Entrepreneurship Education Research Revisited: The Case of Higher Education

Abstract

Our purpose in this article is to take stock of the education preoccupations that animate research on entrepreneurship focusing on the context of higher education. More specifically, we content-analyze a sample of 103 peer-reviewed entrepreneurship education articles through the prism of Bertrand's (1995) Contemporary Theories and Practice in Education. Our results indicate that this literature is articulated around four major types of education preoccupations: (1) preoccupations with the social and economic roles of entrepreneurship education for individuals and society, as well as with the institutions of higher education themselves; (2) preoccupations with the systematization of entrepreneurship education (i.e., instructional design, the use of multimedia environments, and curriculum development); (3) preoccupations with the content matter to be taught and how this content should be delivered; and (4) preoccupations with considering the needs of individual students in structuring teaching interventions. Yet, three education preoccupations remain underaddressed, that is, those proceeding from social-cognitive, psycho-cognitive, and spiritualist or ethical theories. While we consider five obstacles that may prevent management scholars from studying these dimensions, we argue that to address this limitation, scholars must develop a dual expertise in management and education research. To this aim, we highlight a number of specific theoretical and empirical references associated with different education research preoccupations.