Introduction
Education is almost always in a state of reform. It says something about the fraught professional world of teachers that they seem to be either implementing a new program or a new piece of technology, providing feedback on a new pedagogy or planning for the next wave of reforms. In addition to the challenges around professional standards and the move to the Australian Curriculum, teachers also must deal with the changing context of their students and the ubiquity of digital technology. As in life, the only constant in education is change. Accompanying these reforms is an arcane vocabulary of acronyms and buzzwords that are often impenetrable to outsiders: PBL, CBL, AITSL, NAPLAN, student-centred, needs-based, teaching ‘healthcheck’ and so on.
One of the more popular buzzwords in recent times has been the concept of the ‘edupreneur’. I’ve noticed that in the last five years or so there has been a marked increase in school leaders and teachers considering themselves – or behaving like – entrepreneurs. I must admit I was concerned when I first heard the term: to my mind, entrepreneurs are linked with business and the market place. Education has already suffered, I believe, an undue influence from large companies whose interests are not always the same as the interests of the children in the classroom, so I was hesitant to embrace a term that seemed to encourage more market forces in the educational system. I’m not disagreeing with the importance of entrepreneurs to the economy, nor saying that we shouldn’t encourage entrepreneurial skills amongst young people, but I feel that the purpose of education is fundamentally different to that of the economy, and one cannot transplant ideas from one to the other without considering the context. Fortunately, after examining the wide variety of material about the term, I discovered that there is a lot more depth to the term than my original supposition, and it has a range of applications to the work of teachers that I think are in keeping with the broad goals of education. Principally, I liked the way that it encourages teachers and school leaders to think differently about their role – such fresh insights are never a bad thing.
What is an edupreneur?
The term itself is a little bit confusing – some writers use edupreneur interchangeably with education entrepreneur and teacher entrepreneur or ‘teacher-preneur’ but others argue that there are important differences between all of these. The most traditional definition is someone who works outside the state or system mandated boundaries of education systems. According to Lavaroni and Leisey, edupreneurs
try ideas that would enhance learning opportunities for our clients. We thought out of the box. And, we did this by risking our own money and personal resources. We were responsible to ourselves and our clients: the students, the parents and our professional colleagues. We were not responsible to a governmental agency over which we had little or no control except for health and safety issues and reporting purposes such as taxes and attendance. We could measure our success as entrepreneurs especially in our independent schools by many traditional means: test scores, surveys, student portfolios, drop out rates, teacher retention, attendance records and parent participation. And, what’s more, at the end of the year we could accurately determine our profitability. (http://www.edentrepreneurs.org/edupreneur.php)
This is a definition in keeping with the common use of the term entrepreneur. In this case, the only difference is that the edupreneur works in educational circles. Almost every educational consultant who has set up their own business could be classified as an edupreneur in this instance, and this definition is, I think, perhaps the least useful for the practicing principal or teacher.
Fortunately, the term ‘edupreneur’ is being used in much more creative ways than the one outlined above. A good example of a more holistic definition comes from Richard Gerver, a UK educator who has advised various governments and businesses on educational policy. He argues that principals, by virtue of the difficult, complex and varied work that they do, have the skills needed to succeed in the world of business and they need to bring those skills to play more fully in the educational domain. He argues that edupreneurs are capable of managing disparate groups of people in challenging circumstances, undertaking a range of different projects and turning a vision for better education into reality. They can, he writes, ‘seize the agenda and lead their communities with a new sense of energy and empowerment; it is the age of the ‘edupreneur’.
This is significantly different to the previous definition. In particular Gerver seems to be arguing that principals and school leaders are capable of changing the narrative about education and becoming leaders of educational reform through their vision and agency. This is a powerful idea, and one that is hard not to support: the key, I believe, is for principals and school leaders to have the opportunity to share their stories of success and thus serve as inspirations to other school leaders. These edupreneurial stories can become tools used to reframe educational debate about what is actually working rather than the current deficit model.
As I mentioned earlier, another term that is often linked with the above two is the idea of a ‘teacher-preneur’. Whereas Gerver speaks mostly about principals and school leaders, other educators have expanded the idea to apply to classroom teachers. Again, the term is used in a wide variety of different ways, but one definition that is striking in its approach is that used by David Orphal. To Orphal, teacherpreneurs
are part-time classroom teachers. This is the big idea — job sharing so that the traditionally non-teaching jobs associated with a school; the traditionally non-teaching role of ed-policy maker; the traditionally non-teacher role of researcher, staff developer, etc… can all be done by people still have a foot in the classroom.
(http://learning2030-orphal.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/what-heck-is-teacherpreneur_3867.html)
I think this idea is stunning – both in its potential and its simplicity. Orphal has basically redefined what it means to be a teacher and also bridged the gap between teachers and school leaders. He argues that we can all be leaders – we can all contribute to school policy, school improvement and research while at the same time still teaching. Of course, there are logistical issues associated with this idea, but I think the idea of an educational approach where the contributors are still practicing classroom teachers is an incredibly powerful one. After all, one of the biggest complaints made by teahcers about professional development is that the consultants haven’t been in the classroom for a long time.
Tina Barseghian elaborates on this idea:
In this ideal world, teachers spend part of their time in the class as co-teachers, part of their time researching and writing curriculum and assessments for schools, part of the time mentoring new teachers (who have a reduced work load while they’re being trained), part of their time innovating ideas for teacher development, and part of their time drafting educational policy.
(http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/04/11/what-the-heck-is-a-teacherpreneur/)
What does it mean for me?
While there is a lot to like about the idea of edupreneurs or teacherpreneurs, school leaders and teachers might consider such an approach would stretch the already overburdened school system even further, and there is probably an element of truth in that idea. However, the real value in this idea, as I see it, is that it demonstrates that we do not have to remain wedded to same the models and structures within education that we have in the past. Instead, there are avenues to explore where we can get the best of both worlds; having the best teachers remaining in the classroom and working with students, but also making use of their expertise to develop other teachers or work on whole school improvement. Just as the world of work is changing, led by innovative companies like Google, so too can the world of education change, and in that case, it is the teachers and the school leaders who might lead the change at a grass-roots level.