School2Start-up – Pupils discover economy: Advancement of economic education at secondary schools through curricular-integrated student enterprises

The advancement of economic thinking in general and entrepreneurship-education in particular are important areas of responsibility of economic education in all secondary schools. Therefore the Chair of Economics and Economic Education and the Wissensfabrik – Unternehmen für Deutschland e. V. agreed upon elaborating a possibility of advancing entrepreneurial thinking and acting as a part of economic education for secondary schools (secondary level I). Student enterprises can play an important role as a complex, action and problem-oriented learning-teaching-situation in modern and innovative economic education. Indeed, they are widely spread, still literature acknowledges them a “diffuse relation between student enterprises and economic education”. The economic education of students belonging to some student enterprises is even considered poor, because they were pursuing different goals. Existing student enterprises only fulfill the economic claim to education – if at all – oftentimes simply rudimentary and selectively. A new concept of student enterprises shall be implemented with the landmark project “School2Start-up – Pupils discover economy”. The key concern in a short formula: Economic education by student enterprises!The project comprises the development of well-proven curricular documents for the educational integration of the work on student enterprises, the scientific supervision of the implementation within the pilot program schools and the conception and realization of teacher trainings. The output will be a scientifically grounded teacher handbook for a broad impact in plenty of secondary schools.

Project management: Prof. Dr. Thomas Retzmann (University of Duisburg-Essen) / Andreas Schneider (for: Wissensfabrik – Unternehmen für Deutschland e. V.)

Project consultancy: Prof. Dr. Dirk Loerwald (University of Oldenburg)

Project staff: Viona Hausmann (University of Duisburg-Essen) / Dipl.-Kfm. Karsten Schroeder (University of Duisburg-Essen)

Project funding: Wissensfabrik – Unternehmen für Deutschland e. V., Ludwigshafen

Project aim: Development, supervision and configuration of a landmark project for the advancement of economic education at secondary schools

Project period: November 2010 until October 2011