Seven Challenges in Conceptualizing and Assessing Entrepreneurial Skills or Mindsets in Engineering Entrepreneurship Education

Constanza Miranda,Adam Carberry,Bruk Berhane,Julian Goñi

doi:10.3390/educsci10110309

Abstract

The growth of undergraduate entrepreneurship education programs and research, both within and outside of business programs, has led to a diverse array of academic literature on this topic. The diversity of perspectives has led to many conceptual and educational challenges that remain unresolved within the literature. The following conceptual paper offers a critical perspective on challenges that have been identified. A narrative-style literature review was conducted to explore challenges emerging from both (a) the practice of teaching entrepreneurship and (b) the definitions and assessment of entrepreneurial mindsets and skills that result from those education processes in entrepreneurship education, particularly within an undergraduate engineering education context. We achieve this objective by discussing previously dispersed sources of literature from disciplines that have critically discussed and explored entrepreneurial themes, such as business education, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. Contemporary debates within multiple disciplines are integrated and organized as challenges to inspire new theoretical discussions among scholars, educators, and other practitioners that can inform a more comprehensive way to conceive and assess entrepreneurship in engineering education. Seven challenges were identified ranging from the definition of entrepreneurship in education to the role of ethics in the teaching and assessment of entrepreneurship. We use these seven challenges and research questions as a starting point for the disambiguation of the working definition of entrepreneurship in the context of engineering education.

Highlights

Engineering schools have recently increased their efforts in entrepreneurship due in part to accreditation criteria, local demands related to public policies [1] and known benefits for national economies [2]
Morris and Ligouri [18] argue that more research is needed to address several key research questions related to education: How is entrepreneurship taught? What contents should be imparted to students? How should we evaluate results? Mäkimurto-Koivumaa and Belt [64] sought to answer these first two questions by proposing a competency model for entrepreneurship education in non-business programs
A world without systematic ethics and values can lead to engineering solutions with disastrous results. Throughout this conceptual review, we have discussed seven key challenges to consider in an effort to produce a more comprehensive, socially engaged, and integrated vision for both entrepreneurship education and its learning outcomes, specially for the context of engineering education

Summary

Introduction

Engineering schools have recently increased their efforts in entrepreneurship due in part to accreditation criteria, local demands related to public policies [1] and known benefits for national economies [2]. The growth experienced in engineering education (e.g., entrepreneurship-related instruction and publications) has even surpassed that which has occurred within business programs [3,4,5,6]. This shift in the curriculum is yet another change to what has been done traditionally dating back to the Grinter report [7], which introduced engineering design after students had obtained a strong foundation in the sciences and mathematics [8].

Methods

Results

Conclusion