Understanding students’ emotional reactions to entrepreneurship education

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to focus on approaches that acknowledge and make explicit the role of emotion in the entrepreneurship education classroom. As entrepreneurship educators, the authors are aware of the affective impacts that entrepreneurship education has on the students and the authors continuously reflect on and support the students through, what is acknowledged in practice, an emotionally charged experience. With this in mind, the authors outline how a variety of disciplines engage with the role of emotions and how an interdisciplinary approach to the topic can support pedagogy.Design/methodology/approachThe authors synthesise relevant arguments from four discrete disciplines: neuroscience; psychology, education and entrepreneurship, which have not previously been combined. The authors argue that the role of emotion in learning generally, has been investigated across these disparate disciplines, but has not been brought together in a way that provides practical implications for the development of pedagogy.FindingsBy synthesising the findings from four bodies of knowledge that engage with emotion, entrepreneurship and education, the authors start to develop a theoretical model based around the concept of the emotional ecology of the classroom.Practical implicationsThe role of emotion in entrepreneurship education is an emerging topic and the authors’ synthesis of research supports further investigation. The authors’ insights will support educators to develop classroom environments that acknowledge relationships between students and between students and educators. Such engagement could help educators and students to appreciate, acknowledge and address the emotional aspects of entrepreneurship education.Originality/valueThe paper starts to develop new theory around emotions in entrepreneurship education, developing the idea of the emotional “ecology” of teaching environments and highlighting how this might support future research agendas.