To what extent can relocating responsibility to students for designing assessment on an undergraduate module, promote the creativity, innovation and learning required to develop skills for entrepreneurial activity?

This thesis examines the under-theorised intersection between entrepreneurship education and assessment scholarship by asking whether assessment design can operate as a generative mechanism for entrepreneurial learning. It focuses on assessment relocation: the bounded transfer of responsibility for aspects of assessment design from tutor or institution to students within quality assurance limits. The study addresses a central tension in entrepreneurship education: students are encouraged to develop creativity, innovation, agency and risk engagement, yet conventional assessment practices may reward compliance, predictability and grade-protective performance. Adopting a critical realist approach, the thesis reports four action research cycles conducted between 2016 and 2019 on a single undergraduate entrepreneurship module at a post-92 UK university. Data were generated through student diaries/blogs, focus groups, tutor interviews, researcher reflection and assessment artefacts. Analysis used reflexive thematic analysis, supported by abductive and retroductive reasoning, to identify how assessment relocation operated under particular institutional, affective and pedagogic conditions. The findings suggest that assessment relocation can activate a conditional mechanism chain. Relocating assessment responsibility created ambiguity and responsibility; assessment artefacts and reflective spaces enabled some students to develop student assessment literacy and evaluative judgement; this supported agency where students could regulate risk and act within institutional boundaries; and agency then became linked to identity work and entrepreneurial learning. However, this process was neither automatic nor universal. It was moderated by risk orientation, institutional conditioning, cohort variation, group dynamics, tutor scaffolding, student capitals and designed liminal spaces. The thesis contributes a mechanism-centred account of how assessment design can support entrepreneurial judgement, creativity, risk engagement and identity work while maintaining academic rigour. It argues that assessment can become more than a measure of entrepreneurial learning: under particular conditions, it can become a site where entrepreneurial learning is practised.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Ed.D

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Oxford Brookes University

Author dc:creator

• Jordan, Ross

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Wright, Susannah
• Gibson, Mark
• Lawrence, Jenny

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.24384/dkr1-wa93

OAI record oai:identifier

https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=uketd_dc&identifier=tle%3A0a02fca7-34f0-46ee-a014-115ac8f51490%3Ad6bd9758-527a-46cd-bfe2-c433766e8fca%3A1