28 October, 2022

Trudie Murray, the Hincks Centre's Doctoral Researcher, attended the 2022 ISBE Conference in York on 27th-28th October, where she presented her paper ‘Mind the Gap - a mapping of Entrepreneurship Education literature relating to Early Childhood Education’ as part of her PhD research.

The paper presented a scoping review highlighting the gap between literature in the area of entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial teaching and learning within the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) sector.

The paper proposes a framework for bridging the gaps between these two areas of education to encourage entrepreneurship education that is inclusive of students as young as 2.

Conference Paper: ISBE2022

Murray, T., Kenny, B., McGuirk, H. and Cooney, T.M. - ‘Mind the Gap - a mapping of Entrepreneurship Education Literature relating to Early Childhood Education’ - ISBE 2022 (Institute for Small Business & Enterprise), Oct 2022.

abstract

The relationship between entrepreneurship education and early childhood education and care is under-researched and underdeveloped. A whole section of society - children - are at a highly receptive age to engage in entrepreneurial attitudes, behaviours, and activities, yet the broader scope of entrepreneurship education does not include children of preschool age (2.8 to 5.6 years).

Entrepreneurship education should be delivered at an early education level as research evidences that children exposed to entrepreneurial learning opportunities can significantly develop entrepreneurial non-cognitive skills, and this has a noticeably positive influence on their continued education through the school system.  Self-reinforcing non-cognitive skills such as creativity and persistence make it easier for children to develop and apply other important non-cognitive skills and have a crucial influence on subsequent educational stages

However, the transformative role of their educators needs to first be recognised and built upon. Early Childhood Educators need to be equipped with tools to embrace and engage in entrepreneurship education. Academic leaders in entrepreneurship education and early childhood education need to collaborate and build partnerships to embed entrepreneurial teaching within ECEC courses. Policymakers need to recognise the importance of an entrepreneurship education strategy that bridges all levels of education and recognises the ECEC educator as a peer education professional. A number of stakeholders need to cooperate in both research and practice to bring entrepreneurship education to young children. As such, this research provides a scoping review of the literature relating EE and ECEC, highlighting the work and research that needs to be done going forward. This research also proposes a conceptual framework for bridging those gaps and bringing all the necessary stakeholders together.

The full paper submission can be viewed by clicking here.