Last thing before vacation started I finalized an article to the ISBE research conference coming up in Dublin in November. The article describes the results of my 1,5 year quite extensive literature searches on the topic of emotions in entrepreneurship education (and the related topic of emotions in education in general). When searching for articles treating entrepreneurship AND emotions AND education AND learning, only 22 articles showed up! A field in its infancy thus! (mind the gap…)
I conclude in the article that there seems to be an emotional revolution going on in psychology that has not yet reached the domain of entrepreneurship education. The field of entrepreneurship education is also largely disconnected from the emotional aspects discussed in the fields of psychology, education, neuroscience and creativity. The only relevant scholar outside of entrepreneurship education quoted widely is David Kolb, and his most famous book was published almost 30 years ago! The world has moved on, and there is more developed thinking out there that does not seem to be used almost at all. My own favourite is Peter Jarvis, whose quite (but not very) recent “comprehensive theory on human learning” puts equal emphasis on thoughts, actions and emotions (which is very VERY unusual), and offers a wide range of interesting angles to human learning which are very relevant to entrepreneurship education. I also conclude that many slightly lazy (or uninterested) scholars quote Kolb or Gibb, and that’s it, they don’t dig any deeper. Gibb is one of my own favourites, but the world did not become complete with his work. There are more things to uncover out there, such as the comprehensive work by Dewey which is not very frequently cited. We need to dig deeper and much more outside our own domain if we are to advance the field, I think. Some leading scholars outside the entrepreneurship domain that showed up in my review were Andy Hargreaves, Arlie Hochschild, Jennifer Nias, Reihard Pekrun and Michalinos Zembylas. These I will study even more soon, it seems I have just scratched the surface.
What is your take on the theme of emotions in entrepreneurship education?
