Errare Humanum Est: Epistemological Obstacles in Entrepreneurship Education

Abstract

The concept of “troublesome knowledge” is a generic term that encapsulates all the difficulties of comprehending or appreciating a discipline-specific learning subject. In this article, we suggest that students’ errors are an indicator for troublesome knowledge. In an empirical study based on in-depth episodic interviews, we explore teachers’ content, pedagogical content, and curricular knowledge on students’ errors in entrepreneurship courses. We find that entrepreneurial errors have multiple characteristics (ambiguity, post-determination, etc.) that impede the diagnosis of errors. Our findings reveal two types of entrepreneurial troublesomeness: troublesome content-related knowledge and troublesome methodology. Furthermore, this article identifies the didactical strategies teachers have employed to cope with students’ errors (correction by co-teacher[s], correction by peer-student[s], etc.) and didactical implications for designing error-based curricula. Finally, we conclude with a discussion on future directions for theoretical and empirical research in entrepreneurship education.