1) MAKE COMPETENCES AND STRENGTHS OF THE INDIVIDUAL CHILD VISIBLE   

It is important to challenge one’s own bias and assumptions, be it based on the perception of an individual child, an age group, gender or ethnicity. Often educators will make assumptions about what the child can do or might be able to do in order to prepare the learning activities. However, children are not all the same and might have very possibilities. When working with competence development, it is a good idea to set up learning environments and arenas where the child’s individual competences and strengths become visible for educators and children alike. Working with different roles for the children in cooperation and making their strengths and competences visible for themselves and each other can support their cooperation, relationships and self-confidence. It will give the child more self-confident to become aware of what it is good at, but also making other children aware of it can be beneficial, which can promote a better cooperation and social inclusion among the children. Moreover, it will support the educator working with the child perspective and supporting the learning path and development of the individual child.   

2) LEARNING TO MAKE VALUE STARTING WITH THE INDIVIDUAL  

When learning takes place, the individual is always at the center the learning. It is from the individual the motivation to learn comes and meaning making with respect to linking to what prior knowledge the individual has. The SEEDS project targets a social entrepreneurial mind-set, which is about making value for others. The change maker pedagogy, one of the methods of the SEEDS Pedagogy, was developed from research into entrepreneurship education, and describe different levels of activity that can support the development of an entrepreneurial mindset by finding solutions to problems in a dynamic between an individual and collective perspective.  

The process starts with ME. Here you focus on the children, who they are and what is important to them. Then you move on to WE and bring the children together in a group.  When groups work together, they are constantly articulating and reflecting on their own understanding in relation to the others in the group. It is here that community is established, that identity is constructed and challenged, sometimes even threatened. This is why there will always be space for movement between who I am, in relation to who I am as a member of the group.  WE are not just about the group, but also about the whole preschool, the local community or other communities. Then the process moves on to DISCOVERY, which is characterized by asking, observing and trying out the limitations of different methods, materials and tools. In the discovery phase the group explores and investigates a problem or a situation focusing on:  

• what resources and technologies are used,  
• who are involved, their skills and expertise as well their relationships with each other,  
• where the practice takes place, in a particular context and lastly,  
• how the practice happens in the given situation.   

Next comes EXPERIMENTATION, where the educator and children experiment with what could be done to the specific problem with a combination of different methods, materials and digital tools that has not been tried before. The final step is CONSOLIDATION, where there is room for testing and trial. The problem is solved when the group as a whole agrees on it. This is when value is created for the individual and for the community as a whole. This means being able to experiment, seek new and innovative ways to solve the problem and to test potential solutions together. The experimenting community moves back and forth in the change-maker model, creating value for themselves and others through all the phases.  

3) NURSING CURIOSITY AS A DRIVER FOR PLAYFUL LEARNING  

In order to foster entrepreneurial mind-set in young children, it is important to set up learning activities and environments that supports that. Such as starting with the Children’s own perception, curiosity and motivation to make the learning process active and meaningful. The pedagogical traditions that most preschools in Europe share is actually based on playful learning, exploring and following the curiosity and interest of the individual child. Some educators talk about following “the children’s track” when conducting preschool learning activities.   

In the project, this was illustrated in activities where the children had more or less full influence on the content of the activities. Sometimes a child expressed a question or an interest in a topic and the educator took departure in this, in their activities, for example planning a whole activity around that topic. In other cases, the educator set a frame and let the children decide which direction to go and what to explore within that topic.  Some educators expressed a need to change their role in the activity depending on what type of learning they wanted to facilitate. Sometimes, they would walk “in front of the children” to show things to them or tell them things they needed to know. Other times they would walk “beside the children” and engage in activities with the children, where they took on an active role and became curious and exploring together with the children, but not leading, but following and working together with the children. At other times the would walk “behind the children” and let go of control and let the children play and do as they wanted in the activities, and only give support when needed, to give place for free play.  

 4) GIVE THE CHILDREN COURAGE TO EXPLORE, TEST AND FAIL   

In order to develop an entrepreneurial mind-set, it is essential to have the courage to put yourself in positions where you might fail. In order to be creative and innovative you have to be able to explore and test things out and this leads necessarily to potential mistakes. In fact, we learn more from our mistakes than our successes, because this leads to new discoveries and can inspire other solutions or possibilities that we did not see before. This however, requires an environment where it is accepted to fail and where it is just seen as part of the explorative process. So in order to inspire children to engage in explorative activities, it is important that the educators puts value on the process of exploring and testing, rather than looking for a right answer, and explore with the children what they learn, when things don’t go as planned or indeed fail. It can be beneficial for the educator to let go of the control of the activity and let the children explore on their own agency. They learn more from finding answers themselves than from being told the answer.   

When trying out ideas, it’s important to create a space for open discussions. Try not to give the answers or solutions, but support the children in finding them by asking open questions. Follow up on questions with concrete try-outs and follow up on the try-outs with reflections and sharing of learning among the children. It can also be beneficial to work with collaborative learning among the children. They can share their perspectives and insights among each other, and help each other find solutions. Always make sure to create a safe environment where there are no wrong answers, but all answers should be encouraged as potential solutions and learning opportunities. When you ask children to reflect and share knowledge with each other you can support development of their communication skills, and teach them democratic skills like listening to each other’s perspective, accepting that there are more than one potential solution.   

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