Doctoral Programs in Entrepreneurship: Building Cognitive Apprenticeships

This paper applies a supply-side perspective to entrepreneurship education research and explores the socialization process for students in entrepreneurship doctoral programs in the United States (US). It presents the challenges facing higher education regarding how academia prepares future professors to teach. The paper proceeds to build a new model by integrating concepts of cognitive apprenticeship with theories of socialization and considers how it can be used to address these concerns. Our research questions explore different types and stages of socialization, and our theory development presents a combined framework integrating socialization with cognitive apprenticeship. The paper then introduces the methodology for the study, a tripartite design that uses marketing documents/websites, as well as behavioral event and perception interviews. It discusses the results of the data as they relate to an ideal cognitive apprenticeship model. The work illustrates that there is much to do to improve educator development in doctoral programs. We discuss the conceptual contributions of our work illustrating the value of our model in entrepreneurship education, as well as highlighting its value in other research contexts. Seven recommendations are presented, intended to help enhance the way US programs in entrepreneurship embed the cognitive apprenticeship of educators into the learning process for future professors. Our primary contribution is to demonstrate how a cognitive apprenticeship model can be used to address entrepreneurship educator development concerns in doctoral programs, while avoiding significant changes or unreasonable investments in existing programs.