Reinterpreting a signature pedagogy for entrepreneurship education

The importance of contextualizing theory development in entrepreneurship education has recently been raised. Nevertheless, efforts often lead to rather decontextualized concepts and generic theories that are unable to bring together the complexities of applying entrepreneurship education to particular institutional logics and local pedagogical understandings. Based on a narrow and selective literature review, this article seeks to identify and reconstruct how entrepreneurship education can adjust to the disciplines in which it unfolds. To contribute to transcending this dilemma, this article raises the following question: How can entrepreneurship education be understood in a differentiated manner and contextually reconstructed to the many disciplines and professions in which it unfolds?
The study follows the general idea of an integrative literature review, meaning that a few references, in particular Jones’ work on a signature pedagogy for entrepreneurship education, led to a deeper search of the older background literature from Shulman on the idea of a signature pedagogy.
The authors identify three existing notions (MK-0, MK-1, and MK-2) of signature pedagogy within entrepreneurship education and propose a fourth notion that combines the established understandings into a signature pedagogy, MK-3, in which entrepreneurship education should be adjusted to the disciplines in which it unfolds, by integrating and balancing general, disciplinary/professional, and entrepreneurial purposes of education.
Accepting that context matters to entrepreneurship education creates a need for understanding the contextual influence on pedagogies. The paper contributes by establishing a theory-based framework that can help educators formulate and balance general, professional, and entrepreneurial purposes of education, depending on the particular context of their educational activities. Furthermore, the paper is a call to action for additional scholarship that addresses avenues for future research.