The aim of this survey study is to understand undergraduates’ views on how entrepreneurship should be taught in universities. Scholarly interest in embedding entrepreneurship across the university curriculum is increasing, both within the UK and globally in the university sector. However, there remains an ongoing debate about what entrepreneurship is, and how should it be taught. In this qualitative descriptive survey design, we collected the views of a purposive sample of undergraduates (n=223) in a University in Northern Ireland. Besides identifying a range of teaching methods, our content analysis also reveals that (a) the respondents have a narrow view of identifying business owners, who are male and relatively well-known individuals from the USA, as entrepreneurs, and that (b) their way of conceptualising entrepreneurship shapes their expectations of how it should be taught. References to entrepreneurial context, sources and types of entrepreneurships is absent in the data. Importantly, differences in students’ own start up experience and their varying learning needs are not considered as important for teaching and learning. We discuss the pedagogical implications of the findings and argue for the need to address definitional ambiguity, while emphasising the importance of entrepreneurial context and the need to acknowledge variations in students’ own start-up experience and learning needs when teaching entrepreneurship.

Authors:
Paul Joseph-Richard, Ulster University, United Kingdom
Darryl Cummins, Ulster University, United Kingdom
Margaret Morgan, Ulster University, United Kingdom
Aodheen McCartan, Ulster University, United Kingdom

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Paul Joseph-Richard is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management (HRM) at Ulster University Business School, Northern Ireland, UK. His research seeks to extend our understanding of leadership, PhD students' wellbeing & entreprenurship.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-paul-joseph-richard-92300a48/

Additional website of interest
https://pure.ulster.ac.uk/en/persons/paul-joseph-richard-2/publications/

See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule

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