Teacher 2020 On the road to entrepreneurial fluency in teacher education “Teachers entering their profession with an awareness of entrepreneurial principles are able to ignite the ‘entrepreneurial spark’ and inspire their students’ right from the beginning of their professional career.” Commission, Entrepreneurship Education: A Guide for Educators, 2013 "It requires nothing less than a sea change in the approach to education, emphasizing active learning and the provision of new experiences for students outside of the classroom. For many education systems this represents a fundamental shift away from traditional approaches." Commission, Entrepreneurship Education, 2011 Europe’s need to create entrepreneurial mind-sets and initiative-taking is closely linked to changes in education and learning. The key players in these scenarios of change are teachers. Teachers need to foster entrepreneurial mentality and readiness among all students across the entire education sector. Even though primary and secondary school teachers in service might be able to adjust and to develop new competences, they are not likely to be able to change their fundamental mind-sets, as entrepreneurial mind-sets are not quantities of new knowledge but precisely mind-sets, mentality, lifestyles. It is therefore of the utmost importance to tomorrow’s Europe to ensure entrepreneurial fluency among the new generations of teachers. This is probably the only really sustainable way to accomplish what the Commission calls a sea change. This is, however, not a simple mission. Educational authorities and teacher educations are likely to react to this challenge within traditional mind-sets: including entrepreneurship teaching in the curricula as a new subject and on special occasions. This is precisely what the Commission does not recommend: "Furthermore, since entrepreneurship education is a transversal competence it should be available to all students and be taught as a theme rather than as a separate subject at all stages and levels of education." Commission, Entrepreneurship Education, 2011 Entrepreneurial fluency in teacher education is a new general competence, similar to digital fluency, but with a much wider scope. Whereas digital fluency can to a certain extent be taught, entrepreneurial fluency cannot. Entrepreneurial fluency can only be developed through entrepreneurial practice: Teachers cannot teach how to be entrepreneurial without themselves being entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurial competency and skills can be acquired or built only through hands-on, real life learning experiences. Commission, Entrepreneurship Education: A Guide for Educators, 2013 Such entrepreneurial practice cannot be brought about through regulations from educational authorities, at least not through such regulations alone. Regulations do not change mentality. What teacher educations need is therefore inspiration, concrete examples and role-models to learn from and follow. Therefore we must make such resources available to teacher educations, and it is the mission of Teacher 2020 to contribute to the availability of such resources. The most important characteristic of such resources is that it empowers teacher educations and teachers to create their own experience and entrepreneurial pathways; or, in short, empower them to drive their own entrepreneurial fluency. The mission of Teacher 2020 is therefore to produce such resources and make them openly and attractively available to teacher educations and teacher students across Europe. The mission of the project includes serving as a preparation for a 2016-19 Knowledge Alliance on entrepreneurship in schools, generating the needed experience and platform for such a higher level initiative, and joining forces with similar initiatives at European level. The key results of the project will be: - Teacher2020 – The project’s open virtual platform, including inspirational and guidance scenarios of entrepreneurial fluency in teacher education – www.Teacher2020.eu - Go entrepreneurial! hand-outs addressing key entrepreneurial learning challenges in teacher education - Designing the 21st Century Teacher Knowledge Alliance application - Policy recommendations on entrepreneurial fluency in teacher education to the Commission, educational policy-makers and funding programmers - Special report: Creating entrepreneurial fluency among the new generations of school teachers – opportunities and obstacles - Sharing results through local events and European campaigning in selected professional social networks The concentrated and focused project partnership includes teacher educations and practice schools from all European regions: Spain, the UK, Italy, Romania and Denmark.