Entrepreneurial narratives and concept teaching and learning

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education (EE) is facing a tension between practical valence and academic institutionalization. As a consequence, we know very little about how story-based pedagogy is implemented in the classroom, though various entrepreneurial narratives have been institutionalized into EE programs. This article examines how one Chinese teacher thematically constructs six nascent entrepreneurs to illustrate the concept of entrepreneurship in a classroom setting. The findings suggest that the entrepreneurial narratives used by the teacher are different in structure from those reported by entrepreneurship studies, because entrepreneurial stories narrated by teachers are non-participant life stories. This article argues that narrative is an important tool for teachers to personalize their conceptualization of entrepreneurship. Such conceptualization, embedded in both the structure and the content of narratives, facilitates entrepreneurial teaching and learning in a holistic, instantiated, and impactful way. The article also demonstrates that teachers can create additional learning opportunities, by resorting to specific narrative features and thematic construction. It concludes with critical reflections on entrepreneurial narrative, story-based pedagogy, and EE research and calls for more classroom-based research in the field.