How KEEN Encourages the Adoption of Educational Innovations Focused on Entrepreneurial Mindset into Engineering Classrooms

Abstract

Background

A consistent challenge in educational research is ensuring that published innovations are successfully integrated into the classrooms they aim to improve. The process of integrating new pedagogy into existing classrooms involves both a method of communication (journal articles, workshops, word of mouth, etc.) and faculty motivation to make change. This work characterizes the research-to-practice translation of the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), a network of higher education institutions invested in the development of entrepreneurial mindset (EM) in engineering students.

Results

Through semi-structured interviews with six sustained adopters of EM, we were able to examine faculty members’ approaches to adoption and how these approaches correlated with KEEN’s approaches to dissemination. We analyzed KEEN’s professional development offerings using the Designing for Sustained Adoption Instrument (DSAAI) and described how faculty motivation, as characterized by the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI), may affect their integration of innovations into the classroom. We found that KEEN’s offerings largely aligned with the DSAAI’s recommendations for sustained adoption—their consistent emphasis on faculty engagement as well as a mix of active and passive professional development strategies were effective in supporting faculty members throughout the adoption process. Faculty members generally expressed interest in and enjoyment of KEEN professional development offerings, saw value in EM education, and were willing to put in effort to adopt related strategies, implying strong intrinsic motivation to adopt EM. However, many faculty members interviewed expressed a low level of competence related to the entrepreneurial mindset.

Conclusions

Results of this study suggest that faculty members who successfully adopt EM into their classrooms do so using primarily professional development offerings aligning with the DSAAI’s guidelines for sustained adoption. Additionally, successful adopters recognized their own deficiencies in EM and identified KEEN professional development as an opportunity for growth, indicating high intrinsic motivation to make changes in their classrooms.