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Dr Richard Tunstall’s chapter in ‘Revitalising Entrepreneurship Education

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Dr Richard Tunstall’s chapter in ‘Revitalising Entrepreneurship Education: Adopting a critical approach in the classroom’ reviewed by AMLE Journal

Richard Tunstall’s chapter, ‘Education or Exploitation? Reflecting on the Entrepreneurial University and the Role of the Entrepreneurship Educator’, published by Routledge in ‘Revitalising Entrepreneurship Education: Adopting a critical approach in the classroom’ has been singled out for special mention in a review of the book by Academy of Management Learning & Education.

The reviewer said that new light is shed on entrepreneurship education and the role of the contemporary university by Richard’s linking of entrepreneurship with social change and civic attitudes, as an outcome of learning.  Furthermore, the reviewer, Associate Professor Michał Zawadzki in HRM, OB and Leadership of Jönkoping International Business School, Sweden said that his contribution is an:

“eye-opening effort to juxtapose the prevailing neoliberal type of entrepreneurship with the mainstream instrumental model of university reforms. That is, entrepreneurship increasingly becomes the taken-for-granted ideology of higher education policy-makers, who very often reduce the understanding of university to the notion of a profitable enterprise obliged to produce employable students and undergo quantitative audits and ranking games. However, Tunstall does not mythologize the traditional model of the university against the false entrepreneurial model. The cornerstone of defending the university from neoliberal weaknesses is the deconstruction and reconstruction of entrepreneurship education. These actions may be possible by giving students a space for critical resistance to neoliberalism, albeit with an affirmative attitude toward finding new, more collegial, and democratic modes of entrepreneurship.”

Richard continues to build on the ideas developed in this chapter through his research into social learning in entrepreneurship education and in practice through his work in developing the University of Leed’s strategy for student enterprise, the Leeds Enterprise Educator’s Network and the sector-leading cross-faculty With Enterprise undergraduate programmes.

‘Revitalising Entrepreneurship Education’ is available to purchase now as a hardback or e-book: https://www.routledge.com/Revitalizing-Entrepreneurship-Education-Adopting-a-critical-approach-in/Berglund-Verduyn/p/book/9781315447605