Communication as an Entrepreneurial Capability in STEM Higher Education

Theory and Pedagogical Practice

Datos Bibliográficos

ID22413611
AutoresLouise Kuchel (0000-0003-1737-0203, The University of Queensland, autor de correspondencia), Susan Rowland (0000-0002-7052-3451, The University of Sydney)
Año2026
Fecha de publicación2026-05-06
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaResearch in Science Education (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0157-244X • E-ISSN: 1573-1898
EditorialSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11165-026-10340-x
OpenAlexW7160392873
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas44

Entrepreneurial education is emerging as valuable within STEM higher education, but a lack of clarity around the specific range of skills, behaviours and attributes that help develop entrepreneurial capability in students makes it difficult to identify how best to teach and assess it. In this article, we argue for communication practices to be core learning in development of entrepreneurial capability and highlight the synergies with existing practices in STEM higher education. We provide a theoretical rationale to support our argument and demonstrate that communication needs to be conceptualised as more than the classic outputs routinely assessed in science programs to foster entrepreneurial capability in STEM students. Drawing on a body of work by science communicator-educators on how to teach university science students to communicate (Rowland & Kuchel, 2023), we map categories of communication practice used in STEM against the functional entrepreneurial activities and characteristics provided by Filion (2011). Our results show strong alignment between the two, thus providing practical support for communication as foundational to entrepreneurial capability in STEM education. The communication practices of ‘investigating’, ‘engaging an audience’, and ‘joining the conversation’ most frequently underpin Filion’s entrepreneurial actions. Based on these findings we provide a menu of actionable, high impact pedagogies and example learning activities for teaching practitioners in higher education, distilled from relevant lesson plans in Rowland & Kuchel (2023), that can be delivered and assessed in formal education settings as foundational to entrepreneurial learning for STEM students.

Best practice · CLARITY · Entrepreneurship · Higher education · Science education · Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies · Entrepreneurship Studies and Influences · University-Industry-Government Innovation Models