The Change Laboratory for Teacher Training in Entrepreneurship Education

This open access book illustrates a new type of formative intervention for in-service teacher training in entrepreneurship education. The book describes a Change Laboratory and shows how teachers and workshop assistants develop the idea of a multidisciplinary project (area di progetto) entailing the design of a self-service and parking lot in a dismissed area close to the city centre. The multidisciplinary project is taken as example of how an idea is debated and turned into collective action and change, the very essence of initiative and entrepreneurship. This includes preparing the students for the enterprise world, for example by teaching them competencies with authentic problems; students working by projects; group work; showing initiative and autonomy. The book considers diverse levels of change brought about by this formative intervention: the teachers, the curriculum, the students, eventually the whole institution. The Change Laboratory thus increases the participation of students, teachers and stakeholders in the school towards a new curriculum through the implementation of a multidisciplinary project connecting school with the world outside and working life.

The book features a foreword by Yrjo Engestrom, one of the fathers of the Change Laboratory toolkit and the principal investigator (PI) of this study. The study is financed by European Commission within Horizon 2020.