Trends in entrepreneurship education: a systematic literature review

Abstract

PurposeThis systematic literature review provides an overview of the entrepreneurship education research, by outlining the recent trends of research on entrepreneurship education. This research study has two primary goals. First one is the identification and categorization of the entrepreneurship education in scientific research by providing sequential distribution of published articles, and the research output of scientific journals, authors, and different countries. Another goal is to recognize the themes of research that are most developed and examined by the researchers.Design/methodology/approachThis research systematically examines published scientific documents on entrepreneurship education taken from Scopus database ranging from 1950 to 2021. A total of 1,531 articles were selected for final analysis after a systematic process of elimination based on specific criteria. VOSviewer was used for bibliographic coupling, keyword co-occurrence, distance based mapping, clustering, and co-citation analysis of articles, countries, journals, and authors.FindingsThe systematic literature review revealed that in the last 15 years, scientific literature has shown a variation in direction of research in this area. The literature has moved from focusing on traditional means of entrepreneurship education towards more subtle and output-oriented factors of entrepreneurship education such as intentions, motivation, attitude, and behavior. The most popular topic among researchers and with the greater number of published papers is entrepreneurial intentions, and it is closely related to practice, innovation, and entrepreneurial learning.Originality/valueThis is one of the few systematic literature reviews on entrepreneurship education, and perhaps the only systematic review that analyzes literature on entrepreneurship education from 1950 to 2021 with VOSviewer analysis techniques.

Moderators of the effect of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial action

“…The results presented extend previous research addressing above all entrepreneurial intention as the main EE impact indicator (Zhang et al. , 2022; Shabbir et al. , 2022; Kuratko et al.…”

“…This research is focused mainly on the effect of entrepreneurial education on students' entrepreneurial actions. The results presented extend previous research addressing above all entrepreneurial intention as the main EE impact indicator (Zhang et al, 2022;Shabbir et al, 2022;Kuratko et al, 2021;Nabi et al, 2017;Bae et al, 2014). In line with Chen et al's (2018) proposal, students' entrepreneurial actions have been conceptualized through the abstract-concrete continuum, which is an original conceptualization matching the effectuation and bricolage logics.…”

“…From their meta-analysis they concluded that entrepreneurship education has a positive effect in promoting entrepreneurial intention but the national context has a significant moderating effect. Shabbir et al (2022) conducted a systematic literature review and observed that the most popular topic among researchers and the one with the greatest number of papers published is entrepreneurial intentions, which is closely related to practice, innovation and entrepreneurial learning. In addition, it has been surmised that once intentions are formed, student entrepreneurship occurs (Kuratko et al, 2021).…”

Mapping of Scientific Production on Entrepreneurship Education: A Bibliometric Analysis of a Decade

“…This study provided an insightful assessment of 1017 research articles on entrepreneurship education published between 2014 and November 2023 using bibliometric analysis methods, revealing the field's multidisciplinary characteristics and development trends. This study found that the disciplinary areas involved in entrepreneurship education were consistent with the results of Shabbir et al (2022), indicating that entrepreneurship education has a significant impact not only in the fields of business and management but also in other disciplines, such as social sciences, especially in recent years, where it has been more inclined towards social science fields. This study found that the number of research papers on entrepreneurship education has increased significantly in the past decade, which is consistent with the research of Sreenivasan and Suresh (2023), reflecting the continued attention of academics in this field.…”

“…Although Sreenivasan and Suresh (2023) have mapped the growth trend of nearly 20 years from the perspective of entrepreneurship education research, they have not conducted in-depth research on specific citations, such as articles and authors, countries, journal sources, and many potential fields are still waiting to be studied. On the other hand, some researchers have used systematic analysis to review entrepreneurship education (Banha et al, 2022;Shabbir et al, 2022). Although these in-depth studies examined entrepreneurship education from different perspectives, revealing its current status, future development direction, research hotspots and key influences, there are also some limitations.…”