Developing Entrepreneurial Society: Have We Ignored the Opportunities of Preschool Education?

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education has much potential to act as the main driver for society, which promotes well-being, economic sustainability, and solving global wicked challenges, such as climate change. Thus, education strategies and political programs emphasize that entrepreneurship education or strengthening entrepreneurs’ activities should occur through the educational system. However, entrepreneurship education has its roots in adult education or teaching older students. In addition, the field reflects a business orientation, making it difficult for the theme to be integrated into education for young children. In this paper, we study “How has entrepreneurship education been studied in the preschool context?”. This study utilizes a semi-structural literature review which was conducted in the fall of 2022. This approach allows for a better understanding of complex areas within a given research topic, such as studying entrepreneurship education in the context of preschool education. Eleven peer-reviewed studies were included in the analysis. The articles were coded deductively and inductively using a concept-centric approach. The results show the potential of entrepreneurship education to be utilized more in educating young children if we want to develop societies more ambitiously. In general, more research is needed in the field. Furthermore, there is a need to study what happens in entrepreneurship education preschool interventions and what results can be achieved. Our research can also contribute to preparing educational strategies and developing curricula, providing ideas to early childhood educators.