Universities and their partner organisations are promising that short-term work placements in social entrepreneurial organisations will increase student employability, leadership skills, and knowledge of socially innovative practice, while providing students meaningful opportunities to ‘change the world;’ yet theory and empirical studies are lacking that show what is beneficial and important to students, how students develop, and what influences their development through these cross-cultural and interdisciplinary experiential learning programs. This is the first study to explore the value of UK and US students participating in international internships and fellowships related to social entrepreneurship from a socioeconomic perspective. For this study, a value heuristic was developed from organisational models in the social entrepreneurship and educational philosophy literature followed by a qualitative longitudinal multiple case study. Fifteen individual student cases were chosen from two programmes involving two UK and three US universities, taking place in eleven host countries over five distinct data collection intervals. Findings across cases show a broad range of perceived value to students: from research skills and cross-cultural understanding, to critical thinking and self-confidence. Findings also show how student perspectives changed as a result of the placement experience and what ‘internal’ and ‘context-embedded’ features of the placements influenced students’ personal and professional lives. However, the ambiguity of social impact measures raises ethical questions about engaging students with limited knowledge, skills, and preparation on projects where they are unprepared to create long-term value for beneficiaries. This study contributes to the literature on higher education and international non-profit and business education by: providing an expansive matrix of value to students engaging in international placements; initiating a ‘hybridisation’ theory of personal value; creating a rigorous methodology transferable to similar programmes; outlining embedded features that programme developers can integrate in order to improve their own social and educational impact; raising ethical questions related to theory and practice; and including the researcher’s own multi-continent journey into the substance of the work.

In this research, I have attempted to problematize the spread of discourses in which the alliance between educational management and school inclusion is a powerful production strategy in the contemporary school. In order to do that, I have addressed the following issue: how has the education of Inclusive Education managers been produced in contemporary educational discourses? In this exercise of thought, I have used the Foucauldian notions of discourse, power/knowledge relations and governmentality as conceptual and methodological tools. Hence, the analysis has been inspired by Foucauldian Studies in Education following the post-structuralist thought. Noticing the importance of thinking about the relations established in arrangements and intertwinings between management and inclusion, I searched for documents and programs intended to inclusion manager education on the website of the Secretary of Continuing Education, Literacy, Diversity and Inclusion (SECADI). By analyzing the discursive recurrences in the official documents and investigating how managers actions in Inclusive Education have been produced, I noticed the appeal to new ways of being a manager that are also involved in the comprehension of both the Special Education as a knowledge area and the difference in the processes of manager education for inclusion. Such discursivity is set in the need for involving everyone in inclusion management by means of the principles of democratic management. The displacement from the emphasis on the management discourses to the educational management has been regarded in this research as a current strategy of conduct of teachers. The present emphasis on the discourse of management decentralization towards the Inclusive Education has intensified the centrality on the manager, who is required to produce ways of being in the contemporary school, under the democratic, participation and leadership discourses. / Nesta pesquisa, problematizei a circulação dos discursos que têm, na aliança entre a gestão educacional e a inclusão escolar, uma potente estratégia de produção na escola contemporânea. Para tanto, busquei dar conta da problemática: como a formação de gestores para a Educação Inclusiva vem sendo produzida nos discursos educacionais contemporâneos? Nesse exercício do pensar, tomei como utensílios conceituais e metodológicos as noções foucaultianas de discurso, relações de poder/saber e governamentalidade. Dessa forma, a analítica desenvolvida teve por inspiração os Estudos Foucaultianos em Educação, a partir do pensamento pós-estruturalista. Percebendo a importância de pensar sobre as relações que se estabelecem nos arranjos e nas tramas entre gestão e inclusão, procurei, no site da Secretaria de Educação Continuada, Alfabetização, Diversidade e Inclusão (SECADI), por documentos e programas que se ocupam da formação de gestores para a inclusão. Ao analisar as recorrências discursivas em circulação nos documentos oficiais e investigar de que maneira vão sendo produzidos modos de atuação dos gestores para a Educação Inclusiva na atualidade, percebi o apelo a novos modos de ser gestor, implicados, também, na captura da Educação Especial enquanto área de saber e da diferença nos processos de formação de gestores para a inclusão. Essa discursividade está alojada na necessidade de envolver a todos na gestão da inclusão, por meio dos princípios da gestão democrática. O deslocamento de ênfase dos discursos da administração para a gestão educacional é tomado nesta pesquisa como estratégia de condução de conduta dos professores na atualidade. A atual ênfase do discurso de descentralização da gestão para a Educação Inclusiva intensifica a centralidade no gestor, que sob o discurso democrático, a participação e a liderança, precisa produzir modos de estar na escola contemporânea.

A dynamic movement known as wealth creation education attracts many thousands of people seeking education for the vocation of an entrepreneur in the UK. Entrepreneurship education in these collectives includes venturing know-how but also co-constructs existential meaning and purpose for adherents, a role traditionally fulfilled by religion. This emergent sectarian movement is identified as wealth creationism. Led by charismatic entrepreneurs this newly identified research domain represents rich opportunities to study entrepreneurs in naturally arising settings, but has been neglected and understudied. While publicly subsidised educational support for small-business owners has suffered from low uptake, this study provides new knowledge about the kind of education that is engaged with in large numbers, despite being more expensive. This inquiry critically examines the attraction of these educational collectives and evaluates the social processes of eight wealth creation education providers in England. Teaching content and methods were also investigated. This qualitative study takes an interpreted approach through a social constructionism perspective. Using grounded theory methodology the providers were initially researched through participative observation in the educational settings followed by theoretically sampling data with various collection methods. Interdisciplinary theories, including the sociology of religion, accounted for findings, which were analysed at the meso-group level. The movement teaches entrepreneurship know-how and 'mindset' - ways of thinking and being. Insulating directives of behaviour and the construction of stigmatised out-groups maintain social boundaries. Employing similar narrative features and resources as religious sects, the socially constructed co-extensive nomos and cosmos privileges esoteric knowledge and is closely identified with modern Gnosticism. Participants do not acknowledge religious interpretations of their activities, yet three North American authors provide plausible canonical works that legitimise the movement. Wealth Creationists display entrepreneurial chauvinism, which equates employment with bondage, viewing the employed as slaves. Adherents choose educators with perceived entrepreneurial credibility to lead them on a purposeful mission for the type of knowledge that promises emancipation. This study is significant for both researchers of entrepreneurs and the sociology of religion. It offers participating entrepreneurs critical insights into the charismatic settings, which can be both enabling and disabling for venturing. This study has implications for academics engaged in outreach to small-business owners who may learn from the marketing tactics of these groups, although academics may still lack perceived credibility. Insights into business group formation will be of interest to business group researchers. A map of educational provision may interest researchers and educators of small and microbusiness owners, and those from the fields of entrepreneurial learning.