International Small Business Journal 2016, Vol. 34(7) 948–971 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0266242615602322 isb.sagepub.com Small Firms i s b j The theoretical foundations of entrepreneurship education: How co-citations are shaping the field Michela Loi, Manuel Castriotta and Maria Chiara Di Guardo University of Cagliari, Italy Abstract This article develops a co-citation analysis covering the period 1991–2014 outlining the collective logic of authors conducting studies of entrepreneurship education. The core themes, major contributions and topological features characterising their relationships are identified. The findings indicate that the field has a polycentric structure with five core themes of which entrepreneurial intentions emerges as the most influential while the entrepreneurial learning and evaluation themes have emerged in recent years. These two core themes appear to foster changes within the current structure with the introduction of new theoretical inputs and the formation of new theoretical hubs. We argue that future research should attempt to organise focal themes into a theoretical framework that allows a comprehensive picture of entrepreneurship education. Keywords co-citation analysis, collective cognition, entrepreneurship education, knowledge structures, pathfinder analysis Introduction Entrepreneurship education has attracted considerable attention in recent years with numerous special issues of academic journals devoted to this subject (Matlay, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2012) and new calls issued for future work (Fayolle et al., 2014; Pittaway and Penaluna, 2013). Extant litera- ture reviews have enhanced the understanding of the major themes addressed by scholars and have identified important criticisms. Pittaway and Cope (2007a) recognised four core topics: first, the general policy climate for entrepreneurship education; second, the university context; third, pro- grammes and their connection with the entrepreneurship propensities of students and fourth, entre- preneurship education outputs. They note a scarcity of empirical works in some areas and a fragmentation among contributions which are generally developed without drawing theoretical support from adult and management learning, higher education and labour market policy. Corresponding author: Michela Loi, University of Cagliari, Viale Sant’Ignazio, 73, 09123 Cagliari, Italy. Email: michela.loi@unica.it; michela.loi@gmail.com 602322ISB 0 0 10.1177/0266242615602322International Small Business JournalLoi et al. research-article 2015 Article at EM LYON on October 30, 2016 isb.sagepub.com Downloaded from