Entrepreneurship is valued for its economic and social benefits, but also to cultivate the characteristics required by learners to deal with the demands of the twenty-first century. Entrepreneurship education develops learners’ entrepreneurship knowledge, skills, characteristics, and mindsets. Several serious economic and social dilemmas (including high youth unemployment) occur in South Africa, and entrepreneurship education could contribute to addressing these dilemmas. Previous research revealed that entrepreneurship education appears infrequently and in isolated subjects in the South African school curriculum. These entrepreneurship education shortcomings in the South African school curriculum therefore needed to be investigated in an effort to revisit the curriculum to present learners with more opportunities to benefit from effectual entrepreneurship education. To support this quest, a literature review grounded in a constructivist approach to determine international best practice was used to explore how entrepreneurship education is being approached globally. The set of best practices was analysed and compared to current entrepreneurship education in South Africa, using curriculum document analysis, which revealed several areas for improvement of entrepreneurship education in this school curriculum. These insights were used to develop a set of guidelines that could be used to address the entrepreneurship education inadequacies in the current South African school curriculum, thereby contributing to the improvement of South African learners’ entrepreneurship education. An advantageous ripple effect could be expected for South Africa if learners utilise their entrepreneurship education to address the economic and social dilemmas that the country has to deal with.

This book is devoted to scholarship in the field of self-directed learning in the 21st century, with specific reference to higher education. The target audience of the book includes scholars in the field of self-directed learning and higher education. The book contributes to the discourse on the quality of education in the 21st century and adds to the body of scholarship in terms of self-directed learning, and specifically its role in higher education. Although all the chapters in the book directly address self-directed learning, the different foci and viewpoints raised make the book a rich knowledge bank of work on self-directed learning.

Technology is a school subject that forms part of the compulsory curriculum for high school learners in South Africa, and is a core theme in the subject Design and Technology in Botswana high schools. Knowledge and production skills acquired in the subject are applied to solve real-life problems consistent with the steps of the design process. The simultaneous development of learners’ problem-solving and production skills in the subject suggests that Technology could play a vital role in preparing learners as entrepreneurs. Such learning could result in innovation or the manufacture of income-generating products. In these two countries, where youth unemployment is a constant challenge, developing such skills as part of learners’ school curriculum may contribute to alleviating the unemployment levels of young people. For any subject to effectively support entrepreneurship, however, its curriculum should be designed to sustain such development. A structured qualitative curriculum analysis was used to investigate if and how entrepreneurship is included in the Technology curricula at lower high school levels in South Africa and Botswana. The study found that, although Technology has great potential to support and develop entrepreneurship, the curricula investigated do not include explicit entrepreneurship content, nor pedagogical guidance to support teachers in this regard. The opportunity that Technology offers to contribute to reducing youth unemployment is therefore neglected in these curricula. Recommendations for the strengthening of entrepreneurship education in both curricula were made, with the anticipation that implementation of recommended improvements could contribute to the alleviation of youth unemployment in both countries.

Economic equality contributes towards social justice through equal access to opportunities for employment, income generation, or starting businesses. Entrepreneurship is often viewed as the panacea for job creation and reducing unemployment. Entrepreneurship education, therefore, supports the development and expansion of learners’ knowledge and understanding of entrepreneurship. The notion is that when more learners opt to become entrepreneurs, economic inequality will be reduced. Entrepreneurship education continues to be studied for its contribution towards attaining social justice through economic equality. Recent literature, however, indicates a notable shift towards embracing a broader perspective of entrepreneurship education rather than only lauding it for its economic value creation. Numerous contemporary publications use the term entrepreneurial learning rather than entrepreneurship education. This shift emphasises the role of learners to learn self-directedly so as to think entrepreneurially or behave in an entrepreneurial manner rather than educators teaching them to “become entrepreneurs” (i.e., starting a business). Entrepreneurial learning intends to benefit not only the entrepreneurship learner but also purposefully endeavours to create value for others. The current conceptual paper focuses on this broader value-creation purpose of entrepreneurial learning and how this different view can contribute to attaining social justice if embedded in the South African school curriculum using a socio-constructivist theoretical framework. Conceptual recommendations are made for the optimal construction of entrepreneurial learning in upcoming curriculum adaptations to buttress its broader value-creation purpose in support of social justice.

Technology education instils technological literacy in South African learners, preparing them for life and employment. Yet, few high school-level Technology1 teachers are being trained and ensuring that Technology student teachers are optimally prepared, is vital. Learning strategies such as problem-based learning need to be implemented to provide students with opportunities to have their voices heard as well as being actively involved in their education. Hybrid problem-based learning has been successfully implemented in geography and life sciences teacher education, but its use in Technology teacher preparation has not been reported. Therefore, we conducted a concurrent triangulation research study at a South African university offering Technology teacher preparation. In the study, we explored how teacher students experienced and perceived hPBL as a teaching-learning strategy and how this gave them a voice in their teacher training. The study, therefore, substantiated hPBL as a beneficial teaching-learning strategy that can give Technology student teachers a voice and actively involve them in their construction of learning.

The need to expand entrepreneurship education in learners’ schooling is a growing concern globally. It is especially pertinent in countries experiencing high levels of unemployment and ways to expand and improve its implementation is continually sought. Abundant research has been published about preferred pedagogies to enable and foster entrepreneurship education. Amongst these, project-based learning has long been recognized as one of the key teaching-learning strategies to enable meaningful entrepreneurship education. Recently, publications on ‘playful’ project-based learning as pedagogy for entrepreneurship education have increased notably. Theoretical foundations for this emerging new pedagogy in entrepreneurship education appear to be underprovided. Hence, the theoretical foundations provided by Biesta’s three functions of education, namely qualification, socialization and subjectification, were used as an analytical framework to explore what ‘good’ entrepreneurship education is (or should be) and how the pedagogy of playful project-based learning can bolster it. The chapter contributes to the body of knowledge by expanding insights into theoretical underpinnings for entrepreneurship education, as well as by critiquing playful project-based learning as pedagogical choice for implementing meaningful entrepreneurship education.