This conceptual article aims to stimulate the educational discussion in entrepreneurship by identifying instructional differences among the three modes of entrepreneurship education, that is, the so-called “about,” “for,” and “through.” Based on a common understanding of instructional design, restricted to knowledge, skills, attitudes and inclusive to the vast majority of educators, differences in priorities, requirements, methods, and content for building up each separate mode are critically addressed. These differences reveal the nature and latent expectations for each instructional mode and possibilities for future studies. It emerges that the “about” mode follows the positivistic paradigm, the “for” follows the vocational education and training one, while the “through” is inherently transformational. Critical entrepreneurship education can be regarded as a distinct form closely related with the three previous modes in specific ways. It can be concluded that there is an inequality among the modes (“about” < “for” < “through”) regarding their revolutionary perspective (i.e., transformative at macro-level) associated with efficient confrontation of attitudes. Implications mostly pertain to future implementations and empirical research in the field.

No abstract

No abstract

Entrepreneurship education is an evolving field that confronts obstacles due to fragmentation issues and eclectic approaches that have to be resolved utilising robust educational theories and tools able to intrude effectively the entrepreneurial research discourse. Entrepreneurial learning is also the outcome of education and an unequivocal component of theorising about entrepreneurship. Based on explanatory bibliometric techniques, the present study examines, for the first time, how these terms have emerged in the extant entrepreneurship literature since eighties. A set of 7726 abstracts, retrieved from the SCOPUS database, is analysed through (key)word frequencies, co-occurrence networks and citations. Quantitative findings verify the customary picture for entrepreneurship education that exhibits low academic citation and loose connections with learning theories. The present data also reveal that the connection of entrepreneurship with lifelong learning settings, vocational training and career counselling is scarce in literature. Other 'gaps' in research pertain to the comprehensive examination of experiential learning, advanced learning processes and education for innovation. The quantitatively identified shortage of the previous research topics is crucial for the future development of the field of entrepreneurship. Implications concern educational researchers in the field of entrepreneurship, educational agencies or policies as well as academic publishers.