Entrepreneurship Educators in an Age of Climate and Ecological Breakdown

Brentnall, Catherine ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2301-984X and Higgins, David (2024) Entrepreneurship Educators in an Age of Climate and Ecological Breakdown. Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy. ISSN 2515-1274

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Abstract

It is stated, with increasing frequency and urgency, that Entrepreneurship Education should help society move past Business as Usual, the unsustainable development pathway which depletes communities and is driving climate and ecological breakdown. We agree with this ideal, but our lived experience suggests that the everyday philosophy and practice of mainstream Entrepreneurship Education means this shift will be challenging for many educators. Mainstream narratives of economic growth and tools such as Business Model Canvas erase social and ecological concerns, compromising the Entrepreneurship Educator in the way they prioritize economic concerns over un/sustainability. Our question is, given the demand for transformation in Entrepreneurship Education, how do we—educators—change ourselves and our practice? In this paper we blend action-based accounts of change with interpretations from a dialogic perspective to elaborate how Entrepreneurship Educators can, and already are, taking action in light of climate and ecological breakdown. We provide a way of thinking about how change happens—in and through relations and dialogue between people—and new conceptual directions—the metacrisis and time between worlds—which aim to contribute a source of agency for educators.