EN.GA.G.E. – ENtrepreneurial GAmes for Growing Europeans
“Education institutions should be encouraged to become more entrepreneurial in their wider approach, to ensure that they develop and live a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation through their missions, leadership, stakeholder engagement, curricula and learning outcomes.” (Commission, Entrepreneurship 2020 Action plan)
Promoting early entrepreneurial mindsets in education is one of the most important missions in Europe 2020. The Commission states that entrepreneurial mindsets and innovation mentality is the future growth engine of the European economy.
However, the Commission also states and recognizes that this represents no less than a cultural revolution in European education, and that there are no short-cuts to foster entrepreneurial mentality in schools: entrepreneurial mentality cannot be taught in traditional ways and cannot be guided by theory and research. Entrepreneurial mentality must be practiced and experienced through experimental learning and through opening schools to the wider community.
The way forward is therefore to review, produce, document and disseminate entrepreneurial practice in schools and role-models to share across European education. EN.GA.G.E. aims to be a significant and visible contribution to such practice and to be a role-model for schools in the European community. A concrete outcome will be an informal European network for game-based entrepreneurial learning in primary and secondary schools.
As practicing entrepreneurial mindsets in schools is not an adjustment of current practice, or an improvement of well-established teaching approaches, but precisely a “sea change” as the Commission puts it, including fundamental changes in school mentality and creating new collaborative infrastructures in the community, the EN.GA.G.E. project requests two years of experimentation and documentation.
The project will produce the following types of impact:
The project partnership includes school practice partners, knowledge generating partners as well as entrepreneurial partners, and then presents strong and sustainable double national partnerships from Italy, France, Romania, and Greece.
The key outcomes of the project will be:
What is unique about the EN.GA.G.E. mission?