Author(s): Hamalainen Minna, Ruskovaara Elena, Pihkala Timo
This study analyses entrepreneurship education and especially the role of principals affecting the practices used in schools. Particularly, we will analyse the relationship between principals’ development activities and entrepreneurship education practices. In this study, we argue that school principals have a central role in managing and guiding the development of schools to establish new entrepreneurial practices. Various tools have been provided to assist schools and their management in undertaking development processes to promote entrepreneurship education. As school leaders are in significant role by accepting, enabling and promoting the entrepreneurship education practises in their schools, the analysis focuses on 153 principals working in Finnish general education. We will conduct a survey and make an analysis of the answers. We employ ANOVA and linear regression analysis to study the principals’ impact on entrepreneurship education
The study results suggest that schools’ entrepreneurship practices are affected by the principals’ entrepreneurship education development work. This, on the other hand, is strongly affected by the enterprise-related training afforded to teachers and principals. It seems that school size also matters, as the largest schools implement more entrepreneurship education activities than the smaller ones.