Event Details

This seminar examines the history of entrepreneurship education (EE) in the United Kingdom (UK), exploring different forms and types as they have emerged over time. The study uses a wide range of sources, including both secondary and primary accounts that document the lived experience of educators.

The seminar will explain how the research constructs these sources into a chronology. It then identifies different types of practice and explains how these are structured into four primary forms. From this work, the seminar presents an enhanced understanding of entrepreneurship education. It synthesizes influential types, illustrating how and why practice has evolved.

Most of the history of entrepreneurship education is from the United States (US), and its origins date back to Harvard University’s business planning class in 1947. These often present a chronology or charts the growth of EE, positing that it expanded internationally from its US origins in the 1980s. In Europe, research considers the UK and the Netherlands to be the pioneers of EE during the 1960s. Unlike the US, where contemporary histories exist, the UK’s history remains largely unreported. Studies have reviewed the preponderance of practices at specific points and have discussed aspects such as the development of research or outreach practices. There remains no comprehensive account of the UK’s EE history, nor does there exist any explanation of how it emerged over time, nor are there accounts about how different forms arose and influenced practice today. The seminar presents work that addresses these scholarly oversights. The study uses a historical lens to unpick how the historical evolution of EE practice has impacted contemporary approaches. It examines EE’s past more deeply, explores its many forms, and seeks to move beyond contemporary histories that view it as starting and growing from the US.

The study focuses on the United Kingdom (UK) and asks: what are the drivers of the historical evolution of EE in the UK, and how have these impacted the social construction of contemporary practice? Understanding the past and how historical typifications are constructed provides an essential window into EE’s contemporary practice and helps explain the existing contradictions and differences. It also informs the future. Social constructions are the socially embedded and historically situated meanings that guide action, experience, and practice. In this context, the study defines typificatory schemes as the ‘stocks of common beliefs used within a community of practice.’ It contributes to extant knowledge by addressing a gap in scholarship and presenting an analytically structured history. The seminar will introduce key interwoven typifications in entrepreneurship education’s history and synthesize these into four typificatory schemes. The work shows that broad academic responses to contemporary problems in EE in the UK were often driven by, or have occurred as a reaction to, governmental policy and available external funds. Using this historical account, the seminar argues for educators to take more control over the social construction of practice.

The seminar is organized as follows. First, it will outline the conceptual underpinnings of the topic and explain the social constructionist approach used. Then, it will introduce the methods employed in the research, such as published data and educators' ‘lived experience’. Next, it presents the different phases of historical evolution, starting with some early roots, and then discusses how they are interwoven into typificatory schemes. Finally, it explains how they influence today’s practices.