The incorporation of entrepreneurship into social work education: combining social and commercial norms

ABSTRACT

Over the past few decades, the field of entrepreneurship education has undergone exponential growth. Courses in entrepreneurship are now found in many different fields of education, including ones that have a social rather than a commercial focus. In line with this, courses in social entrepreneurship are now common within social work education. Entrepreneurship offers new opportunities in terms of dealing with societal problems. Still, entrepreneurship is based on rationales that potentially conflict with the norms found in social work education. In order to find ways to implement entrepreneurship in education, a better understanding of the different norms must be developed. In this article, the potentially conflicting norms are explored through a case study of social work students in Denmark who participated in an entrepreneurship competition. The study indicates that the students felt alienated because of the commercial and competitive aspects, which seemed to be predominant within the entrepreneurship community. On the other hand, the students’ focus on social issues seemed to be in line with the ideals and norms of entrepreneurship. Thus, both differences and similarities seem to exist between the different institutions and traditions explored. At the end of the article, future perspectives and potentials regarding social work education and entrepreneurship are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work education; social entrepreneurship; pedagogies; creativity; competition; action research

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank students from the University College Absalon and the University College Copenhagen for participating in the research. Furthermore, I would thank Mikkel Høgsbro who teaches entrepreneurship at the University College Copenhagen. Without him, this study would not have been possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In Denmark, the social work education is a bachelor degree program that provides students with knowledge and skills that allow them to work with children and adults with social problems, refugees, homelessness, crime prevention, people with mental disorders, substance abuse, etc. Social work education is integrated in social education that, in addition to the above, includes topics like caretaking, pre-school teaching, and pedagogical work with people with mental and physical disabilities (Ministry of Higher Education and Science, 2019).

2. Participant consent has been given in writing by students that participated in the courses and the competition. Further, the analysis of interviews and observations has been discussed on an ongoing basis with the students that participated in the competition. The conducted research follows the ethical guidelines of responsible research practice at University College Absalon, defined by the ‘Danish code of integrity in Research´ and monitored by ‘The Committee on Responsible Research Practices´. See the following link:https://phabsalon.dk/english/research-and-development-rd/responsible-research-practice/

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially supported by The Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship [grant number SUP-2017-02].

Notes on contributors

Mikkel Snorre Wilms Boysen

Mikkel Snorre Wilms Boysen is docent and PhD at University College Absalon, Denmark. He is currently in charge of several research projects within the field of social work and entrepreneurship. His main area of research is creativity and pedagogies, and he has published many articles in Scandinavian and international journals on this subject. In general, Boysen attempts to involve students, social workers and citizens in research activities in order to democratize and strengthen the relevance of research.