Are we there yet? Stagnation in entrepreneurship teaching practice 10 years on

In November 2007, changes to the New Zealand curriculum were published, with an expectation that schools would fully implement these changes by February 2010 (Schagen, 2011, p. 1). Among the changes were aspects that encouraged greater recognition of an entrepreneurial orientation. We set out to gauge the understanding preservice teachers have of entrepreneurship. We found divergent perspectives on whether entrepreneurship is more closely associated with economic processes and commercial activity, or can be more broadly applied to subject areas such as the arts, languages and music. However, a consistent finding across all groups was that preservice teachers are unaware of the requirement to teach entrepreneurship across the curriculum. Teaching entrepreneurship was seen as a “bolt on” subject and not as embedded in current subject matter. This indicates a lack of familiarity with the intent of the revised New Zealand curriculum, which has made it clear that teachers are expected to encourage New Zealand school students to have an entrepreneurial outlook.