Bringing up global or local citizens?

Abstract

The article explores the conditions of entrepreneurship education in Finnish schools from the perspective of the school’s tradition of national and territorial socialization and the new aim of educating European and global citizens. Entrepreneurship education presents a new challenge for the school system with regard to territorial socialization and the construction of the spatial self. The theme is discussed by using data consisting of Finnish pupils’ narratives of entrepreneurship which were produced in the essay writing competition Good Enterprise! in 1986–2006. The analysis focuses on the prize-winning narratives which reflect both the pupils’ possible selves and the ideals of entrepreneurship education. The article explores what kinds of representations of space, place and possible self young people produce in their narratives and what kinds of representations are favoured by school. Narratives representing entrepreneurship as familiar, domestic, rural and local activity constantly succeeded in the competition whereas the ideal of the global self was not so much appreciated. Moreover, the images of entrepreneurial spaces and places reproduced conventional representations of femininity and masculinity. The competition seemed to construct local and national versions of self and citizenship which were gendered, too.