The benefits and challenges of enterprise education: results from an action research project in the third grade in Finnish basic education

This article is the result of an action research project conducted in 2014in a primary school in the city of Vaasa in Finland. The project focusedon developing the practice of integrating enterprise education as apart of everyday teaching in Grade Three. The project involved threeclass teachers, the headmaster and a university researcher. This articlefocuses on the teachers’ perceptions of the benefits and the challengesof the project. The teachers viewed the project as beneficial to theirown professional development as well as to the students’ learning.The process, however, also revealed several challenges associated withapplying enterprise education in Grade Three, such as time or differentpersonalities. Based on the experiences from this particular project,the article broadens the understanding of how enterprise educationcan be realised in Grade Three, as well as its benefits and challenges.