Learning Entrepreneurship: How Capabilities Shape Learningfrom Experience, Reflection, and Action

Abstract

This paper-based PhD dissertation examines the learning process in experience-based entrepreneurship education. This learning process is characterized by continuous iterations of three components: experience, reflection, and action. Each of the three papers challenges one taken-for-granted assumption about one of the components of this learning process. Those assumptions are that learning experiences occur in face-to-face settings, that reflection is an individual activity taking place in isolation, and that entrepreneurial action can be transferred seamlessly between different contexts and value systems.

Unleashing Entrepreneurial Education: Developing Entrepreneurial Mindsets, Competencies, and Long-Term Behavior

“…The authors highlighted a trend in which entrepreneurship education offerings are moving from teachercentric toward increasingly learner-centric and experience-based pedagogies . Although there is a trend toward more learner-centric entrepreneurship education, it is nonetheless important to note that in real life, most programs and courses include elements of both approaches (Viebig, 2023). Teacher-and learner-centric approaches, as well as approaches in between, have previously been divided into three distinct categories (Johnson, 1988; that serve as a helpful starting point for studying the role of teaching methods in entrepreneurship education:…”

“…Teaching about entrepreneurship means providing mainly declarative, abstract, content-laden, and seemingly value-free knowledge aiming to explain and understand entrepreneurship as a phenomenon Landström & Harirchi, 2018). Although there is no consensus regarding what the content of entrepreneurship courses, this approach seeks to describe the traits of either successful individual entrepreneurs or the entrepreneurial journey , combining elements of general management, marketing, and strategy disciplines (Landström et al, 2012;Viebig, 2023). The dominant ways of teaching about entrepreneurship comprise traditional didactic teaching methods (i.e., one-way knowledge dissemination through lectures, guest lectures, and assigned readings) (Béchard & Grégoire, 2005).…”

“…In this approach, entrepreneurship becomes a way of life" (Gibb, 2002), a method (Sarasvathy & Venkataraman, 2011), or a social phenomenon (Korsgaard & Anderson, 2011). As such, the experiential approach to entrepreneurship education becomes more focused on developing non-cognitive skills (i.e., entrepreneurial mindsets) that allow students to act and operate in ambiguous situations, both within and outside of business venturing as well as in society (Bhatia & Levina, 2020;Viebig, 2023).…”