An exploration of the role of reflective practice in entrepreneurial learning through the mini-enterprise experience in Botswana junior secondary schools.

Abstract

This study explores how learners experience reflective learning in the mini-enterprise projects (MEPs) of the Botswana Junior Secondary School Business Studies curriculum. It addresses the lacuna in entrepreneurship education regarding reflective learning from experience-based entrepreneurial activities such as mini-companies at the secondary education level. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how Business Studies learners participating in the MEPs at the junior secondary education level experience reflective learning in the mini-enterprise experience. A pragmatism-oriented hermeneutic phenomenological theoretical framework and a conceptual model for the entrepreneurial reflective learning process were used to research reflection from a holistic learning perspective, through transactive interaction and adjustment to the world. This approach drew primarily from the philosophies of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Dewey, based on their ability to take into account the cognitive, embodied, enactive, affective, social, and context situatedness of learning. The study employed a hermeneutic phenomenological case study design that involved three junior secondary schools in Gaborone, Botswana, to allow for detailed, in-depth descriptions and interpretations of learners’ experiences of reflection. The study participants were seven Business Studies teachers with experience in supervising learners in the MEP, and 13 former Business Studies learners who had participated in the MEP in the last five years. The participants were selected through purposive sampling and snowball sampling strategies. Data was generated through individual interviews and analysed thematically. The findings revealed that at the planning stage, learners experience anticipatory reflection; during the operation phase, they engage in reflection in action; and at the project completion phase, they engage in written reflection on action. Reflection was revealed to be a participatory process involving collective sense-making and action, occurring primarily through the platform of meetings. In this participatory process, the teachers’ role in facilitating reflection was found to be invaluable – yet not satisfactory. Reflection was also found to be triggered by critical incidents and epistemic emotional experiences. Finally, learners engage in an intuitive reflective coping process using varying degrees of Dewey’s inquiry process. The study contributes to a knowledge gap about reflection in entrepreneurship education at the secondary education level and may be useful to entrepreneurial education researchers, educators, learners, and policymakers. It highlights gaps in the conceptualisation of the MEP from the curriculum design perspective, concerning reflection to make learning meaningful. This is important because reflective learning at this level remains underresearched, and challenges remain on how to teach and incorporate it in experience-based entrepreneurial learning activities, despite its significance. Future research may focus on researching ways in which teachers can effectively teach and facilitate reflection.