ICT, Enterprise Education and Intercultural Learning

Abstract

Little attention has been paid to the role of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in enabling schools to work together in joint enterprise partnerships. This article reports on a school-based enterprise initiative which involved both primary and secondary school teachers working across an international frontier. The main findings of this research show that when ICT was used to link schools, it enabled a wide range of enterprise work to be carried out, particularly in the development of ‘soft’ skills. In primary schools, the ease of linking enterprise to the curricula in two different jurisdictions by teachers in well-established school partnerships led to high use of communication tools and strong collaborative learning. In secondary schools, in spite of timetabling difficulties and lack of prior experience between partners, links were made between a range of business studies courses and ICT helped to make enterprise far more than an academic subject. Overall, the evidence suggests that when students were working closely in teams across a national boundary, they developed a wide range of inter-personal skills that have been identified as important characteristics in enterprise work (Man & Yu, 2007) and for intercultural understanding (Deuchar, 2004).