Formandet av den entreprenöriella läraren: Entreprenöriellt lärande som styrningsteknologi

Abstract in English

The purpose of this thesis is to, from a governing perspective, describe and enhance the understanding of the form entrepreneurial learning takes in lower and upper secondary schools’ practice, and its effects in terms of which approaches and practices are strengthened and marginalized. The context of this thesis is the industrial policy work to implement entrepreneurship in the Swedish educational system in 1996–2009. Industrial policy with its objectives concerning more companies and an entrepreneurial citizen is pervaded by expectations of the impacts of entrepreneurship. Discussing entrepreneurial learning as a governing tech­nology, based on Rose’s development of Foucault’s concept govern­mentality, provides a distance from these expectations and put productive power and complexity into focus. The governing perspective allows for the visualization of how an educational concept in entrepreneurial learning contributes to hierarchies of what is considered valuable but also how the fostering of the entrepreneurial citizen is made possible.

I have followed three regional projects aimed at supporting teachers to implement entrepreneurship in their teaching practice. The analysed material includes observations of teacher training in entrepreneurial learning, inter­views with participating teachers and principals, as well as project documents, policy documents and entrepreneurship research.

This thesis contributes to ’governing research’ which use governmentality to understand entrepreneurship related to education. I show how entrepreneurial learning affects teachers’ subjectivities, how they should be and act, through the production of the entrepreneurial teacher, and what ways to be as a teacher this governing technology marginalizes. I also show how an educational concept in entrepreneurial learning enables governing at a distance by creating links between policy, entrepreneurship research, and teachers. These links contribute to teachers embracing entrepreneurial learning, and thus engaging in the fostering of the entrepreneurial citizen. By making visible the complexity of the entrepreneurial teacher and show the three subjectivities this ‘teacher’ offers: the collaborating, the flexible and the individual forming teacher, and the teachers marginalized: the supporting teacher and the autonomous subject teacher, this thesis contributes to a language to talk about how teachers are governed through entrepreneurial learning and its effects.