Making Sense of Learning: Insights from an Experientially-Based Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Programme

© 2015, © 2015 SAGE Publications. Entrepreneurial learning is complex, reflecting the distinctive dispositions of entrepreneurs (including nascent entrepreneurs at an early stage in their entrepreneurial life course). The surge in entrepreneurship education programmes over recent decades and the attendant increase in scholarship have often contributed to this convoluted field. Consequently, universally applicable articulations of entrepreneurship education can be problematic, especially demarcating between more formal and less formal learning experiences that are not necessarily confined to traditional educational institutions. The authors explore the ways in which nascent entrepreneurs experience and articulate their own ‘learning’ and development during the first year of a specific three-year experientially-based programme. Drawing attention to their deployment of sense-making narratives, the paper presents key findings that have implications for theory and practice