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Introduction

20 April, 2016 - 16:59

In the era of global economy, Brazil is actually transforming its socio-economical needs, creating a new base for local businesses that compete on the national and international markets. This global force is provoking pressure to local entrepreneurs in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. Considering that Brazil has, in the past, suffered many deficiencies; its socio-economical development profile is still showing many signs of weakness that seem to become latent 1.

The origins of a country are strongly related with the way it establishes and solidifies its educational base, and consequently, if it considers that education constitutes a clear determinant in which it may generate sustainable socio-economic development 2.

However, in a process of reorganization of education and in order to establish consistent educational practices that are promising for the future of our university students, from where emerges the importance of change? How is being elaborated a proper education program capable to introduce an entrepreneurial dimension? The first question is linked to the necessity of recognizing the importance of the entrepreneurial force in Brazil and not to accept in a simplistic way new educative norms to be implemented but. We then have to sow a ground reform of thinking, to create auto-consciousness within the educators and to provoke a multiplying effect of positive change.

The theory foundations refer to various fields of research. The first dimension deals about Globalization, Culture and Education. The globalization process stimulates access to information on a wide scale, providing disruption of the territorial borders. Through technology of information, access to knowledge is spread out in real time. Consequently, the era of information provokes time and space compression that makes viable interactions from all places of the planet.

The entrepreneurs, therefore, already perceive that the market must be analyzed in a global perspective. This fact requires that Brazilian companies have to become more efficient and effective to reach a superior performance, as a base of competitive advantage, to be suited to compete on a global scale.

As a socio-political entity, Brazil counts as the “Giant” of South America. Its internal diversity constitutes one of the strongest aspects of the Brazilian culture. As an economical entity, Brazil counts with a huge amount of micro and small businesses. This data demonstrates that the majority of the 88 million Brazilians who constitute the Active Work Force (PEA) works or has some kind of labor link with the Small and Medium Businesses (SMEs), showing that the Brazilian population is intensely entrepreneur 3.

At the beginning of the XXIst century, SMEs were currently the main generating factor of work force because the major companies, with their necessity of increasing productivity and with the new requirements of the market, tend to automatize each time more and thus, hire less. Unfortunately, the Brazilian micro and small business culture seems to have converged more toward interpersonal and social interactions rather than scientific and business performance, provoking alarming rates of business mortality in Brazil and demonstrating that the entrepreneurial Brazilian culture is showing an obvious of lack of core competency.

...The entrepreneur, unprepared, still learns by doing. Taxes, costs of finance, low level of education still are problems that obstruct growth and stanch the mortality rate of small businesses in Brazil. The Brazilian demonstrates that he wants to make things happen, but this is not enough. Beyond the "want to do", it is necessary "to know how to do" and also to "be able to do" ... 4

The most developed economic systems characterizes themselves as capable of generating constant innovation initiatives, which distinguishes them from any productive complex where technology spreads by incremental copy or imitation actions 567 In that context, Brazil has recently started to participate more actively in this debate, because its universe of innovative entrepreneurs has been growing in recent years. The urgency of training the entrepreneurs and forming new entrepreneurs that have the capacity of acquiring competitive knowledge merges with the necessary to re-think Brazil educational system.

The second dimension involves the importance of Change, Uncertainty, Learning and Innovation in the entrepreneur’s life. Morin refers to the necessity of reforming our way of thinking, in which the individual enhances his ability to “re-organize” knowledge, or “think”. Morin’s view basically constitutes a ground of educative transformation where cognitive stimulation offers a new dimension for the subject in a learning process and crucial in an educational context. Such pattern constitutes a key conceptual base for the making of a Pilot Training Course in Entrepreneurship. Morin’s view is that it is possible to guide the student thru a real journey of discovery, which does mean encounter new lands but, to have a different view of the world. Reforming our way of thinking may suggests, in a pedagogic perspective, that it is more accurate to train our student in a systemic perspective, with a broader intellectual view, able ling to reach the meaning of local culture, and also able ling to obtain a sufficient level of cognitive energy required to build an education that train generations capable of thinking 8.

A different perspective about education can suggest a permanent and constant process of review and actualization of learning. Consequently, it is possible to reconsider the concepts of student and teacher and review all levels of education without any absolute connotation 9. Such hypothesis can be characterized as a new paradigm of pedagogy, where usually in education; the actors actually do not allow themselves to be influenced by such a change of path.

The learning process constitutes the result of our own recognition of the necessity of change, which happens when we allow space for reconstruction and maintain stimulus 10. Thus, the environment of the classroom can constitute an opportunity to the educator to recognize himself thru the stimulating experience of making decisions, of being responsible and of having his own liberty. His role is basically to assist in the analysis of the possible consequences of the decision being made.

Educators are like old trees. They have a face, a name, and their own story to be counted. They live in a world where what is /worth is their relation with the students, considering the each and every one of them in an “entity” sui generis, titular of a name and of a story, suffering sadness and feeding hopes. And the education is something that’s happens in this dense and invisible world that is being established by both 11

The wisdom comes from the ignorance, being a process for constant overcoming through critical conscience 12. The role of the educator who opts for change consists in acting and reflecting together with the individuals with whom he interacts to acquire his own conscience together with them of the real difficulties of society.

This means the necessity of the educator to extend each time more its knowledge, not only under his own view of selecting such method and technique of action, but also thru the limits with which he faces in his activity.

In a permanent training process of education, the basics moments are the ones where we can be critical and think about our practices. In fact, it is only by being critical about our practices of the day or the past that we can improve our future practices 13

The third dimension involves the issues of Context, Strategy and Leadership in teaching at the university. In order to be able to judge the quality of the development of an existing training program, a review of the literature from different author on Education has been realized. One refers to the concepts of training and experience 1415 and other refers to pedagogy as a base for understanding educational contexts and learning strategy 16. This brief review shows the importance for the teacher to emerge with a reflection based on epistemological foundations on educational realities, referring to the notions of training, experience; or else tacit and explicit knowledge. It is also important to worry about the roles of the professor and the student; to develop teaching strategies that correspond best to the realities of the conveyed teaching project and, to recognize the essential character to work in an educational reality in order to develop projects of holistic character that responds to the needs of the students.

For example, see  17 educational model proposes a pedagogical situation evolving from a systemic pattern between the professor, the student, the contents and the problematic referring to the teaching, the methods and techniques of formation and the learning process. This model is considered as traditional in the field of Education. The role of the professor is to question the realities concerning the teacher, the potential environments of formation, the contents, and the problematic referring to the experiences and resources that the environments can offer the exchanges that connect the teacher to the environments and the methods and techniques used 18. This educational context constitutes the prism that permits to recognize the situation allowing the teacher to bloom while conforming to the norms prescribed in the exercise of his work. Also, the role of the student is to question the realities concerning the student, the potential environments of formation, the contents, and the problematic referring to the experiences and resources that the environments can offer, the supports that allow the student integration in the environments and the learning process as a strategy of acquirement of the knowledge.

This pedagogical context constitutes a prism that permits to recognize the situation allowing the student to bloom while conforming to the norms prescribed in the classroom. In a traditional model, the student is generally less involved and least aware of the pedagogical situation in which he evolves. The student shows a passive attitude, which is contrary to what is expected from a student learning in an entrepreneurial course.

The word student refers to the learners in quest of formation in an integrated process with the teacher 19, 20. The student’s learning platform becomes in itself the reflection of the one of the educator, constituting its own identity. This situation is important in an entrepreneurial educative situation. The participant happens to be the center of its own educational reality, putting in dynamics the context that position him in relation to the other actors. The student in entrepreneurship comes out of this positivist reality that outdistances him of the professor and the contents formation and, let free course to the passions that guide him in the process of learning.

The participant develops an attitude that implies a responsibility oriented to a process that he borrows. The actions that he achieves are at a time the result of personal initiatives, subject to a redefinition of his own contexts. This redefinition is hybrid, contaminated by the influence of the professor’s model and the learning contents proposed to the student. The student’s pedagogical context becomes symbiotic and dialectic with the role of the professor and the contents that are lavished.

See 2122 presents a model that establishes a systemized pedagogical situation that constitutes one of the pillars of the proposed paradigm (Figure 12.1).

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Figure 12.1 Pedagogical Contexts for Teaching Entrepreneurship 
 

The main author and his collaborators consider that the teacher of entrepreneurship becomes a model entrepreneur who detains the strategies and the leadership required to transform his class. The teacher is, in one hand, a researcher habilitated to identify and to interpret the theoretical foundations of the field of knowledge, and on the other hand, imprints himself of the entrepreneurial reality in order to allow the student to be able to integrate explicit and tacit knowledge in a constructivist way. He becomes an educator capable of guiding his student towards a world where interiority makes the difference, where people re-define themselves by their own vision, their passions, their expectations and their utopian horizons.

Teaching constitutes a unidirectional process between the professor and the student that permits a transfer of knowledge 23. In these terms, teaching requires a positivist approach. In an entrepreneurial perspective, teaching becomes an indefectible complement of the learning process. The works of Paulo Freire are explicit on this topic 24, 25. The author, in one of his various works, mentions that: 1) there is no professor without student; 2) teaching is not a transfer of knowledge; and 3) to teach is a human specificity. The author refers to a multitude of behaviors and attitude, which explains that teaching, can only exist if these educational values are put in evidence. The teacher, as a model, to the student’s benefit, deliberately frees the values.

Learning pulls its existence in its complement with this proposed process of teaching. More specifically, experimental learning constitutes an avenue of training that answers to the needs of the entrepreneur. See  26 helps to understand this reality. His approach enhances a redefinition of teaching strategies, which encourages a process of transformation (Figure 12.2); a process of change, based on the proper “history” of the student and the teacher. Caring about this incorporation of the daily problems and to join them to theory knowledge constitutes the most realistic solution in an entrepreneurial pedagogical reality.

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Figure 12.2 Learning strategy 
 

The output involves the conceptualization of an entrepreneurial educational process, but also of a tool of thinking and a clear and realistic educative strategy. It must remain innovative by integrating various contexts of formation and by setting up new educational strategies. It must become communal to offer to the student different tools of valorization of the entrepreneurial culture. It must be associative to permit the implication of the teachers and the students in concrete projects, with an approach of renewed partnership. Finally, it must be holistic because the systemic implies a global and reconsidered view. Learning strategy in entrepreneurship education has to offer an approach more likely humanistic than organizational, with actions more integrated than divided. Basically, learning strategy has to create a path for a social dimension of the educational environment and enhance a phenomenon of transformation or change.