Social Entrepreneurial Learning in Self-Organized Early Childhood and Primary Education Settings in Greece

In this paper, we investigate how social entrepreneurial competencies develop among young children in self-organized early childhood and primary education settings in Greece that operate outside traditional state–market logics and embrace a commons-based ethos. While existing approaches to Entrepreneurship Education (EE) frequently privilege individual skills and economic productivity, this study reframes entrepreneurial learning through the lens of social entrepreneurship. Using a qualitative comparative case study, we analyze educational material from self-organized schools and include focus groups with educators. The findings show that social entrepreneurial competencies emerge as present-tense relational practices embedded in everyday collective life, rather than as future-oriented economic skills. By situating these findings within contemporary debates on Social Entrepreneurship Education (SEE) and Childhood Studies, the paper advances a model of entrepreneurship grounded in empathy and collective action in response to social antagonism. In these schools, social entrepreneurship in childhood is understood as a mode of being and becoming in common, enacted through pedagogical worlds in which children learn to live, decide, care, and act together in the present. Overall, the findings highlight the potential of commons-based pedagogies to reconfigure entrepreneurial learning as a relational and collective practice in preschool and primary school education.