The chapter takes a discourse approach drawing upon governmentality and the concepts of programme and technology. It focuses on how a programmatic initiative – a strategy for implementing entrepreneurship in schools – is made operable in practice by means of a technology: a competence development initiative. The results illustrate the process of how entrepreneurship gets translated into a new discourse based on an entrepreneurial approach, which takes on a broader perspective including life-long learning, co-operation with the society and democratic values, thus stretching the programme beyond its initial intentions. Moreover, the entrepreneurial approach could bring unintended consequences, which the discourse so far has tended to marginalize or even exclude. The chapter questios what is often taken for granted when it comes to entrepreneurship in schools, the tenet that wwhat is good for business is good for education and society at large’.

Purpose: to enhance our understanding of how entrepreneurship is translated into the school setting and possible consequences of its interpretations in regard to citizens and the surrounding society. Design/methodology/approach – We take a discourse approach drawing upon governmentality and the concepts of program and technology. In this paper we have a specific focus on how a programmatic initiative - a strategy for implementing entrepreneurship in schools - is made operable in practice by means of a technology – a competence development initiative - which is something that so far has been scarce in prior research. Findings – The results shows the process of how entrepreneurship gets translated into a new discourse of an entrepreneurial approach, which takes on a broader perspective including a life-long learning, cooperation with the society and democratic values. In this way stretching the program beyond its initial intentions. Moreover, that the entrepreneurial approach could come with unintended consequences that are related to democratic values which the discourse tend to marginalize or exclude. Originality/value of the paper – There has been a lack of studies that focus on the process of how programs of entrepreneurship is translated and made operable in the school setting. We are also questioning what is often taken for granted when it comes to entrepreneurship in schools i.e. what is good for business is good for education and society in large

The prevailing economic world order relies on financial progress and business development, and entrepreneurship is seen as an important means to achieve this. To inspire the development of an entrepreneurial mind-set among citizens, public initiatives through education has improved and consequently entrepreneurship education is booming. Positioning our research within the discussion regarding entrepreneurship as a broader societal phenomenon, our contribution lies within a much less researched context – entrepreneurship in the lower secondary school. In this context we focus on the teachers’ perspective to investigate how they approach entrepreneurship and what they actually do when teaching it. Our results indicate that there has been a change in terminology from entrepreneurship to entrepreneurial learning. Furthermore, there has been a change in practice. The empirics show that an entrepreneurial learning approach includes real-life connected projects, collaboration with the surrounding community and practising entrepreneurial skills. Adding to this, working with entrepreneurial learning has in this context resulted in enhancing the motivation of pupils as well as a changed perspective on teaching and learning. Our theoretical contribution lies within the literature on societal entrepreneurship, providing a conceptual model of entrepreneurship education in lower secondary education which is an attempt to clarify and enrich the discussion the discussion on a definition of entrepreneurship in a school setting.