Experience-based learning in Entrepreneurship Education - a comparative study of four programmes in Europe
Paper in proceeding, 2014

Research has argued that in order to learn the practice of entrepreneurship, individuals must engage in entrepreneurial processes in order to gain experiential knowledge, often stated as ‘learning by doing’. Practitioners also emphasize that learning to be entrepreneurial is typically experiential. Today, an extensive and steadily growing number of entrepreneurship educations respond to the identified needs for experiential learning but studies on such programmes have often been single case descriptions. This paper investigates the experience-based learning practices across entrepreneurship programmes in four countries, in order to identify common and divergent trends. While the programmes have different structural frameworks, address different groups (ex. engineers, designers, business students), and deliver experiential situations through different means, the programmes share an emphasis on putting the learner centre-stage in the process, and requiring that the learner take shared responsibility for learning from the experience, particularly in regards to setting boundaries for engagement.

learning-by-doing

trends

entrepreneurship education

European case-studies

experiential learning

Author

Karen Williams Middleton

Chalmers, Technology Management and Economics, Entrepreneurship and Strategy

Sabine Mueller

Per Blenker

Helle Neergaard

Richard Tunstall

RENT (Research in Entrepreneurship and Small Business) XXVIII

2219-5572 (ISSN)

Vol. November 19-21 1-15

Subject Categories

Educational Sciences

Other Social Sciences

Driving Forces

Innovation and entrepreneurship

Learning and teaching

Pedagogical work

More information

Created

10/7/2017