Abstract

If experience is the guiding light in entrepreneurship education, then why is there so little mention of a philosophy of experience? This article aims to illuminate the philosophical foundations upon which entrepreneurship education rests by discussing learning through experience. In particular, we discuss the concept of experience used in educational research and learning activities for fostering knowledge development in entrepreneurship education. To illustrate our discussion, we develop a diagram that addresses primary and secondary experience and its interplay as well as a model that further illustrates how educative entrepreneurial experience could be researched through the empirical phenomenology. We suggest that although entrepreneurship is currently positioned as an experiential subject in academia, the theoretical and philosophical roots of experience in learning have not been fully addressed, leading to a deficit in our understanding of how knowledge is derived from experience, and how experience may differ depending on its philosophical underpinnings.