Course content

The course focus on emerging perspectives in entrepreneurship education research. The emerging perspectives are found for instance where entrepreneurship education research overlaps with literature streams from entrepreneurship, technology transfer, sociology, psychology or education and pedagogy studies; or when new phenomena and tendencies emerge in society and education. The first part of the course will focus on the individuals becoming entrepreneurial and include perspectives connected to identity work in entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial mindset, and emotions in entrepreneurship education. In the second part of the course, we will focus on perspectives connected to the interaction between entrepreneurship education and its context. These discussions will revolve around dynamic views on how students learn in extra-curricular activities and from other actors in the university ecosystem, process perspectives on how entrepreneurship education contribute to solving societal and environmental challenges, new perspectives related to education of entrepreneurial students in other disciplines, and critical approaches to ‘standard approaches’ influencing entrepreneurship education practice from other practices. The third part of the course includes perspectives related to efficiency of entrepreneurship education such as approaches to entrepreneurship education from pedagogics research, the research frontiers of gender- and team research in entrepreneurship education, as well as long-term and short-term outcomes of interventions and experiments.

Learning outcome

Knowledge about the research frontier in entrepreneurship education.

Knowledge about the most recent developments in relevant theories and literature streams in entrepreneurship education.

Skills to analyse relevant themes in entrepreneurship education using different theoretical frameworks.

Skills to position your own research at the research frontier in entrepreneurship education.

General competence to design and conduct research projects in collaboration with other researchers.

General competence to structure and formulate arguments.

Learning methods and activities

The course is based on a collaboration between the entrepreneurship education research communities at NTNU, Aarhus University, Chalmers, University of Turku and Nord University. One of the purposes of arranging the course is to facilitate community building among the PhD students and with senior researchers. Practically, the course is organized as a weeklong seminar for PhD students and junior researchers. The senior researchers serve not only as guest lecturers, but are recommended to participate throughout the week. Course activities consist of introductions to the emergent perspectives, discussions on the implications of the perspectives for entrepreneurship education research and the involvement of participants in critically integrating or opposing emergent perspectives in their own research. The course activities will enable the PhD students to relate to the emergent perspectives and integrate this into their own work. The course also seek to initiate community building and research collaborations between the participants, resulting in potential conference abstracts that will be part of the final submission of the course.

Further on evaluation

The assessment will be conducted according to the regulations connected to PhD courses at the department.

Recommended previous knowledge

This course is valuable for PhD students in entrepreneurship focusing on entrepreneurship education.

Required previous knowledge

Master in Entrepreneurship or equivalent.

Course materials

Due to the emergent topic of the course, the literature will be updated every time the course is run.