Identifying Constituent Elements of Entrepreneurship Curricula: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education research has a strong “output” focus on impact studies but pays much less attention to the “inside” or process perspective of the way entrepreneurship education occurs. In particular, the scattered previous entrepreneurship curriculum research has not managed to provide a current and comprehensive overview of the curricular elements that constitute entrepreneurship education. To overcome this shortcoming, we aim to identify the teaching objectives, teaching contents, teaching methods, and assessment methods discussed in entrepreneurship curriculum research. To this end, we conducted a systematic literature review on the four entrepreneurship curriculum dimensions and collected all mentioned curriculum items. We used a two-stage coding procedure to find the genuinely entrepreneurship-specific items. Among numerous items (also from business management and other subjects), we found 26 objectives, 34 contents, 11 teaching methods, and 7 assessment methods that were entrepreneurship-specific. Most of these items were addressed by only a few scholarly papers.

Navigating Entrepreneurial Horizons: Students Perspectives Analysis of the Entrepreneurial Competences in Teaching Context

“…Courses that aim to boost students' intentions to become entrepreneurs should provide engaging elements and activities. In this particular context, it is necessary to enhance the relevance and adequacy of the courses' content [90], in order to foster an entrepreneurial mindset. Extensive research has been conducted on the correlation between entrepreneurship and education [14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

“…This research study includes some of the main variables related to entrepreneurship education. Other research works have studied some of them separately and in depth, such as course content [90], lecturing staff practices and attitudes [55,96,97], and the role of the university [47,98,99].…”

Improving Curricula for Higher Entrepreneurship Education: An International Real-Time Delphi

“…In contrast to this outcome perspective, much less research is conducted on how entrepreneurship education takes place [25,50]. We argue that when the output of entrepreneurship education is measured as a dependent variable, attention should also be paid to the specifics of entrepreneurship education itself as the major independent variable, with particular focus on how such curricula are designed.…”

“…Curricula consist of several elements or dimensions. A well-established curriculum framework for entrepreneurship education, which can also be applied to other topics, consists of, at least, (1) teaching and learning objectives/goals, (2) teaching and learning contents, (3) teaching and learning methods, and (4) methods to assess the students' learning performance [25,34,[50][51][52][53], on which we focus in this study.…”

“…A recent review identified the curricular items discussed in entrepreneurship education [50]: Apart from the entrepreneurship-specific items, there are also entrepreneurshiprelevant items from business management, economics, law, IT, and other fields that are reflected in entrepreneurship curricula; among the entrepreneurship-specific items, which are of predominant interest here, in the objectives dimension, various items for entrepreneurial knowledge, skills, and attitudes exist. The items in the contents dimension refer to entrepreneurship fundamentals, creativity and innovation, business opportunities and business ideas, business models, business plans and pitching, entrepreneurial finance, new venture creation, entrepreneurial strategy, small business management, and corporate entrepreneurship.…”