Are the dominant teaching theories in higher education adequate to underpin teaching practices in enterprise and entrepreneurship context?

Abstract

It can be comprehended that the models and theories which are currently used to reinforce teaching depict the education practices of transmitting knowledge from teacher to students, which is more traditional, linear, input-output construction of teaching that has dominated adult education for decades including the last half century. As numerous studies (e.g. QAA, 2018) emphasizes that both the needs of learner and learning in enterprise and entrepreneurship education (EEE) context is different from other disciplines and mainstream higher education (HE). This requires further development of teaching methods and practices that can encourage the aspirations of the learner in this particular education setting. When investigating the theories and approaches that are used to examine teaching in HE, the relevance and adequacy of them to review teaching practices in this 21 century and EEE context is a question. Thus, the need of new theoretical models and frameworks can be clearly observed. For example, to investigate teacher’s role in EEE setting, there is a need of adopting more context specific, individualfocused research methods. When the recent outcomes associated with the UK higher education are taken into account, there is an emerging key debate; i.e. are universities actually turning off potential entrepreneurs. Whether these outcomes are due to teaching, learning environment or other activities within universities, is still largely a question, hence requires further research to find answers. Introduction There is a rapidly increasing emphasis on the necessity and influence of entrepreneurship (Kuratko and Morris, 2018). This has led to a vigorous, continuing debate among enterprise and entrepreneurship education (EEE) scholars such as Liguori et al., (2018); Birch et al. (2017); Turner and Mulholland (2017); Gibb (2008); Kirby (2007) about how to develop and educate entrepreneurs. The history of entrepreneurship education in HEIs goes back more than seven decades with some of the first entrepreneurship courses began in 1940s (Katz, 2003), however, do the educators today know how to teach entrepreneurship? Is there an agreed approach to teach entrepreneurship? If the educators know it, why only 1.0% of the students start up a business six months after their graduation in UK (see Fig 4), when actually every university in the UK has allocated substantial resources to nurture entrepreneurs? Can the needs of entrepreneurship education be underpinned by general teaching/learning theories in higher education? As Hurney (2012) and Hattie (2003) posit, teaching can actually have a significant impact on students’ development and positively affect their achievements in general, conversely, can teaching have such positive influence on an individual’s entrepreneurial development? The study of Aluthgama-Baduge (2017) finds out that there is still dearth of knowledge in the area of influence of teaching in the development of one’s entrepreneurial skills and attributes. Additionally, a knowledge gap can be noticed in theories and models that underpin the EEE teaching practices at HE level, particularly teaching styles, methods and the teachers’ role during the education process (Aluthgama-Baduge, 2017).