Research
David’s teaching-focused research is primarily situated within Entrepreneurship Education and learning through action, exploring how entrepreneurial learning can be understood as a practice-based, processual and socially situated activity. His work brings together dialogic, performative and reflexive approaches to pedagogy, with a particular interest in how students develop practical wisdom, judgement and critical awareness through engagement with authentic practice. A central focus of David’s current research is dialogism as a pedagogical practice in entrepreneurship education. Drawing on concepts of dialogism, performativity and polyphony, he explores how knowledge and meaning are co-constructed through interactions between students, educators and the wider social, cultural and professional contexts in which learning takes place. This perspective informs his understanding of the educator as a facilitator of knowing rather than a transmitter of knowledge, and positions the classroom as a participatory space in which multiple perspectives and experiences contribute to learning. David’s research is closely connected to his teaching practice. He explores how performative and experiential pedagogies can enable students to learn through doing, experimentation, dialogue and reflection. His teaching-focused inquiry incorporates action learning, art-based methods, real-world entrepreneurial challenges, collaborative problem-solving and conversational approaches. These methods provide opportunities for students to test theoretical ideas against experience, engage with uncertainty and develop actionable knowledge.
His research is underpinned by four interconnected principles: action and practice, collaboration, engaged awareness and critical reflection. Together, these principles seek to understand how entrepreneurial education can develop not only knowledge and skills, but also critical self-awareness, practical judgement, reflexivity and the capacity to question established assumptions. Methodologically, David adopts a relational social constructionist and self-critical reflexive position, using approaches including action research, art-based inquiry and collaborative auto-ethnography to investigate pedagogical practice. This enables him to examine his own teaching as a site of inquiry and to continually reflect upon how relationships, assumptions and educational contexts shape learning. David’s teaching-focused research therefore creates a close relationship between scholarship and pedagogical practice. His research informs how he designs and facilitates learning, while his teaching provides an ongoing context for scholarly inquiry. This reciprocal relationship enables him to continually experiment, reflect and develop his practice, contributing to a more active, dialogic and practice-oriented approach to entrepreneurship education.
Awards & Recognition
(2015) - Emerald Reviewer Award, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research (IJEBR).
(2016) - Best Paper Winner, Entrepreneurial Practitioner Learning Track, Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference.
(2022) - Best Paper Winner, Entrepreneurship Education Track, Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship ISBE Conference.
(2022) - Best Conference Reviewer Award, RENT Conference.
(2024) - Outstanding Author Contribution, Emerald Literati Awards
Entrepreneurship & Small Business (Learning & Education)
David’s teaching and research interests are in the field of Entrepreneurial education and learning through action. His research activity is focused towards exploring practice-based, processual as well as dialogic approaches to entrepreneurship education and learning, reflexive learning, and practical wisdom. His current research explores the role of dialogism in entrepreneurship teaching practice. He embraces a self-critical reflexive position, to explore the practice of dialogism as a form of pedagogical inquiry, utilising various art based methods such as action research and auto ethnographic approaches to how we educate entrepreneurial practitioners/students. He adopts a relational social constructionist perspective, to draw discussion towards how our understanding of “learning in action” is continually mediated and re-developed based upon our dialogical interactions with students and self.
David is actively involved in the ISBE community acting as track chair for the “Research Methods, Practice and Inquiry/Impact Track”, and serving as guest editor for scholarly journals. David holds a position on the British Academy of Management Research Methods Special Interest Group steering community, where he has planned, developed and hosted a number of professional development workshops for students and practitioners at DBA and PhD levels of study.
Research Funding
1. ESRC Research training bursary award - 2012
2. ESRC Research training bursary award - 2010
3. ESRC Research training bursary award - 2008