Teaching entrepreneurship to children: a case study

Nowadays few young people are prepared to consider setting up and managing their own business as a realistic and attractive career option. It is therefore necessary to expose children to the concept of entrepreneurship from a very early age, which means that the school has a fundamental role to play in this task. This research seeks to understand precisely what characteristics and motivations entrepreneurship teaching programmes attempt to instil in children. In order to obtain the required information, both a qualitative methodology and a quantitative approach were used, resulting in the analysis of one of them: the ‘Young Enterprise’ programme run by Junior Achievement Portugal – which served as case-study and was the source of the data collected from observation and survey. Through empirical research, it was possible to conclude that the level of knowledge acquired by children increased after their educational experience. This study makes it possible to conclude that it is important for children to hav...