Entrepreneurship as Everyday Practice: Towards a Personalized Pedagogy of Enterprise Education

Abstract

<jats:p> Adopting the perspective of ‘entrepreneurship as an everyday practice’ in education, the authors conceptualize opportunities as arising from the everyday practice of individuals. Opportunities are thus seen as emanating from the individual entrepreneur's ability to disclose anomalies and disharmonies in their personal life. The paper illustrates how opportunities unfold depending on regional differences, local heritage and gender, to show how entrepreneurship education must take into account differences in context, culture and circumstance. Rather than perceiving entrepreneurship education as universalistic and searching for a generally applicable teaching approach, the authors argue that there is a need to tailor entrepreneurship education to the particular. They therefore propose that the pedagogy of entrepreneurship education should be personalized and they build a conceptual framework that contrasts two opposing views of entrepreneurship education: ‘universalistic’ and ‘idiosyncratic’. Following this distinction, they explore how different elements of entrepreneurship education may be fitted to the particular needs of each individual learner. This insight is relevant for didactic reflections on single entrepreneurship courses and for the construction of an entrepreneurship education curriculum. </jats:p>

Conceptualizing context in entrepreneurship education: a literature review

“…This dimension is not significantly described in the literature, but rather related to the political and economic themes in terms of, for example, the timeframe of a transitional economy (Lee et al, 2006). However, it may be quite important in terms of deciding when we should teach whom what, as one size does not fit all (Blenker et al, 2012).…”

Assessing Experiential Entrepreneurship Education: Key Insights from Five Methods in Use at a Venture Creation Programme

“…Deacon and Harris (2011) found that a blended/ reflective pedagogic approach to entrepreneurship education developed a wider range of skills within participants, including shaping their perspective on opportunity. Blenker et al (2012) stressed the importance of reflective assessment to help tailor entrepreneurship education to be personalized to each individual learner. Pittaway and Edwards (2012) concluded that reflective assessment was rare except for in the most experiential courses and programmes and that there is need to not only include more reflective assessment but also understand how external stakeholders engaged in assessment affect student learning.…”

Effectuation in the undergraduate classroom: three barriers to entrepreneurial learning

“…The rhetoric has been embodied by HE institutions, initially at the business school but increasingly throughout a range of disciplines. The research into whether entrepreneurship should be taught has given way to arguments about what should be taught and how (Blenker et al, 2012). Jones et al (2014) distinguish three main types of EE: (i) education about entrepreneurship, (ii) education for entrepreneurship and (iii) education through entrepreneurship.…”