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Evolving students' conceptions about responsible entrepreneurship: a classroom experiment

Matthias Pepin (Faculté des Sciences de l’Administration, Université Laval, Québec, Canada)
Luc K. Audebrand (Faculté des Sciences de l’Administration, Université Laval, Québec, Canada)
Maripier Tremblay (Faculté des Sciences de l’Administration, Université Laval, Québec, Canada)
Ndèye Binta Keita (Faculté des Sciences de l’Éducation, Université Laval, Québec, Canada)

Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development

ISSN: 1462-6004

Article publication date: 30 April 2021

Issue publication date: 23 June 2021

267

Abstract

Purpose

Entrepreneurship education scholarship has been recently challenged to look at what goes on inside the entrepreneurship classroom to assess what students are really learning. Relying on the construction and analysis of a 3-h long set of learning activities on responsible entrepreneurship, this paper focuses on the activities conducted and what students have learned, based on Bloom's revised taxonomy of educational objectives.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper builds on a pre-/post-intervention assessment around a set of learning activities with 151 undergraduate students. Before and after the class, students were asked to produce a definition of responsible entrepreneurship. They were also asked to reflect on what had changed from the beginning.

Findings

Analysis of students' pre/post definitions shows a standardization of their conceptions of responsible entrepreneurship. This result confirms that the learning objective of this class was met. Nevertheless, applying Bloom's revised taxonomy to students' reflections allows for more nuanced interpretation. The analysis indeed revealed that some students manifest relatively superficial learning while other shows a deeper ability to reflect on the concept.

Originality/value

First, this paper contributes to the entrepreneurship education literature by showing the relevance of using Bloom's revised taxonomy for both teaching and research purposes. Second, it presents a set of innovative learning activities on responsible entrepreneurship that could be easily reproduced in other educational contexts. Third, it shows the importance of asking students what they learned and what has changed for them through class activities.

Keywords

Citation

Pepin, M., Audebrand, L.K., Tremblay, M. and Keita, N.B. (2021), "Evolving students' conceptions about responsible entrepreneurship: a classroom experiment", Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 570-585. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSBED-02-2020-0035

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

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