Abstract
As higher education institutions have increasingly come under criticism for failing to equip students for a fast changing and unpredictable future, the role and purpose of the future university has come under debate (Barnett and Bengtsen, Knowledge and the university; Re-claiming life, Routledge, London, 2020). In response, discourses about entrepreneurial mindsets, attitudes and competences have flourished. These discourses have further anchored the structures and management of the institutions in line with neoliberal ideology. This chapter suggests that teaching students an ethnographic approach to how their disciplinary knowledge is produced and formed in practice could be an important way to begin exploration of societal issues. In Scandinavia, entrepreneurship researchers and educators have been working with a broader definition of entrepreneurship that is about creating different kinds of value. In Denmark, this broader perspective on entrepreneurship and value has led to the development of a change-maker model that has been the basis for some teaching in the Humanities at Aarhus University. In this model, ethnography is used to explore how social practices are formed and shaped. Using ethnography in teaching helps students engage with their disciplinary knowledge.
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Robinson, S. (2020). Ethnography for Engaging Students with Higher Education and Societal Issues. In: Wieser, C., Pilch Ortega, A. (eds) Ethnography in Higher Education. Doing Higher Education. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-30381-5_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-30381-5_6
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