Effectuation in embedded and enquiry-based entrepreneurship education : essays for renewing engineering education at Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education in non-business studies has not been extensively studied. The requirements and special features of engineering education of applied sciences is a fairly unaddressed research topic. Yet, there is a growing need to develop the entrepreneurial behaviour of graduates, as voiced in feedback from stakeholders and other actors in society. The competence requirements of graduates are constantly evolving; they are specified globally as well. The aim and motivation for this study is to develop a new framework for fostering entrepreneurship in engineering education. The developed framework could be used for developing, firstly, entrepreneurial behaviour, and secondly, the entrepreneurial mind-set of the engineering graduates. The main focus of entrepreneurship education research has been on content issues and primarily from the perspective of business studies. Therefore, this study has focused on pondering the methodological challenges of entrepreneurship education in the chosen target field, engineering education. The context for outlining the framework is constructed by first introducing the operational environment of the target organisation. Thereafter, the central concepts of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education and technology-based entrepreneurship are processed in a literature review in order to build the theoretical basis. In addition, research methods with ontological and epistemological choices are displayed. Due to the multilevel structure of the research phenomenon, the study approaches the phenomenon through four essays. The first essay opens up the aspects and background in order to understand the role and expectations of stakeholders as regards entrepreneurship education. The second essay concentrates on the pedagogical issues and possibilities of action-based learning methods with respect to entrepreneurship education especially. The third essay combines effectuation and causation perspectives on opportunity recognition and offers a framework for effectuation-based entrepreneurship education. The fourth essay is an empirical study covering effectuation and causation from the point of view of local technology-based companies. The conclusions of the study suggest that the outlined effectual entrepreneurship education, if combined with action-based learning methods like enquiry-based learning for instance, could support the development of entrepreneurial behaviour, and ensuing entrepreneurship, among engineering students. It is also suggested that adoption of the new framework requires renewal of the learning environment, and the involvement of the entire organisation in the change process.

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