Skip main navigation

New offer! Get 30% off your first 2 months of Unlimited Monthly. Start your subscription for just £29.99 £19.99. New subscribers only. T&Cs apply

Find out more
Home / Business & Management / Entrepreneurship / Teaching Entrepreneurial Thinking / How does this relate to me?

How does this relate to me?

This video by QUT’s Dr James Davis connects entrepreneurial thinking to the Australian school curriculum.
View transcript
4.4
In my career I’ve set up and run businesses in Australia, I’ve been a business development advisor in China, and I’ve helped people set up and run not-for-profit organisations. It wasn’t until I became a STEM educator that I started to consider how entrepreneurial thinking could be applied in areas other than business. I first used entrepreneurial thinking in my own teaching during a STEM investigation project. The problem was that my students found it difficult to evaluate a context, and to define problems that were worth investigating or solving using their STEM skills. Entrepreneurial thinking was a great solution. It gave my students a method for defining problems that were actually worth investigating and solving.
54.6
And I’m sure if you think about your particular teaching area, you’ll find places where entrepreneurial thinking is highly valuable. Entrepreneurial thinking involves ideas, problem definition, creativity and taking action. We could call it a form of activism. We typically take action with limited resources in entrepreneurship, which means being resourceful. It’s about getting out of the building and talking to people, learning about their problems and what they value, testing our own values, and collaborating to come up with solutions. Entrepreneurship is about risk-taking but it’s about taking low risk and failing early so that we limit our failures and survive.
105.8
By learning to deal with small failures, to overcome them and move on, we can develop personal resilience and move forward to define and test new ideas and new problems. Now, if we think about the Australian Curriculum, under the general capabilities, we can see
124.5
three areas where entrepreneurial thinking is most relevant: critical and creative thinking, personal and social capability, and ethical understanding. We can see how our key ideas from entrepreneurial thinking align with these capabilities that cross all areas of teaching from foundation through to senior schooling. I encourage you to reflect on this alignment in relation to your own teaching context and the students you are teaching. If you’re not using the Australian curriculum, consider how these ideas could align with the curriculum that you are using. And, finally, like in my own teaching experience, think about who your students are, and how they could benefit from entrepreneurial thinking.

In Australia, our teachers are required to design, deliver, and assess learning via the Australian Curriculum. As you will find in this course, entrepreneurship is not subject-specific. It can relate to many areas of teaching. This is because its primary benefit relates to general capabilities that cut across all subject areas.

In the context of the Australian Curriculum, we have highlighted three of the seven general capabilities that specifically relate to entrepreneurship:

Three icons representing creative thinking, collaboration, and ethical balance
© Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) 2010 to present, unless otherwise indicated.

In this video, I will explain why you are so important in teaching entrepreneurial thinking to our current and future students.

If you’re not an Australian teacher, tell us how entrepreneurial thinking fits in with your national or local curricula.

Want to keep learning?

This content is taken from Queensland University of Technology online course
Teaching Entrepreneurial Thinking
View Course
See other articles from this course
This article is from the online course:

Teaching Entrepreneurial Thinking

Created by
Join Now
This article is from the free online

Teaching Entrepreneurial Thinking

Created by
Join Now
FutureLearn - Learning For Life

Reach your personal and professional goals

Unlock access to hundreds of expert online courses and degrees from top universities and educators to gain accredited qualifications and professional CV-building certificates.

Join over 18 million learners to launch, switch or build upon your career, all at your own pace, across a wide range of topic areas.

Start Learning now

Register to receive updates

  • Create an account to receive our newsletter, course recommendations and promotions.

    Register for free