Education and Entrepreneurship: Best Learning from Helm Project at Cenderawasih University
Abstract
In 2013, as part of the Higher Education Leadership and Management national initiative sponsored by US AID, Universitas Cenderawasih proposed an action research project to address the under-employment of UNCEN graduates through purposeful entrepreneurship education. Although entrepreneurship education had been introduced previously at UNCEN, it had never been custom designed to integrate theory and practice appropriate to Papua as part of the formal curriculum. This paper focuses on the use of core principles of the action research process (ARP) to develop and implement a locally effective curriculum for students enrolled in UNCEN’s Faculty of Economics. A central value underlying the project was the development of a curriculum that could address social inequalities in Papua, specifically the significant under-representation of Papuan native peoples in the entrepreneurship sector.Through a mixed methods approach that used demographic, attitudinal and outcome data as well as observational, interview and focus group data, the ARP team designed an experientially-based learning module, documented implementation of thepilot learning module, evaluated its effectiveness, and developed proposals for improvement and institutionalization. As a result of its action research project, the ARP team suggests that future iterations of the entrepreneurship curriculum at UNCEN should adopt a culturally responsive pedagogy (Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995) that addresses the disparities in cultural and social capital shown to be significant in the ARP to entrepreneurship education.
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