What are higher education teachers’ values and beliefs in relation to entrepreneurship, and how are these enacted in their teaching practice? Eight case studies in English higher education

My research was initiated by an increasing awareness of divisions between practice and theory in entrepreneurship teaching, the literature noting the subject being defined by action but having an inconsistent tradition of studying action. My thesis explores the issues that relate to this, for instance, the neoliberal restructuring of higher education, the nature of entrepreneurship research and who it is for, the relationship between professional and cognitive knowledge, the status of practice and commerciality within entrepreneurship teaching, and how these issues (and others) relate to the beliefs and understandings of participants and are enacted in teaching. I approach the research using a constructivist perspective as, given its concern with the links between experience and knowledge, it seems a relevant conceptual framework to explore entrepreneurship teaching that aims to develop the “knowing how” skills. This focus does not seek to diminish the role of cognitive knowledge, which the literature observes as systematically undervalued, rather, my research seeks to clarify the role of traditional and experiential forms of knowledge in relation to the purposes of entrepreneurship teaching. My research was carried out in three Russell Group universities, one post-1992 university, and one Plate Glass university, with eight participants who were identified and recruited via a purposive sampling method, with the help of two respected senior entrepreneurship researchers. Two of the participants then recommended their own contacts. The group was a mix of mostly mid-career entrepreneurship researchers and teachers, and contained some who had significant commercial experience, with most of the participants having less extensive or no commercial experience. Because the participants were experts in their field, they had the experience to contribute valuably to my research, which was carried out via observations and semi-structured interviews to allow them the space to discuss what they considered of value. The findings were subsequently analysed through a thematic approach, given that participants’ commentary was often at a thematic level. My thesis makes five theoretical claims: first, rather than viewing the divisions between theory and practice in entrepreneurship teaching as a given, my thesis explores how this arises out of a background of policy, organisational, disciplinary and ideological pressures that shape what teachers think and believe and explores how their teaching reflects the nature of their intersection with these pressures. Second, my thesis observes that entrepreneurship research is “about” the phenomenon of entrepreneurship and is not intended to inform action, and that academic incentives reward entrepreneurship teachers for research in their disciplinary area. Consequently, these continually reinforce the estrangement of practice from the main body of theory-led teaching, because of practice’s basis in strategy rather than entrepreneurship theory. Third, my research finds that there are considerable additional blocks to the teaching of practice – organisational, disciplinary and ideological, that perpetuate the prevalent engagement with theoretical knowledge. Fourth, I explore how the nature of entrepreneurship teaching is personal, observing that this is rooted in participants’ routes to their current role, and how the concerns of the research they are undertaking orient them either towards or away from commerciality, demonstrating that teaching “for” or “about” is not merely an operational choice, but reaches down to deep layers of meaning, and in doing so, asserts allegiance to one set of values or another. Finally, observing how the terminology of theory and practice has become overlapped, I explore the vernacular of entrepreneurship through understandings of knowledge drawn from educational theory, to clarify the nature and effect of practice-based teaching instruments.