Performing Entrepreneurialism: A Playful Pedagogy Using Process Drama in Entrepreneurship Education

Abstract

Entrepreneurship and drama education each offer unique opportunities for an experiential view of learning. This is especially of relevance to entrepreneurship education in the areas of communication and performance. Such performance includes areas of skill development (encompassing presentations, stakeholder management, and summary writings). The authors of this article were curious about the interdisciplinary possibilities of play through performativity and script writing as they related to entrepreneurship education and employed process drama so that students could creatively explore entrepreneurship strategies, perform live case analyses, and conduct learning connected to the real world. Results of this classroom intervention demonstrated how developing the art of the pitch through play and performativity allows for fostering creativity, innovation, and risk-taking in an entrepreneurship education setting with an emerging term – performing entrepreneurialism.

Keywords

entrepreneurship education pedagogy post-secondary teaching & learning performing entrepreneurialism performativity process drama

Introduction

The worlds of entrepreneurship and drama education are each unique and distinct (and generally separated as disciplinary silos), however, they share a unifying common factor: they each fit well within an experiential view of learning (Kolb, 1984; Kolb & Kolb, 2017). Experiential learning (EL) has become a mainstream approach to post-secondary education in recent years, especially within disciplines related to entrepreneurship education (Tomkins & Ulus, 2016). Connected to EL is the concept of play – a pedagogy of play for adult students (i.e., Leather et al., 2021) – whereby play is part of a planned cycle of learning activities that is based on experiences, embodiment, and action. Leather et al. (2021) argued that “one way of conceptualizing [a] playful pedagogy is The Integrated Pedagogical Approaches to play model” (p. 219). This approach adpated by Leather et al. (2021) highlights the continuum between “teacher/leader-directed activities (work/non-play) and student/player-initiated activities (free play)” (p. 219). Play and playful learning are encompassed in the playful pedagogy that focuses on storytelling, active learning, and creativity through experience. Other literature that is relevant to play and experience may involve wonderment exercises (Klapper & Neergaard, 2017) and playful learning in higher education (Heljakka, 2023).

Entrepreneurship communications feature highlighted skills (often encompassing presentations, stakeholder management, and summary writings) that are frequently found in the curriculum as a required standalone course or embedded as outcomes across a variety of courses (e.g., Apply critical thinking through the analysis of a case study). Within a Social Entrepreneurship course at a small liberal arts university in western Canada, two educators sought to explore the application of playful pedagogy in an entrepreneurship education (EE) setting to consider its impact on creating optimal conditions for learning. In the minds of the authors this optimal learning environment would focus on the development of communication skills which are necessary even before these specialized courses and programs in entrepreneurship education – the pressing need for the development of student communication skills is what got the authors of this paper intrigued and asking: what is possible when considering arts-based pedagogies in developing effective communication tasks such as pitch presentations within a entrepreneurship setting?

This qualitative case study was a result of the two authors’ collaborative interest in how playful learning can be undertaken to better prepare students for understanding of the notion of pitching or presenting a business analysis and recommendations as a process. The data we have collected as a part of this case study was performative, as we were seeking to understand how creation, achieved through process drama, play, and script writing, helped to create a more relational and reflective classroom environment within EE (Engelberts, 2004; Fayolle et al., 2016; Jones, 2019). This case study explored ways in which literature from process drama and play could afford opportunities for students to explore entrepreneurship strategies, perform live case analyses, and conduct learning connected to the real world (Kassean et al., 2015) while practicing and refining critical employer-sought capabilities involving critical thinking, communication, and collaboration skills (Saba et al., 2021).

We hope that such work, in our context, demonstrates a unique knowledge acquisition potential within undergraduate entrepreneurship education in what we refer to as Performing Entrepreneurialism. We hope that this concept helps to highlight how “context is much more engaged in the entrepreneurial process than most entrepreneurship theory acknowledges” (Gaddefors & Anderson, 2017, p. 274) and creates new spaces in entrepreneurship education through the inclusion of performativity through play. Both authors are educators, but each comes from deep experience in either entrepreneurship or theatre. When we explored each of our ontological approaches to learning in our pedagogy, each of us had foundational beliefs that space for play, creativity, and design were cornerstones of experiential learning. The thoughtful design was to challenge a focus in entrepreneurship education as a process that builds to a successful output, in our case a pitch presentation, and rather, focuses on the performances and play throughout the learning processes in EE with the final output as secondary. We have been navigating our work with an operational definition of this novel term below:

Performing Entrepreneurialism as a pedagogical approach that considers the creation of a dramatic elsewhere for the purposes of fostering creativity, innovation, and risk-taking in an entrepreneurial process.

Background

In this space of EE, “entrepreneurship has the potential to empower and to transform” (Morris & Kuratko, 2014). The involvement of post-secondary institutions offering entrepreneurship related courses has grown from a few in the 1970s to thousands across the global landscape (Kurato, 2014). Morris and Kuratko (2014) suggest that “over the past four decades, entrepreneurship has grown within universities faster than virtually any other area of intellectual pursuit” (p. 3). With such growth and demand, entrepreneurship education has an increasingly important role in shaping understanding, especially on impact studies involving “person-, context-, and pedagogical model-specific” considerations (Nabi et al., 2017, p. 277). It is also relevant to identify how the positionality of the two authors is informed by the roles of both researcher and educator. Both authors were scholars at the candidate stage in their doctoral work in Educational Research, with each focusing on different specializations (Learning Sciences and Curriculum & Learning) and both deeply experienced in teaching. The interdisciplinary interest came from the disciplines of management, education, and drama in which the authors are post-secondary instructors across these domains. The authors positions across different disciplines and institutions informed their pedagogy by encouraging a truly interdisciplinary stance to both teaching and research. These two authors are committed to authentic learning designs with student-centered experiential learning at the core of pedagogical decisions.

The interdisciplinary characteristics that we identified as researchers, are shared especially by researchers and instructors in entrepreneurship. Neck and Corbett (2018) employed a Delphi method to gather relevant data around teaching and learning of entrepreneurship (p. 18). Barrett and Heale (2020) concluded that the “Delphi technique is a well-established approach to answering a research question through the identification of a consensus view across subject experts” (p. 69). This technique allows reflection among the participants “who are able to nuance and reconsider their opinion based on the anonymized opinions of others” (Barrett & Heale, 2020, p. 69). The key insights from the Delphi panelists that Neck and Corbett (2018) interviewed, around the panelists’ perspectives on the role of entrepreneurship educators were heavily focused on perspectives of lived experience and entrepreneurial mindset. Neck and Corbett identified that there is a trend for more progressive views of entrepreneurship education, and that there “is a place for more traditional teaching methods” (p. 24). This acknowledges the spectrum of teaching methods while amplifying the space for more progressive views of teaching in entrepreneurship and makes space for innovation. As educators, we (the authors) are more oriented towards progressive views of the student experience in authentic learning and developing an entrepreneurial mindset for thinking and conceptualizing opportunities. Neck and Corbett agree that “entrepreneurship is a life skill for the 21st century” (p. 30) and that “skills and capabilities that develop through EE… are transferable to all types of organizations and career endeavors” (p. 30). This approach allows educators to incorporate into their EE pedagogy a deep integration of entrepreneurial thinking to help students develop transferable skills for their future work.

During the conceptualization of this interdisciplinary approach the authors were sure to consider high-impact practices (Kuh, 2008). High-impact practices include learning experiences through capstones, learning communities, and collaborative assignments and projects. The authors had identified that the quality of presentations in previous courses resulted in generally similar PowerPoint-style presentations that did not acknowledge or consider the audience, the environment, or the process leading up to the presentation (except where the assignment rubric required audience interaction or practice rounds). Even still, the students’ focus appeared to consistently be on the presentation file rather than the process and layered considerations in the development of the presentation. McNatt (2019) positioned oral communication and public speaking skills among “the top qualities needed by employees and a central competency they consider when hiring” (p. 278). In Gallo’s (2020) Harvard Business Review article entitled ‘What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation’, the highlights are to use few slides and fewer words, don’t use bullet points, enhance vocal delivery, identify ‘wow’ moments, and rehearse. As researchers and educators, we were struck by the focus on the result and the absence of process-driven focus. This work really required consideration of the role of audience-centric and process-focused presentations that consider how to best have the audience connect to the content through the vehicle of the presentation.

Art of the Pitch

Pitching, a contemporary focus in entrepreneurship education, is the concept of persuasive idea sharing to convince an audience, investors, customers, and partners to get involved with a business or entrepreneurial idea and has great presence in general literary works (e.g., Coughter, 2012; Steel, 2006; Yastrow, 2018) and more traditional scholarly publications (i.e., Burk & Armstrong, 2021; Clarke et al., 2019). In the examples cited, the authors identify persuasive communication, figurative language, and gesturing as impactful in this pitching process. Yastrow (2018) included the art of improvised persuasion in consideration outside of the pre-structured pitch. The process of pitching has been utilized in popular media through television shows such as Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank™, online platforms such as Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and Indiegogo. Post-secondary pitching competitions are also increasing through programs like RBC Fast Pitch (Hunter Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, n.d) and 150 StartUps (Elias, n.d.). In post-secondary spaces, these opportunities are often found through courses in entrepreneurship, incubator or accelerator programs, pitch competitions, and centers for innovation. Developing graduates to be capable of navigating the dynamic workplace and the complex future of work requires learning experiences and practice that use contextualized situated learning (Carbonara, 2013). If the intention was to have students experience the development of presentations in a different way, it would be prudent to look to the arts and invoke arts-based approaches to pitching.

Process Drama and Its Role Within the Pitch

For clarity, process drama is an arts-based series of techniques that is used to explore difficult concepts such as student identity and creativity (Cowan & Albers, 2006; Daniels & Downes, 2015). Arts-based approaches to pedagogy can be difficult for those not previously immersed or trained within such conventions. There is a near mysticism and ambiguity that the arts are often viewed through when being looked at by non-artists (Ruggieri, 2005). This creative pitch project was intended in part, to challenge these pre-existing assumptions and create opportunities for collective creation by inviting the students into a positive and supportive space for learning (Davis, 2007). This learning environment came to employ dramatic scripting, focused on the process of writing the script and preparing it for presentation, making it fall within a pedagogy called process drama. This process-oriented pedagogy was initially developed by Dorothy Heathcote as a way of empowering students to critically reflect and was seen as a collective pedagogy that involved “the whole class as collaborators sharing in an arts-based philosophy of education” (Eriksson, 2011, p. 101). However, it was not until the work of Cecily O’Neill (1995) that process drama first entered mainstream educational theory, research, and teaching practices. It was this work which saw process drama defined as being driven by the presence of transformative outcomes that brings together the worlds of drama education and theater practice in a holistic fashion (Taylor & Warner, 2006). Importantly, the use of process drama, as opposed to other theatrical techniques, can create a comforting distance when students are so new to performativity. Sometimes referred to as a dramatic elsewhere this space insulates the process of creation within supportive scaffolding to encourage growth mindsets in relation to the topic under exploration (Manley & O’Neill, 1997). We, the authors, see these transformative outcomes at play within the pitches themselves when the process was supported through scripting and playwriting. The importance of this pedagogy within the pitch process cannot be understated since the commitments it calls forward towards collective creation to develop the agency of performers greatly assisted students in being able to articulate their analyses and decision points (Lang, 2002).

Within the classroom itself this use of drama challenged more traditional elements of standardization by making the learning process, rather than outcome, driven while also creating a relational context between various group members within the learning setting (Medina et al., 2021). These types of connections are important for the students as they encourage the taking of risks within the pitch project and allows for process drama to demonstrate that it “has its own dynamic potential of knowledge acquisition that is in danger of being lost” (Eriksson, 2011, p. 102). Within educational settings, process drama is often used when working with students to create scenes and vignettes related to a chosen topic area (Eriksson, 2011; Macro, 2015; Taylor & Warner, 2006). Ideally, the topic area should address an aspect of the students’ shared lived experiences, as all students need to be given opportunities to contribute to the character and scene design (Lang, 2002). This makes it important conceptually, within process drama, to be adaptable, relational, and responsive to input from students and the creation needs to be driven collectively (Lang, 2002; Medina et al., 2021). Situating the use of process drama within a pitch project helps to give an element of shared experience to each of the students – while they are each researching different businesses the base project remains the same and similar questions are being asked across the various businesses. Students selected a variety of businesses from a multinational automotive and energy company to local non-profit social organizations, and even the students’ own post-secondary institution.

A project such as this one becomes doable within an entrepreneurship education setting due to the applicability process drama possesses to be used across various settings both within schools and wider community spaces focused on youth – such as community theatre halls and even science centers (Gunderson, 2021). Process drama is also being increasingly used within academic spaces and has been argued to be central in the consideration of drama as a participatory research methodology grounded within scene creation (Shabtay, 2021). Typically, such research is being undertaken by artist researchers who do sometimes experience tension regarding the use of process drama within varied disciplines as it is often seen as a justification for drama, when drama should be seen as valid independent of interdisciplinary connections (Shabtay, 2021). While we recognize this tension, we also seek to break down the types of binaries that have, in the past, been used to separate more arts and entrepreneurial disciplines. If we are to truly embrace performing entrepreneurialism, we must join a chorus of arts-based educators in taking the stance that drama as a discipline has dynamic knowledge acquisition potential within teaching and learning (Eriksson, 2011; Macro, 2015; Shabtay, 2021; Taylor & Warner, 2006).

Scripting the Pitch & Enhancing Student Success

Scripting can be a form of collective creation that is part improvisation and part deeper scaffolded planning (Engelberts, 2004). The scripts provide a foundation for the students to build upon while still allowing for more fluid moments of creation. These moments of fluid creation align with trends in EE toward practices of experimentation, innovation, iterative development, and design thinking (IDEO, 2021). Drama, through practices such as scripting, could afford opportunities for students to explore start-ups, perform live cases, and simulations connected to the real world (Kassean et al., 2015) while practicing and refining critical employer-sought capabilities involving communication and collaboration skills (Saba et al., 2021).

While connections between the theater and the boardroom may not be immediately evident, scholars are beginning to contend that entrepreneurship education is “increasingly being seen as a highly creative pursuit of innovation and wider value creation” (Dobson & Walmsley, 2020, p. 343). However, such a statement also comes with a caution that there remains an “important need for debate about the contribution that arts and humanities may offer the wider delivery of [entrepreneurship] education in higher education” (Dobson & Walmsley, 2020, p. 343). We, the authors, are here to have this debate on a broader perspective of disciplinary interaction, beyond the focused conversations around the use of dramatic conventions in entrepreneurship education and training (Baker et al., 2003; Balachandra, 2019; Hmieleski & Corbett, 2008). We envision the use of drama within EE spaces as being short, targeted, resource-light, activities that focus on building presentation skills (Engelberts, 2004).

Description of Classroom Intervention

Our classroom intervention builds on ongoing research intending to explore innovative pedagogies in one of the author’s social entrepreneurship courses. Our purpose was to reframe current practices to improve the presentation skills of students and enrich the art of the pitch! Overall, we pursued this line of inquiry to contribute to the ongoing dialogue surrounding undergraduate entrepreneurship education (Fayolle et al., 2016; Jones, 2019). The craft of being a successful business student and being a successful performer are not as distinct as one might first think. In fact, entrepreneurship’s sense of risk taking encourages the same kinds of creativity, imagination, personal responsibility, and organizational skills often seen in performance, however, in both contexts such skills are discussed as being part of one’s craft (Zazzali & Klein, 2015, p. 267). With this impetus in mind, we set out to have an impact on the teaching and learning occurring within the course. This research was conducted under certification of institutional ethics review from the Research Ethics Board at St. Mary's University as file number #157FA2022. Informed written consent of participants was obtained.

We built our classroom intervention through the lens of a case study inspired by Stake’s (1995) views as this gave us the ability to quickly build rapport with participants (Mouton, 2001) and obtained a thick and rich description leading to complex in-depth insights (Merriam, 2009). This flexibility afforded us the opportunity to make conscious pedagogical decisions based on the way the students were conceptualizing their pitches and the course. The context for our course was an undergraduate university course at a small, liberal arts campus in Western Canada. This course is one of several course choices for some of the students as part of a Management Studies minor or concentration in a variety of degree pathways, or as an elective to fulfill degree requirements. Situated as a course studying social entrepreneurship as an innovative and growing field that highlights ventures that tackle solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues, students select, research, analyze, and present their findings and recommendations for improvement or re-design. It is worth noting that there is likely a self-selection amongst the student population that lends well to innovative participatory pedagogy in a liberal arts institution with a social justice component in all courses.

It is also important to note that this course was offered in a very condensed and intensive block week, offered Monday through Friday from 9 am through 4 pm. The course had thirty enrolled students, which was the enrollment cap with a waitlist, and all students opted to participate in the process drama-oriented work and no students dropped out over the course during the week. The thirteen undergraduate students represented participants across second-, third-, and fourth-year registrations. The students were situated within programs of study that included Bachelor of Arts (BA) Liberal Studies; BA Psychology; BA English; Bachelor of Science (BSc) Biology. Four of the students had a declared minor in management studies as a part of their wider degree. This course serves as a senior elective within or outside of a declared minor in management studies. While we were initially hesitant that students would fully embrace process drama, they each seemed to agree that the performative approach was highly engaging and generated many rich opportunities for learning (Dunn, 2016). Our teaching process in this course involved direct scripting instruction, drafting and rehearsals of scripts, and the performance of the pitches. We also collected some minor points of survey data outside of the performative approaches to create a baseline of our students understanding of social entrepreneurship.

Direct Instruction

Within the various appendices we have included the documents that supported the direct instruction that students received as a reference point. Within Appendix A the reader can find the scripting template and assignment description for the pitch project undertaken within the course. This template was adapted to make it more applicable to the project and more accessible for students who may not have had prior experiences in drama during their education up until that point – providing more guidance than a similar project within a fine arts course. Within Appendix B there is a detailed breakdown of the types of activities recommended for use in drama-oriented activities within diverse spaces for teaching based upon what was successful within the authors’ classroom. Finally, within Appendix C the course schedule and topics of focus have been provided to provide readers a sense of the ongoing instruction.

Drafting and Rehearsal

The drafting and rehearsal stage was the most important phase of this learning process and indeed is the centerpiece of any work involving process drama. This is because as a pedagogy to support the development of communication skills drama can come to be defined as an “evolving multimodal communicative landscape” (Whitelaw, 2017, p. 42). Such a landscape both enriches overall communication within the given setting and goes about developing the capacities of students to understand complex “ways of knowing” (Vicars & McKenna, 2015, p. 421). However, this must be done in collaboration with others in a space where learners can both give and receive feedback. It is the power of this feedback cycle that has led to process drama being recognized across education as a rich area of possibility, in relation to learning (Estes, 2004; Perry et al., 2013). It is within the process of rehearsal and the refinement of ideas that opportunities arise surrounding the growth of student agency (Daniels & Downes, 2015), and skills, essential within entrepreneurship education courses, such as collaboration, problem-solving, and interpersonal communication among students (York et al., 2019). The learning environment, within the process of drafting and rehearsal, becomes lived, responsive, and reflective of human experience through diverse forms of representation (hooks, 1995; Irwin et al., 2004; Springgay et al., 2005). Furthermore, none of the activities mentioned within this study required large-scale theatrical equipment, rather, they occurred in a standard classroom. It may help readers to picture shows such as Dragon’s Den™ or Shark Tank™ but without the elaborate production equipment. Instead, our activities were highly improvisational and open-ended making them well suited to integration within various curricula (Engelberts, 2004).

Performances

The performances were impactful for the students in several ways, demonstrated through student perspectives, artifacts, and instructor observations. Most notably were the ways in which all students became more personally connected to their chosen businesses and the project overall (Hansen, 2009). These kinds of connections are important especially when entrepreneurship classes are electives since personal connections help to invite new perspectives and individuals into a space that they may not have entered before. Another benefit of the performances was the level of critical thinking present (Shenfield, 2015). Groups were motivated to engage in extensive research to support the claims of their pitch and their recommendations for re-designs or modifications they would suggest to their chosen businesses. They also, through the performances, had a chance to share this research with everyone and not just the instructor through an assignment submission. This openness to learn both from and with their peers helped to create a more holistic learning experience in classrooms (Macro, 2015). As the instructor, author one felt that process drama served as an invitation for students into conversations around curricular concepts, such as business structures and communication skills, in such a way that the authenticity of and engagement within their learning greatly increased (Den Heyer, 2008).

Additional Survey Data

Author two presented the research invitation to the students, managed informed consent and participation, and ran an anonymous online survey that was conducted through the Qualtrics platform. The survey was designed to collect information in conjunction with the performative data on students’ previous experiences in the fine arts and performance, perspectives of the role of entrepreneurship and social good, operational definitions of social entrepreneurship, course expectations, and social, environmental, and cultural issues students prioritize for businesses. No individually identifying information was collected via the survey and responses were reviewed by author two to ensure anonymized data since author one was the instructor of record for the course. Course artifacts (including but not limited to theatre sports activities and the script assignment) and assessments were anonymized and examined after the course was completed and grades were finalized. It was often reiterated that participation was completely voluntary, and students were permitted to withdraw from having their work considered for the purposes of this article at any time without penalty although as mentioned every student remained involved over the length of the course. The objectives of the course itself were not changed, but they were designed to be met under the creative conditions the scripting process fostered within the classroom.

Discussion

Throughout more than 12 years of teaching in the post-secondary entrepreneurship education classroom, there have been countless student presentations across more than 100 instructed courses across the first author’s tenure. Through that experience, students often appear to craft presentations based on previous successes, but don’t often share the presentation prior to its performance. Although some students may storyboard the presentation (either due to previous experience or instructed to do so), the subtle and methodic considerations that script creation addresses are often the overlooked aspects of the learning process. In this case, iterative cycles of feedback, development of the script and scripted performance, and the thoughtfulness of the development to the performance provided evaluative opportunities in formative and summative feedback to the students that removed a single high-stakes evaluation of just the presentation itself.

Student Perspectives

Students were provided with formal review sessions and informal discussion opportunities to receive feedback from peers, the instructor (first author), and author two (drama expert & educator). Students focused throughout the process on the interaction through the process and within the final performance, and this emerged as themes of connection, community, and trust. Following the performance (presentation in context), students submitted their final scripts. One excerpt from a final script submission [from Performance Team AD] shares the students’ approach to opening the performance:

“SCENE ONE

Lights Up on Centre Stage. Men[t]imeter with info to join the presentation that transitions into an interactive poll with the audience as well as other visual components. Sitting equals with the students in the center plain of the stage, two presenters holding a stack of paper invite everyone to join them with their attention. QR codes are on the corner of every table. As the chatter dies down, the presentation begins.

Additional notes were scripted by the student teams to prompt the presenters for considerations involving important verbal tactics and gestures, as this is influential especially in influencing investment judges in entrepreneurial pitches (Clarke et al., 2019). Feedback included notes such as “emphasize and articulate words clearly”, “personal, softer tone of voice”, “engaging tone”, “in a questionable tone”, “look at group to make last connection”, and “mic drop”. Although examples of script notes and stage directions were introduced and feedback provided throughout the course in the development process of the script, the students were not provided a prescribed list or limited constraints. The emphasis was on offering feedback that considered how the performance was constructed to impact and engage the audience while being critical of the content that was selected for inclusion in each performance. Artist statements offered students an opportunity to take a deeper introspective exploration of the learning and experience that each student had undertaken. The seven guiding prompt points are provided in the Scripting Template in Appendix A. These prompting points and the guiding questions were a result of the second author’s previous experience in drama and were well received by both the instructor and students. When reflecting on their experiences, students discussed needing to find direction, researching the social, cultural, and environmental aspects of the business, and narrowing down their field of inquiry. Many groups were even able to identify social issues that had impacted them, or their peers, personally, and while working through the process-drama groups felt supported through an iterative feedback cycle. While the learning that occurred was practical to the outcomes of the course students also identified key takeaways beyond the course such as “this project gave me a voice as a student, something I had never felt before” (Anonymous Student).

Other students also discussed how collaboration was encouraged using process-drama and how they would share ideas both through dialogue in person as well as using Google Docs. Students all seemed to agree that they gave a greater number of comments and suggestions within this project as opposed to other, more traditional, projects in entrepreneurship education classes. This was important to the students who saw a benefit in relation to greater efficiency and transparency during the use of process-drama. Students even came to better consider the learning space itself saying “when we rehearsed…we were able to identify where the audience would be and how we would stage ourselves so that everyone can see and hear us.” (Anonymous Student). Furthermore, while there was a period of adjustment for several students, getting used to performativity, by the conclusion of the process student perceptions were remarkably positive with one group saying “the process really helped alleviate any frustrations we had, and seamlessly we made changes to our presentation. This process to us was so positive. I am also grateful for my team” (Anonymous Student). When considering overall engagement, students demonstrated 100% attendance throughout the course, and engaged outside of provided class time both within their own teams, and across teams to complete the process drama project. It was deeply pleasing, as instructors, for us to see the students form such a tight-knit community around and during the performances as they engaged with their learning differently (Anfara et al., 2002). The fact that they were so connected and possessed such a high level of trust in one another allowed for a “thicker and richer description” to emerge through the scripts, artist statements, and performances (Kostogriz & Doecke, 2013). This trust and community also made the learning more public within the classroom since all the students took part in the process drama (Anfara et al., 2002). As the students performed and communicated with one another, their ability to communicate was enriched by moving learning from the page and onto the stage showing them literacy in “use” throughout the various stages of scripting and performing which were each a type of “literacy event” (Leander & Ehret, 2019). While this may seem like a rosy image of learning to some, what we find impactful about this style of teaching is that it allows us, as instructors, to better respond to the calls of students themselves (Kostogriz & Doecke, 2013).

Instructor Perspectives

It is important to explore some of the factors that we believe helped contribute to the success of this process. The first is the expertise and level of experience of the two authors. Constructing a transparent design and allowing students to see, know, and understand why the design was being implemented was also important for student willingness to participate. The instructor has more than a decade of history teaching more than 55 courses at the institution and has developed a reputation for engaging and experiential learning that the students heavily subscribe to. There is also a powerful consideration for the condensed structure of the course in the week that it was offered. As with most pedagogies, the tensions around how much can be learned in intensive structured courses are often posed (CAUT, 2011). When pedagogical approaches consider time, context, content, learners, instructors, environment, and the objectives of the course, designing learning for intensive modes of study can be transformative (Samarawickrema et al., 2022).

The use of drama and performativity have long been called aspirational pedagogies because of their ability to enrich learning through multimodal approaches (Campbell, 2021). Within the context of this course, process drama created opportunities for students to read, write, see, move, act, and interact as they worked to understand and re-imagine their businesses through the lens of social entrepreneurship (Shosh, 2005, p. 72). In the context of education, multimodal learning opportunities are important as they allow for greater personalization of learning which in turn allows for increased emotional and personal connections to assignments just as pitching a more socially responsible business (Hansen, 2009). Drama, and arts-based pedagogies more generally, have also been said to create holistic and social learning environments within classrooms which both authors would support based on our shared experiences (Macro, 2015). Completing this work through performativity also helped to connect the learning in the class to similar applications within their everyday lives – a critical point of success for learning in the 21st century and supports. Performing Entrepreneurialism emerges as a way of discussing the use of drama in management education classrooms to create a dramatic elsewhere – meaning a space for students to explore and take risks as they attempt to foster creativity and innovation through their learning. This sense of elsewhere is meant to create space for creative expression nurtured through reflective practices, which can in turn impact their learning and thinking in such a way that encourages them to bring greater art into their pitches while building their abilities with communication for future success.

Conclusions and Future Developments

Although we acknowledge that a limitation of this study is the single qualitative case study, the anchoring of the pedagogical considerations in literature and practice suggests an invitation for readers to consider translation to other contexts. Thomassen et al. (2020) claim that with respect to entrepreneurship education, “both what is learned and how it is learned is contextually dependent… Entrepreneurship education relies on experience and storytelling, rather than structured proofs, formulas, or equations. For this reason, entrepreneurship education needs a contextualized perspective” (p. 864). Dramatic conventions are, similarly, grounded in storytelling and contextual information making entrepreneurship and drama education closely related in terms of scope and intent. Envisioning the practices of both entrepreneurship education and drama as ongoing interconnected processes allows for both to become grounded within collective creation (Lang, 2002), relational ontologies (Medina et al., 2021), and performer/student agency (Macro, 2015; Pascoe, 2002) which opens new avenues for pedagogical considerations in EE. This is in addition to the ability of drama to develop and support the identity and creativity of students (Daniels & Downes, 2015) through collaborative and genuine opportunities for dialogue (Macro, 2015; Pascoe, 2002; Wells & Sandretto, 2016). The outcomes of this study demonstrate increases in engagement, self-efficacy, public speaking confidence, and creativity with an improved pedagogy. Opportunities for future research could explore study designs that involve qualitative approaches anchored and triangulated with quantitative methods involving questions of evaluating learning experience, satisfaction, preparedness, and effectiveness (as examples) as steps towards more generalizability.

While we are not suggesting that process drama be embraced in all aspects of entrepreneurship education, we are suggesting that when used intentionally dramatic conventions allow for unique opportunities to consider approaches to creativity, innovation, and risk-taking – especially as they relate to presentation skills. It is our hope that moving towards embracing performing entrepreneurialism gives space for other entrepreneurship educators and students to gain confidence, harness voice, and develop skill through engagement in this playful pedagogy.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Performing Entrepreneurialism: A Playful Pedagogy Using Process Drama in Entrepreneurship Education

Performing Entrepreneurialism: A Playful Pedagogy Using Process Drama in Entrepreneurship Education by Sonja L. Johnston, Harrison Campbell in Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Sonja L. Johnston

Ethical Approval

This research was conducted under certification of institutional ethics review from the Research Ethics Board at St. Mary's University as file number #157FA2022.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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