Visit to Japan Boosts Entrepreneurship Education

Natasha Lloyd and Charlotte Buick from SERC’s Enterprise, Entrepreneurship and Environment team have been maintaining the college’s longstanding links with Toyama University and the Toyama National Institute of Technology (KOSEN) in Japan, through a trip to share experience and expertise in Entrepreneurship Education.  The visitors set out to establish new connections whilst exploring entrepreneurship education in the UK and Japan.

Charlotte and Natasha visited Toyama KOSEN, Toyama Minami High School and Toyama Kamitaira Elementary School to learn about their entrepreneurial and real-world learning, and to share details of SERC’s activities through the Entrepreneurs Club and Project-Based Learning. The SERC representatives also connected with Toyama University and the University of International Studies in Toyama.   

At Toyama KOSEN, Natasha and Charlotte learnt about the university’s highly successful “intrapreneurship” programme, which challenges students to develop new products, ideas and systems for local employers, in response to their needs and opportunities. Students have obtained employment with their work placement providers, while the employers gain profitable products and useful systems. Planning to grow the programme, KOSEN staff were interested to learn from SERC’s experience in collaborating with local employers on enterprising projects.

The itinerary also included visits to Toyama Kamitaira Elementary School and Toyama Minami High Schoo,l and to Toyama University of International Studies. Charlotte and Natasha learnt about the prominence of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the curriculum at these institutions and had experienced for themselves some sustainable real-world learning practices.   

At Minami High School, they gave a presentation on SERC’s Enterprise and Entrepreneurship strategy to the school senior management team, and in turn learnt about the school’s wonderful culture of creativity, self-determination and self-motivation, and discussed students’ research with them.   

The trip to Toyama was funded by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, which seeks to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between the UK and Japan. 

On her return to SERC, Charlotte said “Witnessing the innovative projects at Toyama KOSEN, as well as seeing how the Sustainable Development Goals are embedded in the teaching and learning at the schools we visited, was inspiring - and demonstrated the transformative impact of real-world learning.”  

Natasha added “The trip has been a tremendous opportunity to share experience and learning in entrepreneurship education. We are delighted with the outcomes, which include new ideas and learning for both SERC and our partners, new relationships, a proposed visit to SERC by both staff and students from KOSEN, and the sharing of SERC’s livestreamed entrepreneur events in the future.”    

Thanks are due to the partner institutions, and to the trip organiser, Professor Naruse san of the University of Toyama, as well as to the Sasakawa Foundation, for making this trip possible.