Search Results for
"Vocational education"

IMPACT: Skills development for economic growth is an international priority. vocational education and training (VET) is globally an instrument to deliver skills training to the public. Internationally, public servants working in VET, and specifically in the UK, are not immune to mental health challenges and poor well-being, at significant cost to the public purse. This article argues that VET staff’s well-being should be prioritized and sustained by proactively managing work stress and work–life balance. The authors propose a more strategic, future-orientated and preventative approach. Policy-makers, line managers and human resource professionals would do well by investing in VET teachers’ and administrators’ psycho-social well-being and therefore limit the consequent costs associated with mental health related productivity issues, absenteeism and turnover. A sustainable people management approach, investing in a healthy work-context, will outweigh the costs and harmful effects of performance problems, absences and turnover in the public service. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This study investigates the effect of Video Project-Based Learning (VPjBL) on the practical competency of students in multilevel turning. A quasi-experimental design was employed, involving 66 mechanical engineering students divided into an experimental group (n = 32) that received VPjBL instruction and a control group (n = 34) that followed conventional PjBL. Data collection was conducted through pre-tests and post-tests to measure students’ practical competencies. Results revealed a statistically significant improvement in the experimental group’s performance, with a mean post-test score of 87.66 compared to 70.09 in the control group (t = 41.450, p < 0.001). N-Gain analysis further revealed a high category learning gain (0.7155) for the experimental group. Student response analysis showed strong engagement, with 93.75% rating the VPjBL approach as good or very good. The findings demonstrate that integrating video into PjBL enhances students’ competency acquisition and engagement. This research supports the adoption of multimedia-enhanced instructional strategies to improve practical skills training in vocational education. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.

The active participation of community college lecturers in architecture-related Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programs is essential to maintaining educational quality and aligning pedagogy with industry advancements. Despite this importance, many lecturers face significant challenges that limit their involvement. This study adopts a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach to examine existing research published between 2020 and 2024, sourced from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. A total of fifteen relevant articles were selected through a rigorous process involving identification, screening, eligibility assessment, and inclusion. Thematic analysis was conducted to uncover key issues affecting CPD engagement. The findings reveal persistent barriers, including limited resource access, time constraints, lack of institutional support, technological resistance, and inadequate digital skills. To overcome these challenges, the study offers several strategic recommendations: the development of CPD programs tailored to the unique needs of Technical and vocational education and Training (TVET) lecturers, enhanced collaboration between academia and industry, increased access to digital tools, and the establishment of institutional structures that promote innovation and lifelong learning. This review not only deepens the understanding of obstacles to CPD participation but also presents actionable, evidence-based strategies to support the professional development and instructional effectiveness of architecture lecturers in community colleges. The study concludes by advocating for future research to explore the impact of CPD engagement on lecturers’ competencies and student performance across diverse program models. © 2026, Malque Publishing. All rights reserved.

Marginalised youth in resource-constrained vocational education and training (VET) centres struggle to create engineering products and services with entrepreneurial value. This is due to limitations in the vocational engineering curriculum in addressing real community needs, exacerbated by inadequate resources, limited technology access, and other socio-economic challenges. This paper explores how the vocational engineering programme curriculum can be enhanced to improve learners’ capabilities to create engineering solutions with entrepreneurial value tailored for low-income consumers. The approach explores the Learning Factory (LF) concept, where design optimization strategies are investigated, rooted in sustainable humanitarian engineering, cost-effective materials, and energy-efficient production methods. The research entails enhancing the vocational curriculum by integrating authentic, real-world projects in real settings, giving students hands-on experience with engineering and business practices. The proposed methodology allows for a participatory approach to be explored in engaging local communities and stakeholders, ensuring the solutions fit the region's cultural and economic needs. The research highlights challenges and opportunities in VET institutions in Western Kenya and ways to optimise their engineering design and production processes. Additionally, this study offers insights for educators, policymakers, and practitioners in similar resource-limited settings. This study explores how a traditional hands-on, project-based approach complements the principles of learning factories, offering a practical model for fostering innovation and skill development in resource-constrained vocational settings. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.

The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies demands a fundamental transformation in vocational education curricula to prepare students for the evolving digital economy. This paper presents the evaluation of the AIM4VET project, an Erasmus+ funded initiative that integrates ambient intelligence and IoT technologies into vocational education and Training (VET) programs across Portugal, Spain, and Slovenia. The study focuses on the implementation and assessment of twelve modular teaching units centered around smart home energy management systems, utilizing Arduino-Raspberry Pi architectures and KNIME analytics platform. Employing project-based learning methodologies, the curriculum addresses critical competencies in sensor integration, data processing, machine learning, and ambient intelligence applications. Results from 14 VET students demonstrate significant improvements in technical understanding, with post-assessment scores showing mastery across all evaluation criteria. Student feedback revealed high satisfaction levels with instructional clarity, while teacher assessments confirmed strong performance in autonomy, creativity, and collaborative problem-solving. The majority of students rated module difficulty as appropriate, indicating well-calibrated instructional design. The findings validate the effectiveness of integrating ambient intelligence environments in VET curricula, demonstrating enhanced student engagement, practical skill development, and preparation for Industry 5.0 contexts. This research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on technology-enhanced vocational education and provides a scalable framework for implementing AI and IoT literacy across European VET systems. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.

Background: Research has identified employment as a social inclusion priority for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and has emphasized person-centered vocational training as a predictor of future employment. The Impact Project is a summer program offered by project partners in British Columbia, Canada, that provides youth with IDD vocational training to improve their employment experiences in preparation for future employment. Objective: This study explicates the importance of soft skills in vocational training identified by youth and their parents/carers regarding attained employment experiences during the Impact Project (2020–2022). Methods: This study evaluates qualitative data from youth and their parents/carers who reflected on their vocational training and attained employment experiences. Results: Qualitative findings highlight the significance of soft skills, namely confidence, social capital, and job readiness in the youth's employment experiences and outcomes. Youth and parent/carer observations about these soft skills add insight to understanding positive employment outcomes from the Impact Project. Conclusion: Qualitative data from the Impact Project (2020–2022) illuminate how soft skills contributed to the youth's employment experiences. These findings contextualize quantitative employment outcomes and can guide vocational training programs for youth with IDD in preparation for future employment. © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

This paper reviews the performance of students who graduated from the foundation year programme in business studies and compares their performance with non-foundation students at the higher national diploma equivalent to the foundation degree in the business programme. The study is conducted to understand how foundation students perform at the same level as their peers who have completed their schooling from the traditional school system in UAE. Data collected was secondary from the institution’s archive files of both the groups of students and their academic performance over fifteen modules. Descriptive statistical techniques were used to analyse the data. The results from the analysis found that the foundation students performed equally better as non-foundation students in most modules while in a few cores mandatory modules, students performed better than non-foundation students. The foundation programme students were not found to underperform in any module. In specialisation modules the data varied, however these modules were in marketing/finance/business in which the results were no longer comparable due to differences in specialisation, the field of study, and the type of assessments varied. Foundation students exhibited greater variability in their grades. This study contributes to scarce literature and research work in the area of foundation education in the UAE higher education teaching and learning and guides the future direction of studies based on the findings. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

vocational education in Portugal has improved secondary school qualifications, but its impact on higher education remains limited. Government efforts to facilitate this transition have been only partially successful. This paper explores vocational students' perceptions of the accessibility and relevance of HE, with a particular focus on how socio-economic background, educational pathways and labour market challenges influence their aspirations. Using a qualitative approach, data was collected through focus groups and interviews. Findings highlight systemic inequalities, financial constraints and limited cultural capital as key barriers to participation in HE. Economic pressures lead students to prioritise immediate employment and practical skills, while social influences, particularly from family and peers, reinforce doubts about the value of higher education. Many see it as unattainable or unnecessary. To reduce inequalities and improve access, targeted interventions such as improved careers guidance, financial support and better integration of theory and practice in the curriculum are essential. © © 2025. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Background: Empathy is crucial for effective clinical practice, and patient care. Despite its importance, the comparative studies and effectiveness analyses focusing on empathy-training strategies within both medical education and clinical practice are limited, particularly in China. The objective of this study is to compare empathy levels across doctors, nurses, medical students, and nursing students in China, exploring how workplace settings, professional roles, and training stages influence empathy development, to inform targeted empathy education strategies. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted using the Chinese Version of the Jefferson Scale of Healthcare Professional Empathy (C-JSHPE). Participants included doctors, nurses, medical students and nursing students from primary, secondary, and tertiary hospitals, as well as medical schools located in eastern (economically developed), central (moderately developed), and western (less developed) regions of China. Results: Qualified professionals (licensed nurses and doctors) exhibited significantly higher empathy scores than healthcare students (doctors vs medical students t = 12.959, p < 0.001; nurses vs nursing students t = 7.135, p < 0.001). Nurses exhibited significantly higher empathy than doctors (t = 4.081, p < 0.001), and nursing students likewise exhibited markedly greater empathy than their medical student counterparts (t = 5.221, p < 0.001). Significant differences in empathy scores were observed between nursing students who participated in internships and those who did not (t = 2.548, p < 0.05). In contrast, no such differences emerged among medical students (t = − 0.228, p > 0.05). Both doctors and nurses with more clinical experience demonstrated higher empathy scores (F physician = 10.696, p < 0.001; F nurse = 30.029, p < 0.001). In contrast, those working in tertiary hospitals reported reduced empathy (F physician = 94.018, p < 0.001; F nurse = 486.586, p < 0.001). Conclusions: This study underscored the importance of both developing and retaining empathy in qualified professionals and healthcare students, and highlighted the significant role of clinical work environments and stages of professional development in shaping empathic capacity. The findings suggested that empathy was not static, but evolved in response to the demands, pressures, and relational dynamics of different clinical roles. Simulation-based education and other experiential learning approaches represent promising avenues for fostering empathy, particularly when integrated longitudinally throughout training and aligned with authentic clinical contexts. Embedding these strategies into the continuum of medical education may be key to sustaining empathy as a core professional competence in complex healthcare systems. © 2025 Elsevier Ltd

Agile methodologies are widely used in engineering education to align academic outcomes with industry needs. Embedding Agile as a learning culture requires the pedagogical adoption of its principles rather than reliance on tools. This study examined links between Agile principles, team quality, and professional readiness in vocational software development education, where students often face tight deadlines and limited real-world experience. A pilot framework was implemented across 6 courses at an Indonesian polytechnic (51 students, 9 teams), operationalized around 12 principles over 5 sprints, and evaluated through peer assessments and retrospectives. Team quality was computed using a hybrid metric from Tuckman's stages and Lencioni's dysfunctions; students rated their agility on a 10-point scale. Results showed heterogeneous levels of team quality and principle adoption. A regression model explained a modest share of variance (R2 = 0.26), and the average rank correlation between team quality and principle scores was low to moderate (Spearman's ρ̄ = 0.39). Correlations were stronger for constant pace and self-organizing team and weaker for customer satisfaction and technical excellence. Cultural norms (politeness and hierarchical deference) tempered direct feedback during retrospectives. These findings support the integration of Agile principles into vocational curricula, with attention to local cultural dynamics. © 2025 Wiley Periodicals LLC.