A proposed approach to the design of a doctoral study to identify threshold concepts in Entrepreneurship education and the implications of these for the curricula and pedagogy of Entrepreneurship programmes in Higher Education.

Abstract

This is an exploratory, developmental paper, outlining a proposed approach in a doctoral study to identify the threshold concepts in Entrepreneurship education, and the implication of these in the development of curricula and pedagogy in Entrepreneurship programmes in Higher Education. The production of knowledge is commonly organized in disciplines and the communication of knowledge within a disciplinary field and a non-disciplinary field (such as Business Management) is normally expected to differ (Peter Van den Besselaar & Gaston Heimeriks, 2001). This study therefore will be of interest to educators working in multidisciplinary fields, with an interest in practice-based learning. Five groups have been identified as important to this study which uses transactional curriculum inquiry (Cousin, 2009). These are Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship educators, students of Entrepreneurship programmes, suppliers of professional services to Entrepreneurs and educational developers. A combination of concept mapping (Trochim, 1989), semi-structured interviews and use of the Delphi survey technique (Tigelaar, Dolmans, Wolfhagen, & Van der Vleuten, 2004) are proposed, to identify the threshold concepts of Entrepreneurship, which in this context, has been preliminarily defined as a domain of expertise (Saras D. Sarasvathy, 2008)