Developing Entrepreneurial Society: Have We Ignored the Opportunities of Preschool Education?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic is important: referring to the findings of the study, There are not so many studies carried out in the field.
The storyline is coherent, ver well organised, and the manuscript has been written using good academic English. 
The main concepts have been defined somewhat widely and deeply. However, preschool as the only concept focusing on the educational level could be argued stronger: in some countries, preschool is used, but in some other countries, the same educational level is pre-primary school. This selection should be clarified.
Another concept to be clarified is entrepreneurship education vrs. entrepreneurial thinking and actions (e.g. line 62-63). There are differences in definitions of entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial education, enterprise/enterprising education - in different countries the definition vary (in England, German, France, Nordic countries, America...). The choice should be clarified somewhat stronger. 

The aim of the study is based on the previous studies. The theoretical background has been organised well including appropriate details. However, the research question suddenly includes the concepts of entrepreneurial behaviour, competencies and learning, which have not been defined in the literature review at all. I wonder if they are needed in the research question either: I recommend the author to keep only "How have entrepreneurship education been studied..." because it seems not necessary in this study to limit the possible findings more.
If entrepreneurial behaviour/competencies/learning have been used as key words when searching for the publisher articles in the semi-systematic review, then the concepts should be defined in the theoretical background, too.
This leads us to the next lack: the process of the review has been shared in appropriate way except the first steps in the process. I wonder, what are the keywords/concepts used when teaching for the journals/articles? I found 8line 385) in the discussion, thats scopes was used, but it should have mentioned in the methodology. Also the first 36 articles were mentioned in the discussion: I'd like to see this finding when sharing the details of the articles take with. Also the arguments, why only the 11 articles were accepted, would be interesting to read in the text. Revealing this part of the content analysis should offer an interesting part of the process to the readers and strengthen the reliability of the study.
Additionally, I'd like to see the names of the journals at least in the table 1.

I wonder, if there should be a word that in the line 430 (Maybe the reason behind this is that there has been...)

The findings, discussion and the conclusion are well organised and compared with the theoretical background in an appropriate way.
The only somewhat confusing thing is, that in the two first paragraphs in the Introduction, the author(s) notices some "hard values" in entrepreneurship education. After this, there is not any considerings about some kind of critical aspect: I wonder if the author(s) really want to notice entrepreneurship education among the little children only as a very well come phenomenon. Are the possible critical findings in possible coming studies in this field not so welcome - or has this approach been outside only by mistake. In the conclusion, there might be a place for a short mentioning about this view.

Thank you for your well done study. I hope the best for you when developing it to become published.  

Author Response

Thank you for your constructive feedback. Please, also see the attachment, which includes our comments for your feedback and ideas for improvement. 

 

Reviewer 1

 

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The topic is important: referring to the findings of the study, There are not so many studies carried out in the field. The storyline is coherent, very well organised, and the manuscript has been written using good academic English. 

Thank you. We have tried our best.

The main concepts have been defined somewhat widely and deeply. However, preschool as the only concept focusing on the educational level could be argued stronger: in some countries, preschool is used, but in some other countries, the same educational level is pre-primary school. This selection should be clarified.

Thank you for noticing this issue. We have clarified the differences between the concepts and the choice of concepts in our research.

Another concept to be clarified is entrepreneurship education vrs. entrepreneurial thinking and actions (e.g. line 62-63). There are differences in definitions of entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial education, enterprise/enterprising education - in different countries the definition vary (in England, German, France, Nordic countries, America...). The choice should be clarified somewhat stronger. 

Thank You. We have clarified and extended this approach. Please, see the lines 70 – 88.

The aim of the study is based on the previous studies. The theoretical background has been organised well including appropriate details. However, the research question suddenly includes the concepts of entrepreneurial behaviour, competencies and learning, which have not been defined in the literature review at all. I wonder if they are needed in the research question either: I recommend the author to keep only "How have entrepreneurship education been studied..." because it seems not necessary in this study to limit the possible findings more. If entrepreneurial behaviour/competencies/learning have been used as key words when searching for the publisher articles in the semi-systematic review, then the concepts should be defined in the theoretical background, too.

This is an essential point to develop in our study, and, according to your suggestion, we have changed the research question and the description of the methodology so that we avoid introducing new concepts into this area - especially when they are not necessary.

This leads us to the next lack: the process of the review has been shared in appropriate way except the first steps in the process. I wonder, what are the keywords/concepts used when teaching for the journals/articles? I found 8line 385) in the discussion, thats scopes was used, but it should have mentioned in the methodology. Also the first 36 articles were mentioned in the discussion: I'd like to see this finding when sharing the details of the articles take with. Also the arguments, why only the 11 articles were accepted, would be interesting to read in the text. Revealing this part of the content analysis should offer an interesting part of the process to the readers and strengthen the reliability of the study. Additionally, I'd like to see the names of the journals at least in the table 1.

Thank you for this comment, Scopus has been added to the Method sections. The search string is also included. The screening process from the 36 articles to the 11 articles has been clarified. Further, the titles of the journals are now included in Table 1.

I wonder, if there should be a word that in the line 430 (Maybe the reason behind this is that there has been...)

Thank you. Revised.

The findings, discussion and the conclusion are well organised and compared with the theoretical background in an appropriate way. The only somewhat confusing thing is, that in the two first paragraphs in the Introduction, the author(s) notices some "hard values" in entrepreneurship education. After this, there is not any considerings about some kind of critical aspect: I wonder if the author(s) really want to notice entrepreneurship education among the little children only as a very well come phenomenon. Are the possible critical findings in possible coming studies in this field not so welcome - or has this approach been outside only by mistake. In the conclusion, there might be a place for a short mentioning about this view.

Good point. This has been revised, please, see the last paragraph in the Discussion.

Thank you for your well done study. I hope the best for you when developing it to become published.  

Thank you. Your suggestions for development have been very valuable for us.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall I like the paper. There is a gap which does need addressing, while in some respects we can see why there has not been that much focus on pre-school entrepreneurship education. The paper is very clearly written; language-wise there are minimal issues.

Unclear what is meant by ‘semi-systematic literature ‘ in the abstract (I think the authors mean ‘semi-systematic literature review’.

It’s a shame the authors did not use ‘enterprise’ as a keyword in their searches. This may have resulted in further useful literature.

I’m not sure I quite understand how a semi-systematic literature review differs from a systematic literature review. Can you clarify further in the methodology?

Check Table 1 for unnecessary hyphens, e.g. mech-anisms, or compe-tition, etc.

Where there is empirical data can you include sample size in Table 2 in the ‘methodology’ column (sometimes it has been included)?

The findings as presented in Table 2 were quite surprising. A few things I noticed were that often in these studies the focus was not on the learners, i.e. the preschool children, sometimes the focus wasn’t even entrepreneurship related (e.g. focus on nutrition outcomes), sometimes the measures do not seem appropriate for preschool level children e.g. Ying, Yang and Liu who seemed to have looked at intention to start a business and had made plans for this (at preschool age?!).  

The first sentence in the Discussion section needs revising as it is worded wrong.

I think by ‘inexplicitly’ you mean ‘implicitly’

I think the conclusions should be strengthened in terms of being more explicit in relation to a future research agenda. Of course, the authors do present some ideas in the final paragraph and yet these are quite bland (in the sense that we didn’t really need a review to tell us this). Because of the small number of relevant papers, it is difficult to identify any patterns and trends but there is no harm in picking up on individual papers if they are in some way original and the authors felt there could be value in other researchers adopting a similar methodology or building on a specific paper’s findings. I also wonder whether you might consider a more critical approach towards entrepreneurship education at the preschool level? When is it too young to teach entrepreneurship (as opposed to perhaps enterprise, the former being more associated with business start-up, the latter more with entrepreneurial competencies)? If the authors can add more value to their conclusions their paper is also likely to be more highly cited which would of course be in their interest.

A few minor typos - a thorough proof-read should be able to address this. 

Author Response

Thank you for your constructive feedback. Please, also see the attachment, which includes our comments for your feedback and ideas for improvement. 

Reviewer 2

 

 

Overall I like the paper. There is a gap which does need addressing, while in some respects we can see why there has not been that much focus on pre-school entrepreneurship education. The paper is very clearly written; language-wise there are minimal issues.

Thank You.

Unclear what is meant by ‘semi-systematic literature ‘ in the abstract (I think the authors mean ‘semi-systematic literature review’.

Thanks. Revised.

It’s a shame the authors did not use ‘enterprise’ as a keyword in their searches. This may have resulted in further useful literature.

This is a very good point. As you note, this concept might have been of interest. We will take this suggestion for future research. 

I’m not sure I quite understand how a semi-systematic literature review differs from a systematic literature review. Can you clarify further in the methodology?

Yes. We have extended its clarification.

Check Table 1 for unnecessary hyphens, e.g. mechanisms, or competition, etc.

Thank you for your close reading. Table 1 has been revised to this aim.

Where there is empirical data can you include sample size in Table 2 in the ‘methodology’ column (sometimes it has been included)?

Thanks, this has been included in Table 2.

The findings as presented in Table 2 were quite surprising. A few things I noticed were that often in these studies the focus was not on the learners, i.e. the preschool children, sometimes the focus wasn’t even entrepreneurship related (e.g. focus on nutrition outcomes), sometimes the measures do not seem appropriate for preschool level children e.g. Ying, Yang and Liu who seemed to have looked at intention to start a business and had made plans for this (at preschool age?!).  

This is a very good point. These findings were surprising as they show the strong variation in the studies and the need for research in this area, as pointed out in the conclusion.

The first sentence in the Discussion section needs revising as it is worded wrong.

Thank you. Revised.

I think by ‘inexplicitly’ you mean ‘implicitly’

Thank you again. Revised.

I think the conclusions should be strengthened in terms of being more explicit in relation to a future research agenda. Of course, the authors do present some ideas in the final paragraph and yet these are quite bland (in the sense that we didn’t really need a review to tell us this). Because of the small number of relevant papers, it is difficult to identify any patterns and trends but there is no harm in picking up on individual papers if they are in some way original and the authors felt there could be value in other researchers adopting a similar methodology or building on a specific paper’s findings. I also wonder whether you might consider a more critical approach towards entrepreneurship education at the preschool level? When is it too young to teach entrepreneurship (as opposed to perhaps enterprise, the former being more associated with business start-up, the latter more with entrepreneurial competencies)? If the authors can add more value to their conclusions their paper is also likely to be more highly cited which would of course be in their interest.

We appreciate these ideas for development. Please see the revised and extended Discussion.

Reviewer 3 Report

The abstract's research objectives are somewhat unclear. The purpose of the study is to explore the research on entrepreneurship education in preschools and its approaches. However, the authors need to specify their research questions and propose a deeper contribution instead of just only searching for papers on it. A thorough analysis of the concept of entrepreneurship in early education is also necessary for a meaningful discussion.

Although the authors recognize the necessity for more research in the field, the restricted number of studies examined raises concerns about the comprehensiveness and representativeness of their conclusions. A wider and more varied sample would have offered a stronger foundation for drawing conclusions and recognizing important themes, for instance, the evolution of the concept of entrepreneurship in education and the different approaches to this.

The paper lacks consideration for the limitations of its chosen methodology. With a small sample size and the absence of a clear conceptual framework, it is crucial to recognize potential biases and limitations in the research design. An acknowledgment of these limitations would have led to a more impartial interpretation of the findings and boosted the study's overall credibility.

From a theoretical perspective, it would be relevant to consider the literature on the importance of non-cognitive skills in Hanusehk's work and how this relates to overall societal wealth and development. In addition, a thorough analysis of the notion of entrepreneurship in early education is also necessary for a meaningful discussion. I suggest reviewing https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2016-1135

This theoretical background would provide valuable context for the study

In my opinion, there should be some English revisions required. However, I did not come across any particular issues with the English quality.ality.

Author Response

Thank you for your constructive feedback. Please, also see the attachment, which includes our comments for your feedback and ideas for improvement. 

Reviewer 3

The abstract's research objectives are somewhat unclear. The purpose of the study is to explore the research on entrepreneurship education in preschools and its approaches. However, the authors need to specify their research questions and propose a deeper contribution instead of just only searching for papers on it. A thorough analysis of the concept of entrepreneurship in early education is also necessary for a meaningful discussion.

Thank you. Relevant points. We have revised the research question in the abstract. Furthermore, we have extended our concept definitions in the Introduction. However, since the research area in the field is immature, there are few studies in the field. Therefore, we have justified the reasons behind utilizing a semi-systematic literature review to develop our understanding of what has been studied in the field and how. Thus, we can focus on this study, analyzing the literature in the field. In the future, we will have more opportunities to create new research settings (e.g., including empirical data collection) based on this.

Although the authors recognize the necessity for more research in the field, the restricted number of studies examined raises concerns about the comprehensiveness and representativeness of their conclusions. A wider and more varied sample would have offered a stronger foundation for drawing conclusions and recognizing important themes, for instance, the evolution of the concept of entrepreneurship in education and the different approaches to this.

Thank You. As Cohen et al.  (2018) argue, the generalizability of such single experiments (e.g., pilot studies) can be further extended through e.g., multiple experiment strategies, which allows single pilot studies to contribute to the development of a growing pool of data for eventually achieving a wider generalizability of the key findings. This study is based on this type of income angle. Thus, we have integrated this clarification in the Methodology and Discussion part of the paper.

The paper lacks consideration for the limitations of its chosen methodology. With a small sample size and the absence of a clear conceptual framework, it is crucial to recognize potential biases and limitations in the research design. An acknowledgment of these limitations would have led to a more impartial interpretation of the findings and boosted the study's overall credibility.

Thank you. Good points. Please, see our revised Methodology and Discussion.

From a theoretical perspective, it would be relevant to consider the literature on the importance of non-cognitive skills in Hanusehk's work and how this relates to overall societal wealth and development. In addition, a thorough analysis of the notion of entrepreneurship in early education is also necessary for a meaningful discussion. I suggest reviewing https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2016-1135

This theoretical background would provide valuable context for the study

Thank you. We explored and utilized ideas provided.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language: In my opinion, there should be some English revisions required. However, I did not come across any particular issues with the English quality.

We have edited the text and corrected typos. Thank You for your valuable input.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

References must be reviewed as some of them are not correct. All DOI should be included

For example, cite 15 is not correct, and DOI is missing DOI: 10.4185/RLCS-2016-1135en

It has improved

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your profound work. We have revised the references and tried to improve the language.