Examining the business education curricula in South Africa: Towards integrating social entrepreneurship

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the business education curricula in South Africa in relation to social entrepreneurship and to ascertain pre-service teachers’ perspectives of the reasons for social entrepreneurship not being included in these curricula as observed in classroom teaching practices.

Design/methodology/approach

Through interpretivist inquiry, third-year pre-service teachers’ (n=92) comments on online group blogs were analysed to clarify a range of meanings and understandings of their responses.

Findings

Social entrepreneurship as a concept and as an ideal as well as certain fundamental concept is not adequately integrated in the business education curricula in secondary schools in South Africa. Furthermore, the schools where the pre-service teachers conducted their teaching practice were failing to integrate activities associated with social entrepreneurship in their business education curricula.

Research limitations/implications

The study was limited to a single tertiary institution. Similar studies in both developing and developed contexts in schools could be initiated as a means of teaching social entrepreneurship for social justice as a subject efficaciously.

Practical implications

The study recommends that social entrepreneurship should be implemented earlier in the secondary education system as a means of enhancing the social entrepreneurial capacities of school learners.

Originality/value

This is the first study examining the secondary education curricula in a developing economy, such as South Africa, in relation to the absence of the emerging concept of social entrepreneurship.

Citation

Waghid, Z. (2019), "Examining the business education curricula in South Africa: Towards integrating social entrepreneurship", Education + Training, Vol. 61 No. 7/8, pp. 940-962. https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-05-2018-0115