Entrepreneurship Education Research Revisited: The Case of Higher Education

TLDR

The article aims to inventory and highlight the education preoccupations that shape entrepreneurship research in higher education, providing key theoretical and empirical references. The authors conduct a content analysis of 103 peer‑reviewed entrepreneurship education articles using Bertrand’s (1995) Contemporary Theories and Practice in Education framework, and then synthesize relevant references. The review shows that the literature clusters around four main preoccupations—social/economic roles, systematization, content delivery, and student needs—yet three theoretical orientations (social‑cognitive, psycho‑cognitive, spiritual/ethical) remain underexplored, and scholars face five obstacles that necessitate dual expertise in management and education.

Abstract

Our purpose in this article is to take stock of the education preoccupations that animate research on entrepreneurship focusing on the context of higher education. More specifically, we content-analyze a sample of 103 peer-reviewed entrepreneurship education articles through the prism of Bertrand's (1995) Contemporary Theories and Practice in Education. Our results indicate that this literature is articulated around four major types of education preoccupations: (1) preoccupations with the social and economic roles of entrepreneurship education for individuals and society, as well as with the institutions of higher education themselves; (2) preoccupations with the systematization of entrepreneurship education (i.e., instructional design, the use of multimedia environments, and curriculum development); (3) preoccupations with the content matter to be taught and how this content should be delivered; and (4) preoccupations with considering the needs of individual students in structuring teaching interventions. Yet, three education preoccupations remain underaddressed, that is, those proceeding from social-cognitive, psycho-cognitive, and spiritualist or ethical theories. While we consider five obstacles that may prevent management scholars from studying these dimensions, we argue that to address this limitation, scholars must develop a dual expertise in management and education research. To this aim, we highlight a number of specific theoretical and empirical references associated with different education research preoccupations.