Entrepreneurship education based on the Change Laboratory

•Together with the students, the stakeholders of the interacting organizations are involved.•The participants discuss the problems the students are having in the transition between school and the workplace.•Students display entrepreneurial behaviour by finding solutions to their issues.•The learning processes at the boundary are reflective and transformative.

This paper presents the results of a new model for entrepreneurship education in vocational education with students undertaking work experience. It surveys the contemporary theories of adult learning applied to entrepreneurship education, and then presents the theory of expansive learning within a Cultural Historical Activity Theory framework. The Change Laboratory, a kind of formative intervention developed within this framework and aiming to trigger expansive learning, seeks to redefine work practises through participation and dialectics among the stakeholders within the organization or at the boundaries of intersecting organizations. This model is applied to entrepreneurship education. In Italy and Australia small groups of vocational students undertaking long periods of work experience took part in Change Laboratory workshops. During the workshops the students, together with the researcher, their work tutors and teachers discussed the problems students were having at the boundary between school and work. They found shared solutions and put them into practice. In this process the students displayed entrepreneurial behaviour. The article analyzes the triggering events and the banners made during the workshops by the students in Italy and Australia as proof of expansive learning, as well reflective and transformative learning processes at the boundary.