Role of Inclusive Entrepreneurship Educators: An Actor Network Theory Perspective

Abstract

This paper integrates our autoethnographic narratives as entrepreneurship educators affiliated with higher education institutions located in different parts of the world with the theoretical concepts of Actor-Network Theory (ANT). We provide insights on how educators’ identities are constructed and how these identities can inspire curriculum and pedagogical interventions that transform marginalized entrepreneurship students into inclusive entrepreneurs, capable of handling political oppression, racial and ethnic discrimination, stress, and the inequities existing within society. Empirical analysis utilizing Callon’s model of translation comprising of four phases: problematization; interessement, enrollment, and mobilization, reveals that educators enact four roles encompassing: (1) Critical Educators; (2) Devil’s Advocates; (3) Critical Investigators; and (4) Pedagogy Shapers while engaging with their respective academic networks. The identities of educators are not distinct nor isolated outcomes. Instead, their epistemological, ontological, pedagogical, and axiological underpinnings are shaped by the networks with which they engage with over the duration of their career spans. The educators enact roles which possess the power to remedy existing inadequacies within the existing entrepreneurship curriculum making it more pluralistic, pragmatic, and comprehensive.