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The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the national education standard (curriculum, NC) supports the development of enterprising behaviour and the constructivist approach to learning at the general education level?

New methodology was designed based on the assessment of the evidence and frequency of the incidence of the indicators supporting enterprising behaviour in the text of the NC. A content analysis method is used to systematically code and categorize the target indicators from the text of the NC. According to the frequency of indicators that support enterprising behaviour the extent of support is assessed in different parts of the NC.

The findings of this study show that, while the general part of the NC fully reflects the development of attitudes and skills related to enterprising behaviour, in the competences and learning outcomes of the other parts of the NC, some indicators of enterprising behaviour have only moderate support. This shows that entrepreneurial attitudes are not fully recognized as an educational aim in general education, and for the purposes of moving from a behaviourist to a constructivist educational approach, rethinking and reformulating the learning outcomes in the NC is necessary.

The critical aspects are: first, NC formats may differ between countries, and hence, the suggested analysis may suffer from limited replicability; second, the most critical aspect is that the present work analyses only the learning outcomes of the written NC, which is the basis for real action in the classroom.

The contribution of the current study may be summed up in three main issues: first, methodology for evaluating the extent to which the NC supports the development of enterprising behaviour; second, the need to rethink and reformulate the learning outcomes in the NC (e.g. for natural sciences); and third, evidence of the conflict between the expectations of society and the aims of education. The research results are providing objective feedback to educational experts, policymakers and practitioners to help schools innovate and support the education of enterprising people in general education.

The research is an initiative supported by society and directed to support the learning of entrepreneurial behaviour of pupils at the schools of general education and use of constructivist learning approach.

The current study is contributing to the methodology of analysing the written national curricula at the general education level for identification the evidence and frequency of the indicators of enterprising behaviour in different parts of curriculum. The methodology elaborated and the results of this study may be considered applicable for the analysis of NC in other countries. In the future, the NC in connection with real teaching practice should be studied, focusing on finding new solutions to support the education of enterprising people in schools.

The purpose of this paper is to set the papers included in the special issue into their unique contextual stage of entrepreneurial eco-systems in Nordic and Baltic countries.

The editorial first presents the current status of entrepreneurship in the Nordic and Baltic regions. It then provides an overview of the papers included in this special issue, while highlighting their contributions. Finally, it concludes with suggestions for further research, while pointing out promising areas for future investigations.

The papers included in this special issue help advance the understanding of important aspects of entrepreneurship in general, and within the context of Nordic and Baltic countries in particular. The first two papers focus on antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour, namely – education and passion, while the last two papers address entrepreneurial behaviour and its outcome in terms of both growth aspiration and actual growth. Finally, the editorial identifies three important themes for future research, namely – the roles of Web 2.0 and online communities, crowdfunding and alternative finance, as well as current immigration trends on entrepreneurship development and dynamics in Nordic and Baltic Europe.

This editorial and special issue are in tune with current calls for better understanding of entrepreneurship-related phenomena within their social context, and some of the linkages between social settings and manifestations of entrepreneurship. And while most papers concentrate on themes that may be associated with mainstream entrepreneurship research, each introduces new angles and/or conceptual combinations surrounding such themes and variables, which are unique and inspirational.