Experiential to Transformative: Critical Pedagogy in Entrepreneurship Education with Dr. Bruno Teles

Abstract: This qualitative case study examined how Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy can be intentionally applied to social entrepreneurship education at the secondary level. Twenty-six high school students (ages 15–17) in the Oklahoma City area participated in Empowered Futures, a six-week program built on dialogue, problem-posing instruction, lived experience, and praxis, in which participants identified problems in their own communities and designed ventures to address them. Data sources included pre- and post-program reflective essays, a pre/post critical thinking disposition inventory, a facilitator interview, and field notes. Essays were analyzed using Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis; five themes were generated and mapped to the dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation: proactiveness, innovativeness, autonomy, risk-taking, and competitive aggressiveness. Findings indicate that students moved from describing community problems as regrettable but fixed toward positioning themselves as capable of acting on them, with the clearest evidence in the agency-related dimensions of autonomy and proactiveness. Descriptive gains on the inventory were modest and are reported as contextual rather than confirmatory, given non-equivalent pre- and post-program groups. The study contributes a deliberate design case: where prior work has found entrepreneurial orientation emerging as an unintended byproduct of critical pedagogy, this program used critical-pedagogical methods intentionally to develop entrepreneurial agency, offering educators a transferable model for community-anchored entrepreneurship instruction in resource-constrained schools.