Fostering entrepreneurship and innovation through Home Economics education

Abstract

Entrepreneurs are powerful agents of change who bring about significant contributions to society and stimulate economic growth with innovative employment opportunities. This is paramount to revive the global economy and allow profit-making opportunities to act in response to global financial crisis and the need to safeguard the economy. “Education for Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation” is one of the six cross-curricular themes in the National Curriculum Framework launched in 2012, calling for a pro-innovation culture. The overall aim of the study is to explore how entrepreneurship education, as an innovation in the Maltese context, is adopted by Home Economics teachers in Malta. This study was guided by the Diffusion of Innovation model (Rogers, 2003) and studied this cross-curricular theme in the subject of Home Economics. It included a three phase qualitative process to address three research questions. The first phase explored the quality of entrepreneurship awareness and practice amongst Home Economics educators through focus group interviews, where narrow perceptions of entrepreneurship and the need to diffuse, support and train teachers about entrepreneurship emerged. In response to these findings and with the aim of promoting the NCF’s cross-curricular theme, a resouce pack with activities for fostering entrepreneurship through Home Economics for Upper Secondary Level was designed based on a handbook by Baldacchino and Pulis Xerxen (2013) and distributed amongst a group of teachers who showed eagerness to acquire more knowledge on entrepreneurship. Feedback collected from students and teachers involved showed positive transmission of key competences of entrepreneurship to students, following the implementation of a number of activities chosen by the teachers. Phase three revealed significant findings through a focus group with the teachers involved in the implementation of the resource pack, most notably claiming a need to be further trained about innovative pedagogy, be provided with support such as teaching aids to instigate awareness, interest and reinforcement, to then professionally execute national education strategies.