Rethinking What Is Entrepreneurship Education: A Macro Integrative Perspective

Abstract

Research on entrepreneurship education (EE) has encountered confusing ontological and methodological issues, such as definitional controversy, gaps between research and practice, and lack of theoretical foundations. These are factors holding back the further development of the research and practice in this field. This paper presents a whole picture of EE by exploring key factors involved in EE programs such as objective, audience, content and method, and assessment with a macro integrative perspective. In this way, it points out the disintegrated micro perspectives employed in prior studies is the source of inadequate understanding of EE, which causes issues and confusions in present EE research. The macro integrative perspective offered by this paper provides an innovative way to tackle these issues and hence is expected to contribute to the further improvement of EE research and practice.

Success Through Failure: Towards a Problem-Based Approach to Entrepreneurship

“…The benefit of increasing entrepreneurship to spur economic growth and employment is well understood within academic, business, and policy making communities around the world (Kuratko, 2005;Wu & Gu, 2017). Business dynamism in the United States, however, has been declining since the early 2000s (Decker, Haltiwanger, Jarmin, & Miranda, 2018;Fernald & Jones, 2014).…”

“…Disagreement continues about what activities and competencies are needed to build effective EE programming (Edelman, Manolova, & Brush, 2008;Williams Middleton & Donnellon, 2014;Mwasalwiba, 2010). In addition, a macro review noted ontological confusion and methodological issues in how EE is researched and taught (Wu & Gu, 2017). A 15-year review of the impact of EE up to 2015 revealed that minimal attention is paid to the impact of teaching approaches and methods (Kamovich & Foss, 2017).…”

“…From a pedagogical view, entrepreneurship terms, methods, content, and context vary (Wu & Gu, 2017). As a point of clarity for this exploratory research article, we will use the Harvard Business School definition of entrepreneurship: ''the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled'' (Stevenson, 1983, p.2).…”

The implementation of entrepreneurship education in Estonian vocational education

“…ja -vorme (Arenguseire Keskus, 2018), nõuavad tööhõive tagamiseks ettevõtlikkust. Niisiis on ettevõtlus ja ettevõtlikkus (Hongyun Wu & Jibao Gu, 2017) saanud oluliseks peale ärisektori ka ühiskonnaelus laiemalt ning neis nähakse suurt potentsiaali nii majanduslike, sotsiaalsete kui ka kultuuriliste väärtuste ning innovatsiooni loomiseks ühiskonnas (Bacigalupo et al, 2016;Lackéus, 2015). Koos nende muutustega on muutunud ka arusaam sellest, mida mõistetakse ettevõtluse all.…”

“…Ettevõtlusõpe tugineb usku musele, et ettevõtjaiks ei sünnita, vaid ettevõtluses tarvilik pädevus on aren datav ja ettevõtlusõppel on positiivne mõju ettevõtlus pädevuse arengule (Lans, Blok, & Wesselink, 2014;Lans, Ploum, & Baggen, 2018). Seega ei peaks ette võtlusõpe olema lõimitud mitte üksnes ärisektori, vaid ka teiste valdkondade õppekavadesse ning haarama paljusid sihtrühmi nii vanuse, tegevus valdkonna kui ka eri suguse ettevõtluskogemuse ja -profiili mõttes (Greene, Brush, Eisenman, Neck, & Perkins, 2016;Hongyun Wu & Jibao Gu, 2017;Lackéus, 2015;Venesaar et al, 2018). Ettevõtlusõppe tulemuslikkuse poolest on seniste uuringute andmed erinevad.…”