Legitimizing new constructivist practice for entrepreneurship educators: Legitimacy as a framework to examine educators’ new practice in China

Purpose
This work makes a case for legitimacy as a framework with which to examine how educators made decisions about implementing entrepreneurship education in higher education institutions to better understand the educator within the educational ecosystem. It then uses a new legitimacy framework that includes self-legitimacy to examine the issues a group of educators in China encountered when implementing new constructivist entrepreneurship modules in their non-entrepreneurship curricula.

Methodology
The researchers utilized focus groups to collect data from twenty-four groups of educators at higher education institutions in four regions of China. The researchers used a bottom-up thematic analysis process to identify themes, then used legitimacy as a lens to analyze the data.

Findings
The results are presented in three main categories: Theorization, or how the practice aligns with existing practice; diffusion, or how the practice is perceived by stakeholders; and self-legitimacy, or how the practice impacts the educator’s image of the self. The data shows that legitimization of their constructivist entrepreneurship education practice has not occurred at each of these stages, leaving educators struggling to rationalize how the new practice fits into their existing ecosystem.

Originality
Using legitimacy as an approach, the research adds to an understanding of how and why entrepreneurship educators adopt practice and how they are empowered to change practice within their existing institutional structures. It brings different legitimacy theories into one framework to examine changes to entrepreneurship education practice and it applies self-legitimacy to education, an area previously only examined in high power distance situations like law enforcement, but which is appropriate for high power distance educational cultures like China.