Reflective Practice in Entrepreneurship Education: A Bibliometric Review (1990–2025)

Abstract

This study examines the conceptualisation, application, and scholarly development of reflective practice within entrepreneurship education in higher education between 1990 and 2025. Although reflective learning is widely recognised as central to experiential pedagogy, its integration into entrepreneurship education remains fragmented and insufficiently theorised. Using a bibliometric review methodology guided by the PRISMA 2020 guidelines and Scopus-indexed literature, the study analysed 247 peer-reviewed publications using descriptive analysis, keyword co-occurrence mapping, and citation network analysis in VOSviewer. The findings reveal growing scholarly interest in reflective and experiential approaches to entrepreneurship education, particularly regarding entrepreneurial mindset development, self-efficacy, transformative learning, and active pedagogy. However, reflective practice remains largely implicit within the literature rather than explicitly conceptualised as a pedagogical or theoretical framework. The study further identifies significant geographical and methodological imbalances, with dominant contributions originating from Global North institutions and qualitative methodologies prevailing across the field. The review argues that reflective practice has substantial potential to strengthen entrepreneurship education by supporting critical thinking, ethical reasoning, adaptability, and process-oriented learning. The study concludes that more theoretically grounded, contextually diverse, and methodologically rigorous research is required to establish reflective practice as a core dimension of entrepreneurship education scholarship and pedagogy.