The research in 60 seconds

Researchers analysed Norway’s LK20 core curriculum to see how strongly it reflects five features of pedagogical entrepreneurship: value creation, experiential learning, creativity, collaboration and interdisciplinarity. They found all five, although not equally clearly. Value creation was most visible, while interdisciplinarity appeared least often. The term pedagogical entrepreneurship itself does not appear in the curriculum, and entrepreneurship appears only once. The authors argue that this matters because ideas can be present in policy without necessarily being recognised or translated consistently into classroom practice.

So what?

The word entrepreneurship can be misleading in schools. It can sound as though the aim is to teach pupils how to start businesses.

That is not what this paper is primarily describing. The authors use a much broader idea of pedagogical entrepreneurship: learning in which pupils act on ideas, solve problems, collaborate, create something of value and connect learning to meaningful situations.

The most useful part of the paper is the framework it uses to make that idea visible.

In Norwegian, VEKST stands for:

  • Verdiskaping — value creation

  • Erfaringslæring — experiential learning

  • Kreativitet — creativity

  • Samarbeid — collaboration

  • Tverrfaglighet — interdisciplinarity

The authors translate this into English as VECCI: Value creation, Experiential learning, Creativity, Collaboration and Interdisciplinarity.

That gives schools a practical way to think about innovation without reducing it to novelty.

Value creation asks whether pupils are making or doing something that matters to themselves or others. Experiential learning asks whether they are learning through doing, testing, exploring and reflecting. Creativity involves making connections or finding possible solutions rather than simply reproducing an answer. Collaboration means genuinely creating or solving something with others. Interdisciplinarity involves drawing together knowledge from different subjects or contexts where that helps address the problem.

The paper’s analysis found that these ideas are already embedded to different degrees in LK20. Value creation was the most visible of the five dimensions, followed by experiential learning, creativity and collaboration. Interdisciplinarity was much less prominent, despite the curriculum’s explicit interdisciplinary themes.

That last finding is particularly interesting. Schools can organise several subjects around the same theme without pupils ever genuinely integrating what they know. The authors argue that the curriculum gives relatively little practical guidance about what meaningful interdisciplinarity should look like, leaving considerable room for interpretation.

There is an important limit to the research. This is a curriculum document analysis. It tells us what can be found in LK20, not what teachers actually teach, how often pupils experience these forms of learning, or whether they lead to better outcomes. The researchers are analysing the intentions and language of the curriculum, not classroom effects.

But that may be precisely why the framework is useful. It does not require schools to introduce another innovation initiative. Instead, VEKST offers a lens for asking whether existing learning experiences already give pupils opportunities to create value, learn through experience, think creatively, collaborate and make meaningful connections across knowledge.

Innovation, in other words, may sometimes be less about adding something new and more about noticing what kind of learning we are actually designing.

For teachers

  1. Use VEKST as a lens, not a checklist.
    Take an activity you already teach and ask which elements are genuinely present. A strong task does not need all five. The useful question is whether one missing dimension could make the learning more meaningful.

  2. Ask what value the work creates.
    Before pupils begin, consider who the work is for and why it matters. Does it solve a problem, help someone, communicate something useful, improve an idea or contribute beyond simply being handed in?

  3. Look for genuine connections rather than forced interdisciplinarity.
    If a problem naturally requires knowledge from more than one subject, make those connections visible. Do not add another subject simply to make an activity look interdisciplinary.

For school leaders

  1. Use VEKST to sharpen conversations about innovation.
    Instead of asking whether teaching is “innovative”, ask what pupils are actually doing. Are they creating value? Exploring? Generating solutions? Collaborating meaningfully? Connecting knowledge?

  2. Avoid turning pedagogical entrepreneurship into another programme.
    The paper suggests many of these ideas are already present in LK20. The leadership opportunity is to help staff recognise and strengthen them, not necessarily to launch a new initiative.

  3. Examine what interdisciplinarity really means in your school.
    A common theme across several subjects is not automatically interdisciplinary learning. Look for places where pupils genuinely need to combine knowledge, methods or perspectives in order to understand or solve something.