Social Entrepreneurship Education: Is it Achieving the Desired Aims?

Abstract

This study's purpose was to uncover the challenges and best practices in the field of social entrepreneurship. We examined definitions of social entrepreneurship; the most widely used cases, articles and textbooks; and the most popular pedagogical approaches in 107 social entrepreneurship courses. Our findings suggest that faculty have done an excellent job of utilizing powerful pedagogical methods like service learning. In addition, the majority of courses covered opportunity recognition, innovation, acquiring limited resources, measuring social impact and building sustainable business models as core elements of social entrepreneurial activity. The greatest challenge involved teaching students about scaling social innovations.