“Not Everyone is Cut Out to be the Entrepreneur Type”: How Finnish School Teachers Construct the Meaning of Entrepreneurship Education and the Related Abilities of the Pupils

The present study set out to explore how a group of Finnish school teachers constructs the meaning of entrepreneurship education and produces related characterizations of the abilities of the pupils in their interviews. In their discussions, the teachers deployed the discourses of ‘internal entrepreneurship’ and ‘external entrepreneurship’. Internal entrepreneurship was associated with the pupils' responsible attitude to (school) work; it was represented as an ideal subjectivity for all and accepted as the natural aim of schooling. The promotion of external entrepreneurship, however, was seen to be beyond the aims of basic education. Within the discourse of external entrepreneurship, the teachers explicated the differences between the pupils' abilities; they saw potential for entrepreneurship particularly in those boys who are not academically accomplished but are socially talented, creative, easygoing and risk-taking or competent at practical things. High-performing students, especially girls, were not included in the characterizations of “the entrepreneur type of pupil”.