Abstract
Entrepreneurship education is an evolving field that confronts obstacles due to fragmentation issues and eclectic approaches that have to be resolved utilising robust educational theories and tools able to intrude effectively the entrepreneurial research discourse. Entrepreneurial learning is also the outcome of education and an unequivocal component of theorising about entrepreneurship. Based on explanatory bibliometric techniques, the present study examines, for the first time, how these terms have emerged in the extant entrepreneurship literature since eighties. A set of 7726 abstracts, retrieved from the SCOPUS database, is analysed through (key)word frequencies, co-occurrence networks and citations. Quantitative findings verify the customary picture for entrepreneurship education that exhibits low academic citation and loose connections with learning theories. The present data also reveal that the connection of entrepreneurship with lifelong learning settings, vocational training and career counselling is scarce in literature. Other ‘gaps’ in research pertain to the comprehensive examination of experiential learning, advanced learning processes and education for innovation. The quantitatively identified shortage of the previous research topics is crucial for the future development of the field of entrepreneurship. Implications concern educational researchers in the field of entrepreneurship, educational agencies or policies as well as academic publishers.
Highlights
How learning becomes an entrepreneurship component? Unequivocally, it underlies everyday activity of entrepreneurs and it motivates entrepreneurship education
Bibliometric analysis of the 7726 SCOPUS sample of abstracts that appear under the search keyword “entrepreneurship” concerns: word frequencies and text mining for corpuses of titles, author or index keywords, abstracts and citation analysis
We propose that the incorporation of reflective, meta-cognitive or higher-level learning processes in research may link to fostering entrepreneurship through lifelong learning or to effective incorporation of entrepreneurship in traditional career counselling practices
Summary
It underlies everyday activity of entrepreneurs and it motivates entrepreneurship education. Following Cope’s perspective, entrepreneurial learning can be thought as a fundamental pole for conventional but for innovative entrepreneurship as well The wide provision of entrepreneurship education, emerging from relevant educational policies, fares a more ‘mature’ phase after the initial ‘fostering entrepreneurial mindsets’ period The impact of educational programmes and the induced entrepreneurial learning, i.e. the outcome of entrepreneurial courses, have become pivotal issues and Kakouris and Georgiadis Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research (2016) 6:6 are being investigated A cross-country survey about the impact of entrepreneurial courses worldwide is performed through the Entrepreneurship Education Project at Illinois State University (Vanevenhoven and Liguori 2013). Similar surveys appear in the European Education Area as well (e.g. European Commission 2012a; PACE project).
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