In the Eye of the Beholder: Visualising Students’ Implicit Entrepreneurship Theories

Abstract

Teaching methods and students’ preconceptions are considered a crucial basis for entrepreneurship education, not least when entrepreneurship is taught outside business schools with differentiated learning outcomes. This qualitative study seeks to explore students’ experiences of a visual-based teaching exercise––“Images of entrepreneurship”––and examines how the exercise contributes to making their preconceptions of entrepreneurship explicit. The study presents the exercise and its theoretical underpinnings and then, via interviews with 28 students from various educational backgrounds, gives a unique insight into their experiences of the exercise. The purpose is to contribute to the development of theory on pedagogical practices in classroom settings in entrepreneurship education in higher education. In order to systematically discuss the students’ relationship to the exercise and to their preconceptions of entrepreneurship, implicit theories are proposed and developed as a theoretical framework. Based on the students’ views, this study shows that entrepreneurship educators can use visual material to initiate reflective conversations about students’ implicit entrepreneurship theories, and involve students in evaluations of teaching methods in order to promote their perspective.