E-BOOK

E-book

At the core of these OER resources, designed to support education change agents, is an e-book produced with PressBooks, where we collected the key findings of a research study of 8 entrepreneurial educators conducted with the support of a grant from the Kauffman Foundation. The 8 case studies are also complemented with a selection of additional stories contributed by students and other users over time.

Link to the Pressbook version of the e-book

Here is the link to the e-book, which if desired can be printed partially or in full following the directions on its Pressbooks version:

Promoting Innovations in Education: Stories and Practices of Entrepreneurial Educators  (edited by R. Borasi & D.E. Miller)

Opportunities to contribute to the e-book

We encourage you to help enhance the e-book by contributing (a) a “commentary” to any case-study or additional story included in Appendix, and/or (b) the story of a new educational innovation, following these “Guidelines for Contributions.”

Possible ways of using the e-book

This e-book can be read linearly – as any traditional book – if desired.  However, users can also decide to read only a selection of the case-studies, and/or read the case-studies in a different order, as we purposefully wrote each case-study chapter so it could be read as a standalone case.  As each case-study chapter includes a “story” component followed by the findings of our in-depth analysis, readers could also decide to read just the “story” component of each case-study first and then engage in their own analysis of that story – before or instead of reading our findings.  We also encourage you to take advantage of free tech tools like Hypothes.is to add your own notes to our text.  See the Learning Tasks section of this website for more ideas. 

E-book annotated table of contents and links to supplementary materials 

Here you can find brief descriptions of each chapter and case study, along with links to additional online materials (commentaries and methodological appendix) that are not included in the Pressbook version.

Part I: Framing

1. Introduction (R.Borasi)

Here we provide information about the purpose and motivation for this book, introduces the case-study subjects and the rationale for their selection, and explains how the book is organized and could be read.  

2. Setting the stage (R.Borasi)

Here we review definitions of “entrepreneurship”, key principles and findings from the literature in the field of entrepreneurship most relevant for education change agents, along with introducing key categories of “entrepreneurial mindsets and practices” that guided the analysis and reporting of the case-studies. 

Part II: Case-studies of entrepreneurial educators in non-traditional settings

3. Donna Thompson’s case: Starting a business to address unmet learning needs of adult professionals (R.Borasi, J.Che & D.E. Miller)

Donna’s profile: A former history teacher, after nine years of teaching Donna Thompson decided to join a small firm providing professional development services, mostly to corporations. A few years later, as this firm was on the verge of bankruptcy, she and a colleague decided to buy the company and “turn it around” by refocusing it on the organization of effective meetings for both corporations and professional associations, as a vehicle to provide worthwhile learning experiences for working professionals. After several years of hard work and innovative practice, the company became very successful, increasing their annual revenues more than tenfold. Donna’s case-study includes the in-depth reconstruction of three transformational innovations: (1) taking over and turning around a bankrupt company, (b) re-inventing the company by embracing new technologies, and (3) moving the company to the next level by taking on a high-risk/high-opportunity project.

4. Roderick Jones’ case: Developing learning-based organizations to serve high-need communities (F.C.Jefferson & J. Duckles)

Rod’s profile: Rod Jones became CEO of the Community Place of Greater Rochester soon after this organization was created as the merger of three separate Settlement Houses; as essentially the founding CEO, he did much to develop its mission, culture and structure, in addition to starting several new partnerships and initiatives.  Prior to joining the Community Place, Rod had also been a co-founder of a small non-profit organization to encourage and support under-privileged youth to go to college, the Rochester Step-Off Program. Across all his enterprises, Rod brought an educational model of serving the community aiming at empowering individuals from underprivileged background to “help themselves” so as to eventually become self-sufficient, with education as a key means to achieve this goal.

5. Gidget Hotf’s case: Creating new business ventures within a not-for-profit organization to empower individuals with disabilities  (F.C.Jefferson & K. Mukhopadhyay) –Commentaries

Gidget’s Profile:  A speech pathologist by training, Gidget Hoft devoted her career to empowering individuals with disabilities to become more self-sufficient and productive members of society.  While the Rochester Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ABVI) was already a well-established organization when Gidget became its CEO in 1986, under her 34-year leadership it significantly expanded and even transformed its mission and scope, becoming eventually “Goodwill of the Finger Lakes”.  This was the result of many new ventures Gidget initiated, including starting the first manufacturing operation and a Call Center, joining Goodwill to open thrift stores that could employ visually impaired individuals, as well as creating many other innovative training opportunities and services for this population.

Part III: Case-studies of entrepreneurial educators in schools and universities

6. Patricia Chiverton’s case: Transforming a professional school at the brink of closure (R.Borasi)  

Pat’s profile: As Pat Chiverton became dean of the School of Nursing at the University of Rochester, a professional school within a highly decentralized private research university, this academic unit was in dire financial straits.  During her 9 years as dean, Pat was able to totally “turn around” this situation through a series of innovations which included, among many others, starting new visionary programs while closing down traditional ones where the school could not be as competitive, doing aggressive fundraising, and developing “business lines” within the school as a way to develop and test new models of health care as well as to generate new sources of revenues to support teaching and research.

7. Ron Dow’s case: Turning the library into the learning hub of the campus (A.F.Wall & N. Verarkar)

Ron’s profile: Ron Dow, the Head of Libraries at the University of Rochester for 8 years, was able to transform the campus libraries into inviting, vibrant and functional places for faculty and students to work in.  This outcome was the result of undertaking many successful innovations – from a major renovation of the main library facilities to a re-conceptualization of the composition of the university library collection and the role of university librarians.

8. Mary Rapp’s case: Achieving systemic reform in a public school (J.Fonzi & R.Borasi)  

Mary’s profile: As a principal and assistant superintendent of instruction in a suburban school district, Mary Rapp took a leadership role in several school reform initiatives aimed at improving the quality of instruction – despite the many obstacles to innovation presented by a public school setting.  Her innovations included, among many others, developing the first school-wide and district-wide curricular frameworks, adopting research-based reform curricula for mathematics, and changes in the teacher evaluation process.

9. Ralph Spezio’s case: Adding unusual services in an urban elementary school to meet the needs of the “whole child” (R.Borasi, R. Vitagliano, & F. Jefferson)  

Ralph’s profile: During his 12-year tenure as principal of one of the poorest elementary schools in the Rochester City School District, Ralph Spezio transformed his school into a place that truly attended to its children’s needs through several innovative initiatives.  These initiatives did not so much focus on curriculum and pedagogy, but rather addressed other issues that he thought were equally critical to his students’ academic success – including literally building a pre-school on his school premises as a means to set up his students for success when they entered first grade, creating a health clinic within the school to address health needs of his students (and families) that interfered with their learning in school, and establishing a special collaboration with a local college to prepare the kind of teachers he needed.

10. Lynn Gatto’s case: Creating unique learning opportunities for urban elementary students (R.Borasi, S. Khan, & R. Vitagliano)  

Lynn’s profile: Throughout her 30-year teaching career in the Rochester City School District, one of the poorest urban districts in New York State, Lynn Gatto showed remarkable resourcefulness in providing her elementary students with the learning experiences she felt they needed to “level the playing-field” and be successful in both school and life.  This translated into many innovative initiatives that spanned from creating and even publishing innovative curriculum, to organizing and funding field trips to other parts of the country to enable her students to broaden their experiences.

PART IV: Lessons learned

11. Looking across the cases: Entrepreneurial practices related to vision, opportunities, risk, resources and growth (R.Borasi & C.Flahive)

Here we report key findings of a systematic cross-case analysis of the previous 8 case studies aimed at identifying a set of key “entrepreneurial practices” education change agent could use to become more effective when dealing with vision, opportunities, risk, resources and growth – aread that we identified as critical to an entrepreneurial educator’s work.

12. Looking across the cases: Key factors impacting entrepreneurial educators’ activity (R.Borasi, C.Flahive and D.E.Miller)

Here we report key findings of our cross-case analysis that focused on identifying “individual characteristics” and “contextual factors”, as well as different “types of innovations”, that could potentially affecting the actions of an entrepreneurial educator – and, thus, also their use of the entrepreneurial practices described in the previous chapter.

13. Looking across the cases: Practices in action at specific stages of the entrepreneurial process (R.Borasi, C.Flahive and D.E.Miller)

Here we report on how our case study subjects actually employed specific entrepreneurial practices at specific stages of the implementation of the innovations reconstructed in their case study – that is, coming up with the idea and evaluating/refining is; planning and gathering the needed resources; implementing and monitoring the initiative; and, ensuring long-term sustainability and/or bigger impact.  The chapter also includes the “annotated version” of a specific innovation story, where the practices used at each point are explicitly identified.

14. Conclusions: The potential of entrepreneurship for education revisited (R.Borasi & A.F. Wall)

In this final chapter, we come back to discuss how education change agents can benefit from the stories and findings reported in the previous chapters, so as to become better at initiating and carrying out innovations that are both worthwhile and successful.  More specifically, here we examine the important roles that innovations can play in education in light of the previous stories, the value of judiciously employing the entrepreneurial practices identified in our cross-case analysis, how context matters yet entrepreneurial behavior can occur in all educational institutions and positions, and how synergy can be achieved between mission and fiscal responsibilities.

References

APPENDICES

Appendix A.  Case studies research design (R. Borasi) Link to document
Provides a detailed description of the research design used to conduct the eight case-studies of entrepreneurial educators and their cross-case analysis

Appendix B: Selected additional stories of educational innovations
Ever-growing collection of stories of educational innovations contributed by students and other users of the e-book, selected to complement the innovation stories included in the eight case studies.  A more complete set, along with tags and brief descriptions, can be found in the Stories section of this website. 

Appendix C: Opportunity Evaluation Tool
Comprehensive list of questions designed to guide the evaluation and refinement of an idea/opportunity for educational innovation.