This paper introduces the Longitudinal Experiential Entrepreneurship Education Project (LEEEP), a large-scale research program designed to examine critical variables in experiential entrepreneurship education. Using a quasi-experimental design with data collected pre- and post-participation in an entrepreneurship experiential learning course, the LEEEP dataset comprises a sample of nearly 18,000 students enrolled at nearly 200 universities across the United States. This paper provides information on the course context, the study design, and the measurement approach. Initial results indicate significant differences in the main variables of the study before and after the course, suggesting the influence of the experiential course. Future research avenues are discussed, encouraging scholars to leverage the LEEEP dataset, a free, publicly available database, to advance the field of entrepreneurship education.
Entrepreneurship education in Latin America increasingly unfolds in contexts marked by economic volatility, institutional fragility, and relational interdependence, intensifying the emotional demands placed on students. While emotional intelligence has been widely studied as an individual competency, less attention has been given to how emotional processes develop within venture-based curricula in the region. This study advances the concept of emotional consciousness as a developmental capability emerging from the integration of cognitive and somatic processes and asks how it contributes to entrepreneurial learning in Latin American higher education. The Emotional Consciousness for Entrepreneurship (ECE) program was implemented across six Mexican campuses using a convergent mixed-methods design combining qualitative interviews ( n = 32) with pre–post survey measures ( n = 97), integrated through abductive analysis. Qualitative findings reveal a layered developmental process in which somatic regulation enables cognitive-emotional differentiation, which in turn supports identity reinterpretation and relational leadership enactment. Quantitative indicators remained largely stable, a divergence we theorize as evidence that standardized trait instruments under-detect early-stage developmental change. Findings position emotional consciousness as a foundational regulatory capability shaping entrepreneurial learning under uncertainty and contribute a contextually grounded model of emotional consciousness development for entrepreneurship education in Latin America.
This study examines whether different ways of presenting policy information within an educational setting influence students’ entrepreneurial intentions. Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior, we conducted a randomized pre-test/post-test experiment involving 191 advanced undergraduate students at Uruguay’s largest private university. Students were assigned to one of three interventions: factual descriptions of entrepreneurship support instruments, narratives from entrepreneurs who had successfully benefited from these policies, or a combination of both. Policy descriptions alone did not significantly influence entrepreneurial intentions or their antecedents. In contrast, exposure to role-model narratives significantly increased entrepreneurial intentions, while combining narratives with policy information produced the largest, though not significantly stronger, effect. These findings suggest that entrepreneurship education can function as a mechanism through which entrepreneurship support policies become cognitively accessible and socially meaningful to prospective entrepreneurs. The study contributes to entrepreneurship education by explaining how institutional information enters the entrepreneurial intention formation process through different communication formats, while also complementing entrepreneurship policy research with an ex-ante perspective on policy communication.
Studies highlight that Entrepreneurship Education (EE) is now a well-established research field, yet fundamental issues concerning its theoretical foundations and societal role remain highly debated. To substantiate this debate and strengthen theoretical and epistemological perspectives, the call for this special issue identified three complementary macro topics deserving of research attention: philosophical and theoretical issues, pedagogies and educational models, and critical perspectives. This introduction offers a comprehensive review of the EE literature that explicitly addresses philosophical concerns or introduces well-defined perspectives, identifying four partially overlapping temporal phases that reflect shifting analytical foci on EE conceptualization and philosophical engagement. The analysis shows that while pedagogical models and educational practices have been extensively explored, deeper philosophical inquiry and critical reflection on issues of inclusion, gender, and social responsibility have emerged more explicitly only in recent years. The papers included in our special issue, accordingly, tend to address important gaps underlined in both our call and literature review.
This study explores how an Educational Design Research (EDR) approach can enhance the development of experiential Educational Escape Games (EEGs) that aim to increase engagement and foster entrepreneurship knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) among students aged 14–16. Although EEGs represent an innovative teaching method, they have not been systematically designed nor analyzed within the context of secondary entrepreneurship education (EE). This research gap has led to a limited understanding of how to design these games effectively. The study develops EEGs that are aligned with specific learning objectives through iterative EDR cycles, utilizing data from questionnaires, observations, expert panels, and debriefings, applying reflexive thematic analysis to the qualitative data. The EDR approach effectively connects theory to practice in curriculum design. Enhancements, such as an integrated AI chatbot and a hint system, provide targeted support during the game, fostering student autonomy and motivation. Reflective debriefing sessions help to strengthen the connection between game experience and learning objectives. Carefully designed EEGs are valuable tools for EE, as they make abstract concepts more tangible, engage students actively, and align with contemporary educational approaches, such as game-based and experiential learning. This study provides practical guidance for teachers and contributes to the existing literature on innovative EE.
This study explores the development of self-efficacy and social capital in a unique entrepreneurial education setting: the first Fellowship cohort run by the Los Angeles Economic Equity Accelerator and Fellowship (LEEAF), an economic equity initiative headquartered at a local university. The Fellowship program trained matched cohorts of BIPOC women entrepreneurs (leaders) and BIPOC/First-Generation students (fellows). LEEAF provided both cohorts with resources encompassing technical skill development, business model refinement, organizational capacity building, social capital development, and fundraising. Acting as interns for their assigned leaders, Fellows engaged in a reciprocal learning experience that attempted to ground self-efficacy and social capital development in a sense of shared community mission. Results from post-program surveys and focus groups indicate significant positive shifts in social capital, self-efficacy, and mental wellness practices among the Fellows, illustrating the program’s meaningful contribution to the holistic development of this diverse student community. The study underscores the vital role of Minority-Serving Institutions, specifically in promoting upward mobility and empowerment for underrepresented students.
This study draws on ecological systems theory across the system levels of micro (entrepreneurial teacher), meso (entrepreneurial teaching training/stakeholders/institutions), exo (community involvement), macro (culture, value, policies), and chrono (socioeconomics). Together with a social constructivist perspective, we synthesize the prevalent factors in pre-service teacher Entrepreneurial Education (EE). This paper presents a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed studies in EE to address the research gap and inform the development of effective teacher preparation, promoting EE. Researchers obtained publications from databases, including ERIC, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, through expert consulting and the backward snowballing technique. This systematic analysis used Covidence Reference Management Software to manage the screening and review of studies and extracted data for this study. Data screening and full-text review resulted in 61 relevant publications with Pre-Service Teacher (PST) education on EE as their research context. The qualitative content analysis and integrative synthesis method were then applied using NVivo to integrate coding and sorting into categories. The insights from this systematic review can aid in expanding the current emphasis on improving PST education in schools by incorporating EE into Higher Education Institutions to improve Pre-Service Teachers' and students' capabilities and to promote and advance this research field.
Veterans transitioning from military service to civilian entrepreneurship often encounter challenges not simply in acquiring new communication skills, but in adapting deeply ingrained communication patterns to unfamiliar social and professional contexts. This qualitative study explores these challenges through in-depth interviews with 20 graduates of the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans (EBV) program. Findings reveal that veterans do not typically conceptualize communication as a discrete skill, but as embedded within broader orientations toward responsibility, clarity, and mission execution. While these patterns can support decisive leadership and operational effectiveness, they often require recalibration in civilian business environments that emphasize relational nuance, interpretive flexibility, and self-presentation. Drawing on social cognitive theory, the study identifies elements shaping this transition, including relational misalignment, identity reconstruction, learning system differences, and shifts in self-regulation. These dynamics influence veterans’ ability to build relationships, communicate value, and engage effectively with stakeholders. The findings suggest that entrepreneurship programs should move beyond general skill development to incorporate structured, feedback-rich environments that support behavioral adaptation, communication self-efficacy, and the translation of prior experience into entrepreneurial success.
This article examines entrepreneurship education (EE) in school and in teacher education in the Nordic European countries including Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The research design is based on a semi-systematic literature review following the PRISMA 2020 statement and a reflexive thematic analysis after Braun and Clark. Within the findings, all Nordic countries identify a concordant subject-orientated understanding of entrepreneurship education as a didactical approach and a mindset of educators in the learning process by using several terms, summarized in the definition of the term “Nordic entrepreneurial pedagogy.” Our article highlights aspects of entrepreneurship education in the Nordics against the background of international understandings, focusing on the definition of entrepreneurship education, the role of the teacher and methods applied. The analysis reveals the importance of a standardized definition for entrepreneurship education and calls for more scholarship exploring Nordic entrepreneurial pedagogy in teacher education.
In the research field of entrepreneurship education, role models have been extensively studied. However, the other party in the role modeling process, role aspirants, has received less interest in terms of research. This article argues that without entrepreneurial role aspirants who strive to identify with potential entrepreneurial role models, there would be no such role models. Entrepreneurial knowledge and a positive perception of entrepreneurship are necessary elements in the formation of a role aspirant. Hence, this study discusses the formation of entrepreneurial role aspirants by examining the significance of school and entrepreneurial family background in the creation of entrepreneurial knowledge and a positive perception thereof. Data used in this article was gathered from 15-year-olds in Finland ( N = 26,063). The results indicate that an entrepreneurial family background creates role aspirants by delivering entrepreneurial knowledge and creating a positive perception of entrepreneurship. In contrast, school can deliver knowledge of entrepreneurship, but it does not create a positive perception of it. This article discusses how this might affect the planning and implementation of entrepreneurship education.
This paper introduces a learning innovation that merges science fiction with entrepreneurship education to encourage bold, futures-oriented thinking and entrepreneurial action today. Developed for master’s level students at a public research-oriented university, this learning innovation promotes the exploration of distant futures, leveraging established tools from futures studies within an entrepreneurial context. Through a structured five-step process, students shift their focus from cognitively proximate futures to those that radically diverge from the present, enabling them to conceive of innovative ventures. The learning innovation thus fosters performative futures thinking, engaging in speculative science fiction authoring, and utilizing backcasting to translate visionary futures into immediate entrepreneurial actions. Over three yearly iterations, the learning innovation has demonstrated its effectiveness in broadening students’ imaginative capabilities and improving their capacity to act upon fictional expectations. This paper reflects on the outcomes, student feedback, and potential applications of the learning innovation in various educational and corporate settings.
This study evaluated the impact of a training program on entrepreneurial potential, focusing on personal competence indicators among 1,036 secondary school students in Spain. A comparison between the experimental and control groups confirmed the effectiveness of the program, revealing significant differences in the outcomes. From a gender perspective, the analysis shows no significant differences in the acquisition of entrepreneurial knowledge. However, notable disparities have emerged in the development of practical entrepreneurial skills between men and women. This study also confirms that entrepreneurial intention, which is influenced by personal traits and subjective norms, boosts entrepreneurial potential and exhibits clear gender-based variations. It was concluded that identifying these distinctions is essential for creating tailored and effective training programs. The findings suggest the need for educational strategies that specifically aim to strengthen women’s confidence in undertaking new ventures, creating companies, and fulfilling the unique skills and qualities they bring to the business world.
This study examines the entrepreneurial skills business undergraduates develop through digital prototyping tools in an experiential learning environment, addressing the limited understanding of what specific entrepreneurial skills are cultivated and how they are developed in entrepreneurship education. Thematic analysis of 57 student reflections from a Lean Startup methodology unit within a business degree program at an Australian university identified specific entrepreneurial skills and mapped them to Kolb’s experiential learning cycle. The findings reveal three core entrepreneurial skills: strategic thinking and decision-making, resourcefulness and adaptability, and innovation and problem-solving. These skills are supported by six skill pillars and 37 specific skill attributes. Reflective Observation aligns with all three core skills, while Abstract Conceptualization supports strategic thinking and resourcefulness, as students apply theoretical insights to refine strategies and make data-driven decisions. Concrete Experience and Active Experimentation primarily drive innovation and problem-solving, fostering hands-on and iterative engagement through digital prototyping. The alignment of entrepreneurial skills with Kolb’s experiential learning cycle provides a framework for designing targeted, practical learning activities. Higher education institutions can use these insights to enhance entrepreneurship curricula by integrating digital tools that bridge the gap between theory and practice and cultivate industry-relevant entrepreneurial skills.
Advancing reflective practice for teaching entrepreneurship education (EE) in higher education requires educators to adapt their teaching. This article explores how entrepreneurship educators develop systematic rationales for defining their teaching practice’s values, beliefs, and aspirations. The empirical study reveals how educators construct different categories of teaching philosophies to become context-aware and balance EE purposes. The research question is: How do entrepreneurship educators develop their teaching philosophies to foster reflective practice and improve their pedagogical approaches? I explored this by studying existing approaches to teaching philosophies from educational science and conducting an empirical investigation at a university of applied sciences. The findings identify how educator development in EE may be guided by facilitating a reflective practice, aiding the entrepreneurship educator to foster sound pedagogical and didactical reflections and choices. The study presents an empirically refined integral perspective in which the balancing of EE purposes is promoted through three distinctive categories of teaching philosophies: 1) Teaching practice didactics and vocabulary; 2) Educators as agents in an institutional context; and 3) Professional practice as context for EE. The insights highlight critical strategies for developing teaching philosophies that are adaptable, purpose-driven, and responsive to the dynamic nature of entrepreneurship and facilitating reflective practice. In doing so, I contribute an entry point to discuss teaching philosophies in EE and bring this vital topic to the forefront, henceforth discussing how to enable and advance further understanding of the crucial roles of entrepreneurship educators in higher education.
Entrepreneurship education scholars have endorsed teaching for experiential learning as an innovative instructional approach. However, empirical studies in the 2010s revealed a persistent reliance on lecture-centered teaching in entrepreneurship classrooms. Since then, few studies have examined this issue in conjunction with emerging trends, particularly the accelerated technology integration. This study addresses this research gap through a mixed-methods approach, combining 107 survey responses and 9 interviews with U.S. entrepreneurship instructors. Findings reveal the current pedagogical landscape of entrepreneurship education: (1) the widespread adoption of inquiry-based and learner-centered teaching in entrepreneurship education and mixed adoption of technology integration, (2) the influence of instructors’ perspectives on entrepreneurship in adopting inquiry-based teaching, (3) the benefits of professional development programs, and (4) structural barriers to fully adopting experiential learning in higher education. These results also illuminate key contemporary issues such as the importance of entrepreneurial identity for innovative teaching practices, the lack of a theoretical framework regarding the relationship between technology and entrepreneurship, as well as the challenges faced by underserved communities in ensuring authentic experiential learning. These findings inform higher education leaders about ways to enhance the quality of entrepreneurship education and provide scholars with fruitful directions for future research.
Entrepreneurship and drama education each offer unique opportunities for an experiential view of learning. This is especially of relevance to entrepreneurship education in the areas of communication and performance. Such performance includes areas of skill development (encompassing presentations, stakeholder management, and summary writings). The authors of this article were curious about the interdisciplinary possibilities of play through performativity and script writing as they related to entrepreneurship education and employed process drama so that students could creatively explore entrepreneurship strategies, perform live case analyses, and conduct learning connected to the real world. Results of this classroom intervention demonstrated how developing the art of the pitch through play and performativity allows for fostering creativity, innovation, and risk-taking in an entrepreneurship education setting with an emerging term – performing entrepreneurialism .
The focus of this study is on the epistemological frames that teachers employ to facilitate student learning in entrepreneurship education (EE). Drawing on three epistemological frames that teachers exhibit in teaching: delivering knowledge, guiding knowledge construction, and making space for collaborative and iterative knowledge construction, this study investigates what and how students learn about entrepreneurial behavior in response to teachers’ epistemological frames. Our qualitative study focuses on a bachelor’s-level EE course investigating the learning reflections of 12 students from six different teams, all of whom provided a report on a team exercise The Entrepreneurial Movement . For the students, the course was experienced as a relational activity that, through their responses and reflection, produced a learning journey with various knowledge-related and affective learning outcomes on entrepreneurial behavior. Our study introduces “ through ” competition as an applicable mode of learning in EE and shows how the suggested epistemological frames stimulate different student responses and complement each other in students’ holistic learning about entrepreneurial behavior. We identify potential future research directions and provide implications for educators and students in EE.
This paper explores how entrepreneurship instructors foster an entrepreneurial mindset (EM). There is a growing demand across campus for graduates who can navigate increasingly dynamic and uncertain contexts. However, how to cultivate an EM remains unclear, posing design challenges and legitimacy issues. Therefore, a real-time case study of a rare, extended entrepreneurship course at a Danish university was conducted. The case-study database consists of a unique combination of pre-post surveys, observations, and semi-structured interviews. The study uses learning and educational psychology to explore how learning experiences facilitated the fostering of specific psychological attributes of EM. Findings suggest that the applied pedagogy enhances some attributes of EM, such as entrepreneurial passion, self-efficacy, and perceived controllability, while other attributes did not appear to change equally. Many studies attempt to establish a causal link between educational intervention and EM development. This paper goes further by exploring the role of pedagogy in fostering specific EM attributes. By studying a non-business setting, the paper builds on insights from a context where students have not previously been encouraged to think and act entrepreneurially. With this knowledge, researchers gain a more nuanced perspective on how pedagogies shape EM development and instructors gain guidance to design entrepreneurship courses.
The article is concerned with the cognitive aspect of the entrepreneurial mindset when teaching entrepreneurship. To encounter the escalating complexity underlying the discipline of entrepreneurship, the Hegelian dialectical method is applied to the conceptual pillars of Shane’s individual-opportunity nexus: opportunity and knowledge. Step by step Hegelian sublations in each dimension lead the concepts to their opposites and ultimate synthesis in an integrated dialectical framework. Opportunity is contrasted with support and knowledge with ability. The dialectical tensions reveal the dynamic emergence of entrepreneuring by unifying the contrasting concepts into the entrepreneuring milieu and the entrepreneuring competence. Pairs of opposing concepts from each dimension reveal four complementary entrepreneurial styles. The emerging typology introduces new, inherent, and spontaneous conceptualizations of the plethora of entrepreneurial factors that individuals perceive as critical to success. Implications of the dialectical method pertain to reconceptualizing the relationships among fundamental entrepreneurial notions while teaching entrepreneurship to diverse audiences. The present approach delves into the promising philosophical underpinnings of dialectics with a potential to develop a new tool in educational practice.
Physical innovation spaces foster students’ entrepreneurial mindset by leveraging the synergy of co-locating entrepreneurship education, (in)formal student activities, and external events. However, academic research remains inconclusive on whether students’ design requirements for these spaces are universal or context-specific. Seizing the opportunity presented by the opening of a new university mixed-use entrepreneurial space, an action research study was initiated following the participatory double diamond process of design thinking. The first phase (2022–2023) involved nine focus groups ( N = 253), while the second phase (2023–2024) consisted of twelve prototyping and testing sessions ( N = 99). A subsequent comparison of students’ design requirements with features of other innovation spaces ( N = 10) as well as findings from an extensive post-empirical literature review indicated that—contrary to the content and pedagogy of entrepreneurship education—students’ needs regarding entrepreneurial space appear essentially similar, with only their relative importance exhibiting some contextual variation. Further research is needed to validate the consistency of these requirements and to explore how contextual factors, such as culture, economy, and organizational structure, influence their prioritization.
