined with the comprehensive school’s institutionalised notion of the good student and the political notion of the enterprising self (Korhonen et al., 2012a; Korhonen et al., 2012b). Our results indicated that these teachers considered their pupils’ entrepreneurial abilities and their potential for entrepreneurship by resorting to their school’s traditional discourse of the good student. In their discussions, the teachers created the construction of ‘internal entrepreneurship’, associating it with the pupil’s diligence and responsible attitude towards (school) work. Internal entrepreneurship was presented as an ideal subjectivity for all pupils. Within the construction of ‘external entrepreneurship’, the teachers explicated differences between the pupils’ abilities and relied on their school’s hierarchical division into theoretical and practical abilities. They saw potential for external entrepreneurship firstly in those boys who were not academically accomplished but competent at practical things. Secondly, socially talented, creative, easy-going and risk-taking – but not necessarily academically competent – boys were characterised as ‘entrepreneur types’. Altogether, high-performing and academically talented pupils, especially girls, were excluded from the characterisations of the entrepreneur type of pupil (Korhonen et al., 2012a).

According to our findings, EE challenges the supremacy of theoretical ability (Korhonen et al., 2012a), which has traditionally represented genuine ability and the most valuable form of intelligence at school (Mugny and Carugati, 1989). Although EE is grounded on the school’s meritocratic discourse of abilities, it challenges the traditional hierarchy of abilities in that (1) practical skills are valued more than theoretical skills and (2) the new discourse of ‘entrepreneurial abilities’, highlighting the importance of abilities such as social skills, risk-taking ability and creativity, is gaining ground (Korhonen et al., 2012a). In teachers’ minds, however, there is a discursive struggle stemming from the juxtaposition of economic and educational discourse (see also Anderson et al., 2009; Leffler, 2009): the aim of promoting ‘external entrepreneurship’ at school is supposed to be resisted because it is associated with the ‘hard’ values of business and is considered to increase inequality among pupils (Korhonen et al., 2012a; Korhonen et al., 2012b). Our analysis of the pupils’ perceptions of entrepreneurial abilities aims to investigate whether the encounter of EE with the school’s traditional discourse of abilities also creates a discursive struggle within the pupils’ accounts.

Data and methods

The subjects of this study were 29 15- or 16-year-old pupils (17 girls and 12 boys), who were all in the same ninth-grade group of a comprehensive school in eastern Finland. This particular school was chosen as the setting of our study because it was known for its efforts in the field of EE. We were invited to present our projected study to the headmaster and the entrepreneurship class teacher in September 2010. The headmaster suggested that we conduct interviews with this particular class because many of the students had participated in an optional entrepreneurship course. The teacher of the course gave us further information, according to which the course consisted of the following topics: entrepreneurship in the society, the concept of entrepreneurship (internal and external entrepreneurship), abilities of an entrepreneur and an exercise for planning a business (e.g. business idea/case, stakeholders, marketing).

The data were gathered through nine thematic group interviews. Participation was voluntary for the pupils. The pupils and teachers negotiated the composition of the groups together. The final groups consisted of two to four pupils and were formed on the basis of gender, friendships and the pupils’ timetables. All interviews were conducted within a four-week period (two interviews a week) during the pupils’ classes. We were able to interview two groups at the same time since our four-person research group had two members who took the responsibility of conducting the interviews. The interviews lasted from 40 minutes to 1.5 hours and were transcribed into text files (totalling 337 pages).

The interviews started with a discussion of the pupils’ experiences of EE at their school (theme 1). We also asked the pupils to name people who worked as entrepreneurs; if they did not know any such people, we encouraged them to describe the image of entrepreneurs and the abilities that a real or imagined entrepreneur might have and would need in her/his work (theme 2). The pupils were also asked to consider the kinds of pupils/classmates they could see as potential future entrepreneurs and then to describe the abilities of those pupils (theme 3).

As a part of the interview, the pupils were presented a specific team selection task (theme 4). They were asked to imagine an enterprise contest in which they had to establish a growth-oriented, profit-seeking firm and a small-scale business, and then select three of their classmates for each of the two teams. We also asked them to say why they selected these classmates and what abilities or skills the selected classmates had that might help the team to win the contest. The purpose of the team selection task was to encourage the pupils to reflect on the abilities of the entrepreneur at a more (inter)personal level (as opposed to the general images of the entrepreneur and her/his abilities). The last part of the interviews focused on the pupils’ educational and occupational plans and prospects (theme 5). They were encouraged to consider whether they could see themselves working as entrepreneurs in the future and, if so, on what basis. ²

Common sense conceptions of intelligence and abilities are multifarious, containing many controversial themes (Räty and Snellman, 1995). Therefore, we approached EE and the notions of abilities it has produced as a discursive phenomenon, that is, as an array of various meanings, representations and stories that underlies both entrepreneurship and EE (see Korhonen et al., 2012a; Korhonen et al., 2012b). Our approach represents poststructuralist discursive psychology, in which a discourse refers to the linguistic resources linked to particular institutions and practices. The poststructuralist framework recognises both the constitutive force of discourse and, in particular, discursive practices, recognising at the same time that people are capable of exercising choice in relation to those practices. In line with Davies and Harré (1990), we argue that the constitutive force of each discursive practice lies in its provision of subject positions. These positions incorporate both a conceptual repertoire and a location for persons within the structure of rights for those who use that repertoire (Davies and Harré, 1990: 262). Repertoires can be viewed as ‘relatively coherent ways of talking about objects and events in the world’, or as parts of larger discourses that set limits to the meaning-making in the course of everyday social interaction (Edley, 2001: 198).

Our analysis ³ focused on themes 3 and 4. The other interview themes are not included in the analysis presented in this article. We first searched for the different discourses and repertoires that the pupils used in their evaluations of entrepreneurial abilities. When people use repertoires, they position themselves and are positioned by others as a certain kind of person (Edley, 2001). Therefore, we also traced the subject positions produced within the different discourses and repertoires, that is, explored the ways in which the pupils positioned themselves and their classmates in their talk. As speakers, people acquire beliefs about themselves and others, and these beliefs do not necessarily form a unified, coherent whole (Davies and Harré, 1990). We thus also looked at the variation and contradictions in the discourses, repertoires and subject positions deployed.

We consider our nine thematic group interviews from a school as a case that enables us to illustrate the variation and complexity of the social construction of entrepreneurship in the school context. We argue that with this particular case we managed to reach the end goal of empirical saturation. Obviously, our data, limited in terms of the number of participants, is not sufficient to give a generalised picture of the ways in which young people perceive entrepreneurial abilities. The case provides a proper insight into the rich repertoire in which entrepreneurial abilities are categorised and evaluated by young pupils, however.

It is possible that the interview questions and methods encouraged pupils to look at entrepreneurship from the point of view of individual traits and innate abilities. Moreover, in this study, we can only speculate the impact of the entrepreneurship course on the students’ perceptions. On the other hand, this is not among our main concerns, as we instead concentrate on exploring the impact of the school’s traditional discourse of abilities on the students’ meaning-making of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship requires academic talent

This analysis section starts with a presentation of the different repertoires that constituted the meritocratic discourse of abilities in the pupils’ accounts of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial abilities. Our analysis revealed that the pupils deployed the repertoire of academic talent intheir talk. In this repertoire, the conceptions of entrepreneurial abilities were grounded on the evaluation of the person’s academic success and/or failure, that is, school achievement. The pupils considered entrepreneurial abilities by reflecting on their own and their classmates’performance in school subjects. The repertoire included a distinction between practical andtheoretical abilities as well as a categorisation of classmates into ‘bright’, ‘mediocre’ and ‘poor’ students. Interestingly enough, the pupils’ accounts of entrepreneurial abilities in terms of this repertoire included zero speculations about the person’s attitudes, motivation or personal characteristics.

In the repertoire of academic talent, the so-called good students were positioned in a very contradictory way – as either potential entrepreneurs or those unlikely to become entrepreneurs. On the one hand, the pupils thought that good students were potential entrepreneurs simply because they had academic talent. The entrepreneurial competences of the good students were thus associated with academic achievement and ‘book learning’. Our interviewees seemed to think that the academic talent of good students is transferable as such to any sort of work and that it predicts success in working life, including entrepreneurship.

Well, for me at least, the word entrepreneur brings to mind somebody that has read a lot or has been good at school, something like that.

Somehow I think that since they’ve done so good otherwise, they’ll think they’ll get on fine in that too.

So, as they have more ambition and wanna do well at school, like, they must also want to do well in working life you know, and maybe they’ll just do everything more ambitiously.

On the other hand, many young interviewees thought that good students are perhaps not likely to become entrepreneurs because, due to their innate talents, they have access to secure and regular paid work. In these accounts, good students were positioned as safety-oriented, risk-avoiding ones.

Interviewer:

So, in your opinion, do those pupils who do real well at school somehow easily set out for an entrepreneurial career?

… so maybe they wanna, I dunno, maybe they wanna play it safe somehow, so that they won’t need to start taking care of that business, so that they get regular wages and everything is just a lot easier if you don’t have your own… Well, me at least, I would rather take a job where you get good wages and the job is secure, rather than a business … but of course, they [good students] might also if they find a good one.

The analysis also showed that a classmate’s success in theoretical school subjects – especially mathematics and foreign languages – was the most common criterion for selecting that pupil as a team member in the team selection task. None of our interviewees mentioned a pupil with practical hands-on skills, for example. Instead, as the following extracts illustrate, success in the subjects that are traditionally highly valued at school served as strong evidence of one’s intelligence in entrepreneurship as well.

Interviewer:

On what grounds did you select these pupils for the enterprise?

She’s a straight-A student, that’s why.

They’re real bright.

He seems like a person that might be a little smarter.

He knows how to use common sense but has book knowledge, too.

She’s good at school and would surely have a … yeah, and she gets everything right … she just knows everything fearfully well.

She’s really wise, like, and is able to make sensible decisions, and has an insanely good report card, and knows foreign languages and mathematics.

Well, maybe school performance comes into the picture because if they have the stamina to study hard at school, maybe they’ll also have the stamina to start an enterprise.

Success in mathematics and languages, in particular, is typically regarded as an indicator of a person’s innate and genuine intelligence at school (see, e.g., Kasanen, 2003). Accordingly, school subjects can be seen as social categorisations reflecting the school’s hierarchy of abilities (Räty et al., 2006). In their accounts of entrepreneurial abilities, the pupils valued high achievement in certain school subjects above others, which reflects the powerful effect of the school’s notion of natural giftedness on EE.

In the repertoire of academic talent, our interviewees also positioned ‘mediocre’ and ‘poor’ students as potential entrepreneurs. They thought that despite the lack of high grades, mediocre pupils could become entrepreneurs if they succeeded in certain school subjects. In this case, too, mathematics and languages were associated with the person’s real intelligence and seen as basic skills for entrepreneurship. One interviewee stated as follows: ‘Well you don’t necessarily need top grades. If you’re just average so that you know your math and languages, you can start a business on the strength of that’.

Our interviewees thought that pupils who were sort of ‘poor students’ or ‘bad learners’ at school might become entrepreneurs in an occupational field that required hands-on abilities or other non-theoretical competences. The positioning of a pupil as poor at school was gendered and classed; in the views of the interviewees, poor students were mainly boys, who were considered likely to become small business owners in an occupational field that could be characterised as masculine and working class.

Those students who get fives and sixes, they just make me think of some kind of handyman right away.

Yeah, and quite a few of those go to vocational school, for example, especially if you’re a boy, and boys are a bit like, they can’t concentrate too well, at least here in junior high they can’t, so many, or at least more boys than girls, so they might start a car repair shop or something after they’ve got out of vocational school you know.

So, if you start a business of your own, all you need is knowhow of that particular field, so that if you’re no good at school, like in the mother tongue and such things, and you start a business like a car repair shop, for example, well that’s not a problem.

The above extracts show that within the meritocratic discourse of abilities, the pupils also considered the possible educational and vocational paths and prospects that a person would have in terms of her/his (academic) abilities, thereby deploying the repertoire of predetermined career. According to these views, good students usually end up at university and become ‘doctors’, for instance, whereas poor students end up in vocational school, which prepares them for practical jobs, such as a construction worker. The pupils’ positioning of good and poor students and their possible educational and occupational paths reflects the cultural distinction between theoretical and hands-on abilities, with an implied distinction between male and female and working-class and middle-class abilities.

In the school’s discursive practices, a good student is not only academically talented but also a diligent and hard-working one, that is, a ‘nice’ student. When our interviewees chose teammates in the team selection task, they relied on the repertoire of the diligent student in addition to the repertoire of academic talent, as the following extracts illustrate.

She’s good at school and like, always calmly and diligently takes care of everything, is calm and conscientious and everything, always takes good care of everything.

She’s really always so well organised, with exercise books really tidy, always.

Again, that depends, but I believe, actually, … because at school it’s like, it’s like you have to think of all sorts of things on your own, just like in entrepreneurship, and you have to take responsibility for your own doings and …

In this repertoire, the pupils positioned good students as potential entrepreneurs simply because they had a responsible attitude towards schoolwork. In the team selection task, they often chose pupils – girls in particular – who were seen as ‘dutiful’, ‘careful’ and ‘systematic’ in their everyday tasks.

Challenging the value of academic talent

In their group interviews, the pupils also questioned the value of academic talent in entrepreneurship. Firstly, they did it by adopting the repertoire of common sense. In this repertoire, they made a discursive contrast between academic talent and other forms of intelligence and argued that good grades are not a necessary precondition for successful entrepreneurship. More generally, they questioned the notion that academic achievement serves as evidence of one’s intelligence; instead, they thought that even a student who does poorly at school might be ‘intelligent’ and have what it takes to become an entrepreneur. Pupils with ‘common sense’, ‘rationality’ or a proper ‘mental attitude’ were positioned as entrepreneurial. According to the interviewees, such personal qualities might well compensate for lack of academic abilities and poor motivation for schoolwork and thereby lead to a successful entrepreneurial career in the future.

Yes, there’s plenty of advice, including like what sort of business would be worth starting and so on, but all you need is common sense to figure out whether this or that sort of business makes any sense. Those school grades are not necessarily all that important.

Grade seven like, and even lower grades, but that does not mean, you know, that you’re not bright or can’t do things … maybe school just doesn’t interest you like others, you know, or that does not rule out the possibility that you could sometime be [an entrepreneur]…

Well it’s like, I guess you may well succeed as an entrepreneur, too, even if you hadn’t yet, even if you hadn’t done good, you know, at comprehensive school, for instance, not particularly good, like, I don’t know.

I think maybe success at school is not the key thing here after all, that it’s more of a question of your mental attitude you know.

Well surely even those who don’t do that well at school, even they can do just as well in business as those who do well at school, grades do not necessarily count for all that much.

Well it really depends on your character, of course, I mean you don’t, you just don’t start a business on the strength of your school grades.

The above interpretations reflect the cultural image, passed on by the media, of the heroic entrepreneur who is successful in life without a grammar school diploma. These interpretations also challenge the notion that success in (theoretical) school subjects indicates the person’s real intelligence (Räty et al., 1995). It should also be noted that the cultural discourse of common sense includes the view that people with higher education and academic talent represent ‘official wisdom’ only, their intelligence being based on ‘book learning’ (Kortteinen, 1992).

The second repertoire to emerge from the pupils’ accounts was the repertoire of personal characteristics. In this repertoire, the person’s entrepreneurial abilities were not evaluated in terms of her/his performance in school subjects or the division into theoretical and practical abilities. Instead, the pupils considered entrepreneurial abilities by characterising their own and their classmates’ personal attributes and qualities. Particularly in the team selection task, the pupils made choices on the basis of criteria other than those of school achievement or theoretical/practical abilities. In this context, they positioned potential ‘enterprising partners’ by listing personal attributes, such as social skills (politeness, adaptability and ability to get along with everyone), creativity, desire to succeed and courage.

At least he’s surely able to… he’s able to look at things from many points of view, and then he would surely come up with all sorts of colourful new stories and things to say…

In particular, both of the girls would have creativity.

They have the courage to do it.

He’ll surely want to try out all sorts of new things…

Well, maybe he’s kinda bold, you know, or kinda… like he’s not shy although he’s not good, he’s not too good at all at school.

Well, a lot of it is sociability and just that, you know, thirst for winning, or like you wanna be successful, so there could be a whole lot of students interested in, you know, entrepreneurship.

He has, like, an awful lot of ideas and he brings them out a lot, and also, he’s a bit like, like a leader, and everybody trusts him.

He’s quite inclined to take the leader’s position, you know, in our class, and he also talks an awful lot like he always wants a little bit more.

There was an implied suggestion that although the entrepreneur type of pupil with creativity, social skills and boldness is not necessarily good at school and might lack interest in schoolwork, he has other interests and ideas. Some of the pupils thought that good students might even lack attributes and abilities that are important in entrepreneurship, such as social skills: ‘What comes to my mind about a straight-A student is, well the image that comes to mind is he is not necessarily the most sociable person on earth’. This characterisation of the entrepreneur type of pupil reflects the negative image of ‘nerd’ or ‘bookworm’, one who is solely occupied with mental activity and matters pertaining to learning and thinking and is disconnected from social relations and activities (Räty et al., 2011).

We suggest that the repertoires of common sense and personal characteristics constituted the discourse of entrepreneurial abilities in the interviews. In this discourse, the importance of academic talent for entrepreneurship was challenged; personal attributes and qualities were valued over academic achievement. It should be noted, however, that within this discourse, the pupils also made constant, contrasting references to ‘school grades’ and ‘intelligence’, even though entrepreneurial abilities were not evaluated in terms of one’s success in school subjects.

Beyond intelligence and abilities: social relations and personal interests as bases of entrepreneurship

The interviews also included talk about entrepreneurship that was not based on evaluations of the person’s abilities or other internal attributes. In the repertoire of loyal friendship the pupils considered the significance of social relations in entrepreneurship. In the team selection task, the ranking of classmates was not based solely on entrepreneurial abilities or school achievement; social relations and friendships in informal school interaction also acted as criteria for inclusion and exclusion (see also Berg, 2006; Kasanen, 2003). Informal school interaction refers to non-educational interaction in and out of the classroom, student cultures and other informal hierarchies at school (see Berg, 2006; Gordon et al., 2000). According to Kasanen (2003), pupils tend to favour classmates who are academically competent students and nice friends. In our study, heart-to-heart friendship as well as ‘good chemistry’ with the imagined business partners acted as criteria for selecting team members.

Well me at least, I’d choose my best friend ‘cause I can him trust even if I couldn’t trust the others, I mean properly trust you know, so at least I could trust him.

Well I dunno, it should be like, just the right person you know, for you can’t put up for years and years with somebody who’s not so nice you know.

When considering their own possibilities of becoming small business owners or profit-seeking entrepreneurs, the pupils made absolutely no references to school achievement, academic abilities or any abilities at all. Instead, they evaluated their own potential for entrepreneurship according to the criteria of personal interests and finding a suitable occupational field. Our young interviewees were willing to become entrepreneurs one day only if they could find an interesting field and a profitable business idea.

If I could think of a good business, like a profitable one you know, I guess I could become an entrepreneur.

If I could come up with a good business idea, something I believed would sell well, well surely I’d start a business you know, absolutely.

If I could find a suitable business idea, sure I could try it out.

Generally, in this repertoire the pupils were more optimistic, even overly optimistic, about their occupational possibilities and outlooks compared with the repertoires of academic talent and predetermined career, which reflected a ‘determinist view of individual potential’ (Hart, 1998). It might well be the case, however, that pupils at this age are inclined to use personal interests as the main criteria for their occupational choices and prospects outside the context of entrepreneurship as well.

Entrepreneurial abilities at school: comparing pupils’ and teachers’ views

We conclude by comparing our results with the findings from our previous studies, that is, teachers’ perceptions of their pupils’ entrepreneurial abilities (Korhonen et al., 2012a). Pupils and teachers represent different positions in the school context, but their conceptions of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial abilities are equally shaped by the school’s institutional discursive practices, which set the framework for their meaning-making. Pupils and teachers construct their views about entrepreneurship within this particular context but are also capable of challenging and resisting the prevailing discursive practices.

There are several interesting similarities between the pupils’ and teachers’ views. Both evaluated the pupils’ educational and occupational possibilities and prospects while characterising entrepreneurial abilities. The school’s meritocratic discourse of abilities held its ground in both the pupils’ and the teachers’ accounts: both reproduced the hierarchical hand–head division in their talk. At the same time, they also reproduced the related categorisations into male/female and middle-class/working-class abilities.

The pupils’ and the teachers’ conceptions of entrepreneurial abilities were different, however, in their positioning of good students as entrepreneurs. The teachers made a clear contrast between good students and the entrepreneur type of students (Korhonen et al., 2012a). They mentioned neither the academically talented nor the obedient, dutiful and ‘nice’ students as entrepreneur types. Instead, they positioned pupils with practical, hands-on skills and/or social skills and creativity as the most entrepreneurial ones (Korhonen et al., 2012a). The pupils saw both the academically talented and the ‘nice’, dutiful students as potential entrepreneurs. They did not equate practical skills with entrepreneurial abilities. On the other hand, they questioned the value of academic achievement for entrepreneurship and regarded certain personal characteristics, qualities and attitudes (such as creativity, social skills and boldness), as well as ‘common sense’, as more important than school grades. Both the teachers and the pupils said that the entrepreneur types of pupils are ‘smart’ in spite of their possible lack of academic success.

We can conclude that in comparison with the teachers, the pupils were more convinced about the necessity and value of academic talent for entrepreneurship. Presumably, pupils have learnt that diligent schoolwork and obedient behaviour are recognised and valued at school and that these qualities and ways of acting might therefore also be desirable in entrepreneurship. Moreover, they seem to think that good academic performance reveals the person’s real intelligence and possibilities for success in working life. At the age of 15–16 years, pupils have not yet adopted the new ability ideals constructed in working life. Furthermore, they seem not to be familiar with the ability repertoire culturally associated with the entrepreneur. It is worth noticing, however, that the pupils’ views were two-fold in terms of the value of theoretical abilities and school achievement for entrepreneurship.

The teachers clearly thought about the current trends and demands in working life when they evaluated their students’ entrepreneurial potential. In their accounts of EE, they rejected the ‘hard business values’, such as opportunistic competition and a profit-seeking attitude, but nevertheless called for new entrepreneurial abilities, such as risk-taking, creativity and social skills, that they found important in working life (Korhonen et al., 2012a; Korhonen et al., 2012b). In the process of characterising entrepreneurial abilities, they criticised the school’s traditional pedagogical practices and seem to be responding to the cultural debates about the school being too theoretical, too feminine, incapable of acknowledging the whole spectrum of individual talents, particularly non-theoretical and ‘extra-curricular’ abilities, and failing to serve the personal needs of students (Korhonen et al., 2012a; Korhonen et al., 2012b). In the light of this debate, paying special attention to academically successful and diligent pupils represents ‘old-fashioned’ pedagogy. The teachers who participated in our study worried about the boys who were bad learners of sorts and poor at theoretical subjects but competent in other areas; it is these boys that were regarded as the most entrepreneurial pupils in the teachers’ views (Korhonen et al., 2012a). We suggest that the worry about the boys probably stems from the educational discourses and debates mentioned above.

The pupils’ interpretations of entrepreneurial abilities were also gendered and classed but perhaps not to the same extent. Obviously, their perceptions lacked the critique of the school system since they had not yet encountered the cultural discourses of schooling. Nevertheless, the ‘troubling boys discourse’ (see, e.g., Lahelma, 2005) is also reproduced in their accounts, particularly in the way they consider the entrepreneurial potential of their male classmates who do poorly at school. According to their views, however, entrepreneurship is also a possible career for academically talented girls or boys; nice and responsible girls; ‘bad learners’ with poor grades (mostly boys); bold, creative and socially talented entrepreneur types; and pupils with ‘common sense’ and a proper attitude. To sum up, pupils’ perceptions of entrepreneurial abilities are broader and more diverse than those of teachers.

The discourse of entrepreneurial abilities occurred in the pupils’ talk as well. Within this discursive frame, pupils and teachers alike questioned the importance of academic talent for entrepreneurship. Social talent and creativity were associated with entrepreneurial ability in both the pupils’ and the teachers’ accounts. Boldness and the ability to take risks were also mentioned as proper personal qualities of an entrepreneur. Obviously, such qualities are compatible with the school’s notions of ideal abilities. This kind of interpretation may stem from the topical school debates that highlight the importance of such pedagogical practices that can foster social competences and creativity among the students. Accordingly, shyness and lack of boldness and risk-taking ability were regarded as qualities undesirable in entrepreneurship. Both the pupils and the teachers implied that good students might lack risk-taking abilities and have a need for secure paid work and therefore might not be the most entrepreneurial pupils.

Discussion

As noted above, in the European and Finnish policy discourse of EE, the school is regarded as a neutral context in which talents of all different kinds are equally valued. Moreover, the school’s pedagogical practices are considered to be in need of change to ensure that the new ideals of entrepreneurial attitudes and abilities could be adopted and fostered without burdens from the past, such as the comprehensive school’s historical values of stability, safety and tradition. EE is seen as a new, progressive and (gender- and class-) neutral practice of schooling that nurtures and values multiple forms of individual talents. In Finland (and in other Nordic countries) there is a call for a particular entrepreneurial pedagogy that would enable pupils to work on improving themselves, emphasising the joy of creating, innovativeness and awareness of the value of their own interests and passions (e.g. Seikkula-Leino, 2007; see also Berglund, 2013).

Accordingly, the trait approach to the entrepreneur, which has been questioned and criticised for creating a heroic and gendered image of the enterprising self (e.g. Holmgren and From, 2005; Korhonen, 2012), seems to be challenged. Teaching with the right methods is perceived as a transformative power capable of changing students in a very positive way and liberating them from their previous, safety-oriented mentalities and the negative impacts of traditional teaching methods (Dahlstedt and Hertzberg, 2012; Leffler, 2006). In this framework, abilities tend to be considered in isolation from hierarchical social positions and contexts – particularly those of the school.

Even so, the school institution is a powerful site, providing students with discourses and repertoires through which they can make sense of themselves, their abilities and their positions at school and in working life (O’Flynn and Petersen, 2007). In this article we analysed the ways in which pupils who have participated in the school’s practices of EE interpret entrepreneurial abilities in relation to the school’s discourse of abilities. Moreover, we traced the similarities and differences between the pupils’ and the teachers’ views and asked what counted as ideal entrepreneurial abilities at school. Our analysis shows how the school frames the interpretative repertoires available to its micro-level actors in regard to entrepreneurial ability with its discursive practices. In comprehensive school in Finland, entrepreneurial abilities are considered within the meritocratic discourse of abilities. This discursive frame sets the possibilities and boundaries within which young students, as well as their teachers, articulate their views of entrepreneurial ability.

Although EE is said to be about developing and changing every student’s individual attitudes, motives and self-conception so as to make her/him more entrepreneurial, the practices of the school turn these characteristics into a part of the ideology of natural giftedness, with all its differentiating and categorising effects (Mugny and Carugati, 1989, Räty and Snelmann, 1995). EE reproduces the school’s gendered and classed division of abilities into theoretical and practical abilities and makes use of the psychometric notion of intelligence that entails the ranking of students in categories such as ‘bright’, ‘mediocre’ and ‘poor’. An interesting paradox of EE is that although it seeks to ‘promote a general enterprising attitude and a new basic mentality for every citizen’ (The Finnish Ministry of Education and Education, 2004: 15), it is based on a logic according to which (entrepreneurial) abilities are individual, internal characteristics and personal properties. In the school context, the general aims of EE are thus converted into innate abilities. EE thereby ends up naturalising individual differences and reproducing the trait approach to the entrepreneur. This does not surprise us, for the comprehensive school system tends to treat ‘individuality’ in terms of differential individuality and thus the new pedagogical concepts are likely to become exclusive in the school context. In the light of our findings, this seems to be the case with entrepreneurship, too.

EE not only reproduces the school’s traditional conceptions of abilities but also acts as a new practice of evaluation and selection at school. It creates new dimensions for the categorisation of individual differences and produces new, exclusive hierarchies of abilities. The aim of EE is to promote different kinds of individual talents, with special attention paid to entrepreneurial abilities. For example, Anne Ward (2004: 106) calls for a Multiple Intelligence Theory (see Gardner, 1993) by arguing that ‘students that might be talented in other areas [than linguistics and mathematics] but do not do well in traditional assessment may not come to realise their innate talents’. According to Ward (2004), the skills and strengths of the typical entrepreneur lie in interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences. We argue that another paradox of EE is that while celebrating multiple forms of talents and highlighting entrepreneurial abilities, it excludes students who are seen as ‘bright’, that is, successful according to traditional intelligence criteria.

Pupils with non-theoretical abilities, such as social skills and creativity, are positioned very positively in terms of entrepreneurship and thereby included in the practices of EE. At comprehensive schools in Finland, the discourse of enterprise abilities is clearly emerging along with the meritocratic discourse of abilities. Although the school’s meritocratic discourse of abilities also structures the evaluation of entrepreneurial abilities, EE seems to challenge the school’s hierarchy of abilities; social skills and creativity, in particular, are considered to be forms of intelligence in EE (Korhonen, 2012). The emergence of the discourse of enterprise ability is a transformational process that brings into play a new set of interpretations of ability and intelligence. In doing so, however, it does not question their innate and differential-psychological nature.

There are, then, at least two polemic discourses of abilities occurring in EE at school. EE’s ability ideals and the proposed inclusive pedagogy seem to be incompatible with the school’s differential, exclusive conceptions of abilities. One might speculate, however, whether EE can be regarded as an inclusive pedagogy in the first place, as it is grounded on the trait approach to the entrepreneur. In this respect, the ambivalence between EE and the school’s more traditional ability conceptions is apparent for it is mainly concerned with differing valuations of personal traits and qualities.

To sum up, the definition of a ‘good student’ in EE expands at one end and narrows at the other. Pupils seem to have a stronger belief in the power of formal education and academic abilities than teachers do. It is worth noting that pupils’ interpretations are also more ambivalent: in their minds, entrepreneurial abilities are not located in a certain ability category or evaluated according to the school’s intelligence criteria alone. For example, social relations, personal interests and friendships are used as evaluative criteria for entrepreneurship. This is an interesting finding that deserves further consideration.

We also find it interesting that the European aim of fostering entrepreneurial abilities among all citizens is expected to be attained through the institution that has a long and successful history of upholding the differential notion of intelligence and abilities. We argue that the implementation of EE at Finnish or European schools is not a matter of a fluent response to the European educational trends and the political aims of EE; rather, it is a question of dealing with the prevailing discourses of the school and with the conventional conceptions of abilities they embody (see Korhonen, 2012). Obviously, the school’s discourse of abilities is Pan-European/universal, as is the policy discourse of EE, but the implementation of the ideals of EE in schools may still vary across national school systems and cultures; in terms of future research, this variation needs to be investigated (see also Anderson et al., 2009).

Our information about the pupils who participated in this study is limited to their school, age and gender. Presumably, the pupils’ social background and social positions (e.g. parents’ education and occupational position) might well have affected their interpretations. Previous studies show that academically educated parents favour the school’s ideology of natural giftedness, whereas parents with vocational education emphasise the working-class view that education produces only ‘official wisdom’ and thus reject the view that university education and high academic achievements are signs of an individual’s mental capability (Räty, 2003). Further research is definitely needed to explore the ways in which pupils from different social positions negotiate the category of entrepreneur and the abilities related to it; for instance, do pupils from middle-class families highlight the importance of academic achievement and theoretical abilities for entrepreneurship more than pupils from working-class families do? It would also be interesting to further explore the power of social relations in pupils’ evaluations of their classmates’ entrepreneurial abilities, for the school’s informal hierarchies and peer relationships seem to influence pupils’ accounts of entrepreneurship.