CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Theory
2.1.2 Learning Theory
1) Individualized learning theory
The origin of individualized learning theory can be traced back to 2500 years ago. Chinese educator confucius has proposed the method of “teaching students according to their aptitude”, which should be the earliest individualized learning theory. In the field of modern education, it is generally believed that the theory of personalized learning came into being at the beginning of the 20th century. It emphasizes the potential characteristics of learners’ personalities and believes that individual learning needs to revolve around their potential. Different personalities have different learning needs. Respecting the individual potential of learners means respecting the differences of learners, emphasizing the provision of learning resources, teaching means, and teaching methods to meet the individual needs of learners. At the same time, the individual ability of learners should be explored in adaptive and flexible ways to realize their all-around development (Z. Wang, 2012).
Personalized learning emphasizes the reasonable allocation and scheduling of high- quality educational resources according to the different personality characteristics of learners, to support the fairness of the educational process and guarantee the balanced
development of education at higher levels. The essence of personalized educational resource recommendation is to provide personalized educational resource recommendation service to meet learners’ different learning situations and psychological states. With the accelerated development of educational information, personalized learning has a strong material guarantee and technical support, and the recommendation service of educational resources has also accelerated its development pace (Y. Zheng, 2014). Personalized educational resource recommendation especially emphasizes that learners’ learning materials, learning partners, learning methods, cognitive tools, and other educational resources should be consistent with learners’
individual needs. Learners can receive intelligent education resource push service anytime and anywhere (J. Ding, 2016). Therefore, personalized education resource recommendation services must pay attention to learners’ different situation states and learning needs in real-time. Then according to the needs of learners combined with the characteristics of educational resources, educational resources are screened and filtered for learners. Finally, the recommendation service of educational resources based on learners’ personality characteristics is realized.
2) Constructivist learning theory
The constructivist learning theory, proposed by Jane Piaget, originates from Piaget’s theory of the stages of children’s cognitive development and the theory of generative epistemology (J. Liu, 2011). Piaget’s work on the stages of child development was first published at the 1937 international psychological conference in Paris. The content mainly includes the concrete operation about children, the overall structure of operation, and so on. Piaget published Structuralism in 1968 and Principles of Generative Epistemology in 1970. The publication of these two important works marked the birth of Piaget’s genetic epistemology. Subsequently, the constructivist learning theory has been developed by leaps and leaps, both at the theoretical research level and in the teaching practice level. The basic connotation of constructivism learning theory is that learning is a process of knowledge construction (W. Yang, 2010). Constructivist learning theory holds that knowledge cannot be acquired only through teacher impart, but needs to interact with the certain social situation and cultural background. At the same time, learners also need the help of teachers or learning partners, and other people, and make full use of the existing
various resources, through the way of knowledge reconstruction (Y. Zheng, 2014).
Constructivism learning theory emphasizes the subjective initiative of learners. It is believed that learning is a process of constructing and understanding knowledge based on the existing knowledge of learners. This process is usually completed in social and cultural interaction.
3) Situational learning theory
Bransford and Ann (1974) Brown argued in the book of How We Learn: The Brain, Mind, Experience, and the School that this rapid increase in knowledge has shifted the focus of education away from helping students acquire large amounts of knowledge and toward helping students develop the necessary cognitive tools and learning strategies. A scientific understanding of learning includes an understanding of the learning process, the learning environment, teaching, sociocultural processing, and many other factors that facilitate learning. New learning is based on the principles of pattern recognition, knowledge chunking, knowledge conditioning, smooth extraction, metacognition, and professional understanding.
Providing students with opportunities for professional observation and practice enhance their recognition of meaningful patterns of information. This is especially important for the development of their professional ability. The goal of education has changed from “acquiring knowledge” to “developing skills”, and then to “promoting the transfer of school learning to the social situation”. The transfer of the school to everyday situations is the ultimate goal of school learning. This kind of turn put forward in the book gives the situational learning theory sufficient development power and a good development environment (G. Xu, 2020).
The world is interrelated, and its meaning manifests itself in interconnection. “The actor, the world, the activity, the meaning, the cognition, the learning, and even the knowledge are interrelated and interdependent meaning is essentially a product of social interaction, and what the participants know and do are inseparable” (C. Wang & Wu, 2021). Situation is “the whole situation, background or environment-related to an event”. It is the specific environment often faced by the subject, and it is also the important inducing factor and influencing factor on which the subject’s activities occur. Learning in situations is an ability common to humans and all other animals. However, human’s social existence state and the nature of
“relation sum” determine that human’s situational learning is more complex and changeable, and it is more necessary to follow rules. In Situational Learning:
Legitimately Borderline Participation, Leve and Wenger (1998) discuss the connotation, significance, and characteristics of borderline participation of situational learning. Learning is a “legitimate marginal participation” in the community of practice, an indispensable and indivisible aspect of the whole social practice, and a way of existence in the social world. Situational learning theory is based on the theoretical presupposition that practice is regarded as the sum of all human life activities and the basic way of human existence and development. It is different from the traditional logical order of “learning first, then practice” which regards learning only as a way of cognition. Learning-related to the situation and reality is itself a kind of practice, and practice is the main way for people to acquire direct experience, knowledge of rules and skills, and it is an important learning type. “Learning can happen whenever people interact with each other in conditions of legitimate marginal participation.” Understanding learning in this sense can not only expand the scope of learning, strengthen the function of learning, but also reconstruct the meaning of learning. UNESCO recently summed up the meaning of learning more deeply:
“Learning is both a process and a result of that process. It is both a means and an end.
It’s a collective effort as well as an individual effort” (C. Wang & Wu, 2020). The constructiveness, practicality, generation, and cooperation of learning are included in it.
4) Entrepreneurial learning theory
In the economics classic The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith defined entrepreneurs as capitalists. At the beginning of the 19th century, French economist Say distinguished between two kinds of entrepreneurs, namely, the owners of business capital and those who perform business management functions. In classical economics and neoclassical economics as the mainstream of the economic theory, the role of entrepreneurs has been largely ignored by economists. However, the Austrian universities pushed the role of the entrepreneur to a central theoretical position in economics. Economists have had a profound impact on the development of entrepreneurship theory. Polanyi (1966) called the entrepreneurial theory “Tacit Knowledge” and “individual Knowledge”. Casson (1997) further extended this view
to the firm theory. He believes that information is incomplete in the real economy, and individuals have different abilities and channels to obtain information. Therefore, entrepreneurs are “people who specialize in judgment and decision-making in a unique, unpredictable and often complex environment” (R. Yang & Yang, 2001).
Ikujiro Nonaka believes that the starting point of innovation is individual tacit knowledge. Demsetz (1991) also pointed out that the fundamental reason for the existence of firms was that the market could not organize knowledge effectively.
When faced with uncertain and risky environments, entrepreneurs can accurately judge and make satisfactory decisions because they have heterogeneous information and knowledge. The entrepreneurial vigilance proposed is a quality of entrepreneurs, and the existing knowledge of entrepreneurs is the main factor that affects entrepreneurial vigilance (Wei, 2009). To sum up, the early research on entrepreneurial learning from economic theory has laid a necessary theoretical foundation for the development of entrepreneurial learning theory. Some people may have the talent to start a business, but learning is more important. Learning becomes a special relationship to screen entrepreneurs (X. C. Li, 2000).
In the development of entrepreneurial learning theory, there are some classic entrepreneurial learning models, such as Politis’s entrepreneurial learning modeland Petkova’s entrepreneurial learning model. Politis’s entrepreneurial learning model emphasizes the conversion of entrepreneurs’ previous experience (entrepreneurial experience, management experience, industry experience) into entrepreneurial knowledge (opportunity identification, overcoming start-up weaknesses) through exploratory and applied transformation methods. Holcomb, Ireland, Holmes Jr, and Hitt (2009) interconnect intuitive inference, knowledge, decisions, actions, and results to form a complete entrepreneurial learning model. The entrepreneurial learning model of Rae is quite different from the previous two entrepreneurial learning models. Through in-depth interviews with individual entrepreneurs, Rae uses narrative methods to tell their life stories. Rae’s entrepreneurial learning model mainly includes eight themes. They are self-efficacy, personal values and motivation, personal achievement, setting and achieving grand goals, an individual theory derived from experience, intellectual competence, relational competence, and active learning. Among the eight themes, Rae emphasizes,
in particular, the improvement of individual self-efficacy and positive attitude through entrepreneurial learning (Rae, 2000). Petkova and Springel (2009a) believed that entrepreneurial learning is a cyclical process. It goes through a learning-error-learning process to continually process “wrong” information to change the structure of previous knowledge. The knowledge structure of a specific domain mainly includes general knowledge, professional knowledge, and revised knowledge. Petkova’s entrepreneurial learning model includes the following three stages of the generating entrepreneurial results. The innovator faces new tasks and new environments, sets goals, and stimulates entrepreneurial behavior. Apply general knowledge to select behavior and carry out entrepreneurial activities. Error detection phase. Entrepreneurs use general knowledge to explain their results. The actual results are compared with the expected results. Apply professional knowledge to analyze existing errors. Error correction phase. After finding the error, analyze the cause of the error. Apply professional knowledge to correct errors. Acquire the right knowledge to update the knowledge structure. Petkova and Springel believed that these three stages were a gradual process, and had drawn some propositions about the influence of entrepreneurial knowledge and cognitive ability on entrepreneurial learning and entrepreneurial results. To sum up, entrepreneurial learning theory presents academic prosperity of “a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend”.
Different schools explain entrepreneurial learning from different theoretical perspectives, which broaden the research perspective of entrepreneurial learning and enrich the theory of entrepreneurial learning.
Therefore, based on the human resource theory, especially the transformation relationship between knowledge learning and ability acquisition in modern human resource theory, this study puts forward the research hypothesis on entrepreneurship curriculum directly affecting university students' entrepreneurial competence. Based on the personalized learning theory in learning theory, this study puts forward research hypothesis on the positive relationship of entrepreneurial self- efficacy on College Students' entrepreneurial competence in the entrepreneurial curriculum. Based on the entrepreneurial learning theory, this study proposes that
entrepreneurial courses are divided into three categories Different types of courses focus on cultivating different types of entrepreneurial competence.