How Intellectual Movements among External and Internal Actors Shape the College Curriculum: The Case of Entrepreneurship Education in Engineering.

Abstract

This study focuses on key aspects of curricular change that are often overlooked in the engineering education literature. Specifically, attention is directed to the contextual factors and the collective action of multiple actors that shape the change process as the actors frame and reframe a new curricular idea. In order to analyze this process, the study employs the social movement theories of scientific and intellectual movements and collective action frames. Using a case study method, this investigation examines the emergence of entrepreneurship education at the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering (CoE). Over two years, the researcher conducted 27 semi structured interviews, collected over 300 documents, and observed 17 events. The case study is presented in four periods, the latent (late 1990s-2006), the launch (2006-2008), the start me up momentum (2008-2011), and the branching out from engineering (2011-2013). Over these periods, entrepreneurship education went from few individual and scattered efforts to a collective action that mobilized multiple actors, including student organizations and alumni groups. This collective action established new curricular programs and numerous co-curricular activities. More important, it built an entrepreneurial ecosystem and moved the CoE and the entire university towards a pro-entrepreneurial culture. In general, when the emergence of entrepreneurship education in the CoE is viewed as a movement, four processes can explain its success. First, senior faculty promoted a new vision for engineering education, one that could be accomplished alongside the traditional curriculum. Second, structural conditions in the university and in local and state government gave the movement access to key resources. Third, various micromobilization contexts served as spaces where movement participants came into frequent contact and where new members could be recruited. Fourth, movement participants framed and reframed curricular ideas in a way that both internal and external actors to the university could identify with and bridged differences between them. Overall, this research contributes to curricular change theories in engineering education by illustrating how contextual factors and collective action influence change. The study concludes with recommendations for both curricular change advocates and curricular decision makers.