Search Results for
"education"

This study proposes the Critical Incident Technique as an empirical tool to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching entrepreneurship competencies within entrepreneurship courses by using the Comprehensive Entrepreneurship Competence Model as a theoretical framework. The study focuses on the perceptions and experiences of 15 teachers who introduced in parallel, during two semesters in 2022, the same teaching approach in 39 entrepreneurship courses offered in 5 universities in Estonia, Finland, Italy, Poland, and Portugal. The teachers were asked to describe in detail specific incidents encountered during their teaching experience, without any cognitive filter represented by pre-established items, categories, and elements of evaluation of the teaching process. Then, the incidents were sorted into categories based on similarities in the content and classified as relating to positive and negative outcomes. Our findings contribute to the design of new educational programmes aiming at fostering students’ entrepreneurship competencies, showing peculiarities that need to be considered. Moreover, the study emphasizes the importance of using a range of evaluation approaches when testing a new method and suggests that exploring the teaching process, in addition to learning outcomes, can provide useful insights to inform the design of the teaching. © 2024 Society for Research into Higher education.

Interdisciplinary engineering education (IEE) is gaining traction as engineering practices increasingly acknowledge the need to transcend traditional boundaries given the complexities of globalised systems. IEE, however, faces challenges that underscore uncertainties and different perceptions about what interdisciplinarity means for engineering education, what it requires, and how current educational practices should change accordingly. This study addresses these concerns by taking competencies as indicators. Analysing new angles interdisciplinary approaches bring to traditional engineering competencies, we first propose six IEE-related competency categories. We then use the Q-sort methodology to investigate how interdisciplinarity is envisioned within overall engineering educational goals. Findings highlight three distinct perspectives, seeing IEE respectively as social-holistic, technical problem-solving, and reflective pragmatic. Each perspective embodies specific values and conceptions about the role and implications of interdisciplinarity for engineering education. The multifaceted understandings of and approaches to realise IEE suggest the need for nuanced strategies and continuous dialogues in education. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The combination of knowledge and skill sets from robotics and Artificial Intelligence has proven as a powerful catalyst for students’ learning experiences, when applying available resources and knowledge acquired through vocational training. Within the Department of IT at an Austrian vocational high school, our students actively engage in projects that combine robotics and AI. Our diploma theses extend beyond mere classroom theory, allowing interested students to apply their knowledge in authentic, real-world scenarios in the form of thesis projects which span different engineering and IT disciplines. Our goal is to emphasize hands-on experiences and encourage our students to design, construct and program robots, even with the addition of AI technology, such as image recognition and classification trained for specific tasks. Through this practical immersion, our students gain a deeper understanding of robotics and AI, disciplines that are at the forefront of today’s technological innovation. We worked with two groups of students on interdisciplinary projects bridging the gap between robotics and AI and based on our students’ feedback found an increase in motivation to learn not only about the fields themselves, but also about related fields, from mathematical theory to better understand the intricate workings of AI algorithms to electronics and working with microcontrollers. Personal interviews with involved students have also pointed toward an increased motivation through the intense cooperation between the team members as well as the teachers responsible for supporting the project teams through their thesis projects. Projects connecting robotics and AI empower students to become adaptable, creative problem-solvers which is a crucial foundation for success in the twenty-first century. By fostering collaboration and critical thinking, while enhancing students’ technical skills and equipping them with the adaptability and creativity they require, this educational approach prepares students to thrive in a rapidly changing world where both disciplines play pivotal roles. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.

Purpose: In the evolving landscape of the 21st century, characterized by dynamic global challenges such as health crises, climate change, and rapid technological advancements, the imperative of lifelong learning has become more pronounced than ever. Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) plays a pivotal role in lifelong learning, involving independent, self-directed behaviors to enhance knowledge and skills. While the significance of SRL is widely acknowledged in the broader context of lifelong learning, its specific role in vocational schools is a critical aspect that requires careful investigation. In these specialized educational settings, effective SRL practices are not only integral to individual academic success but are also crucial for fostering the competencies essential for a thriving professional career. However, there is a need for a systematic analysis of how SRL is fostered within vocational schools. Despite its importance, the current best practices for promoting successful SRL in vocational schools remain underexplored. Therefore, this study aimed to systematically review intervention studies focused on changing educational practices related to SRL in vocational schools. Specifically, we addressed two key research questions: (1) What are the characteristics of intervention studies aimed at fostering SRL in vocational schools? and (2) What is the quality of these interventions in terms of their impact on promoting SRL? Methods: To address these questions, we conducted a systematic review of intervention studies focused on fostering SRL in the context of vocational education. Our review includes 11 studies, with 10 reporting positive effects of interventions promoting SRL. Findings: The findings highlight that collaborative and problem-solving approaches, along with learning environments emphasizing student autonomy, are effective methods for enhancing SRL. Additionally, the review underscores the importance of distinguishing between direct and indirect interventions to promote SRL in the classroom. The effectiveness of each approach is contingent on the specific context and student population. Conclusion: However, comparing and drawing conclusions from these studies presented challenges due to the limited similarity in outcome measures and variations in the quality of evidence. Future research should consider methodological adjustments to address the heterogeneity of intervention studies on SRL at the vocational school level, including the development of standardized assessment tools and more rigorous experimental designs to better evaluate the impact of SRL interventions. These adjustments are crucial for ensuring that vocational schools can effectively integrate SRL practices that not only align with academic goals but also prepare students for the demands of their professional careers. © 2025 European Research Network Vocational education and Training. All rights reserved.

Professional development for the further education sector (FE) in England, whether commissioned by the education and Training Foundation (ETF), or the Department for education (DfE), is typically formal learning. There are usually measurable outcomes, and practitioners are asked to identify changes to their practice. The focus on outcomes means informal learning is rarely directly funded. This paper analyses a professional development programme funded by the DfE and cut short. This programme was based on a network model that is neither fully formal nor informal. We argue the model sits in a ‘grey zone’ between formal and informal professional development, and that the specific benefits of this kind of ‘grey zone’ model should be considered for future commissioned professional development. We find that informal learning in the semi-structured setting created by the Network had the potential to empower and recognise frontline teaching staff, by providing opportunities to present good practices and learn from other Network members. The Network structure enabled responsiveness to practitioners’ needs, by being flexible and adapting to circumstances. However, these adaptations made the Network vulnerable to challenge, and this, alongside concerns about the quality of presentations, and a lack of centralised control, ultimately contributed to its downfall. In conclusion, whilst there are undoubtedly risks from a funder perspective of operating in the ‘grey zone’ these should be balanced against the potential significant benefits to participants of a network approach to professional development. © 2025 Association for Research in Post-Compulsory education.

With the proliferation of disruptive technologies driving innovation, there arises an imperative for businesses to equip themselves with forward-looking skill sets. The stewards of higher education institutions (HEIs), who oversee the preparation of candidates with pertinent skills, bear a significant responsibility. The workforce is grappling with an expanding skill gap (SG) brought about by the rapid adoption of technology and the evolving landscape of job roles. Thus, academia finds itself presented with a pressing challenge—to bridge this growing divide. To address this concern, we propose the HEISG (higher education institution skill gap) framework, leveraging machine learning (ML) techniques to assess and quantify this SG. This framework calculates skill scores pertaining to both supply and demand by analyzing exit skill scores from HEIs and entry skill scores required by industries, respectively. By comparing the resulting student profiles from HEIs with job descriptions from industry, we compute a cosine similarity score that highlights the gap between the supply and demand skill vectors. This iterative process is aimed at narrowing the chasm between the skills demanded by the industry and those imparted by HEIs. Our proposal suggests updating curricula to align with industry needs. The application of ML algorithms and natural language processing aids in generating skill index (SI) with customizable threshold values, tailored to specific disciplines and sectors. This study contributes to a better understanding of the demand for various skill sets, ultimately ensuring that students are well-prepared for the industry, thanks to the implementation of this framework. © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Urmila Shrawankar and Prerna Mishra; individual chapters, the contributors.

Intersectoral policy coordination has garnered considerable attention in the study of the European Commission (EC) over the past few decades. Within the EC, a logic of hierarchy and a logic of policy portfolios coexist, often leading to a conflictual and complex relationship. While the literature has extensively explored the internal dynamics of the EC, there has been less focus on the role of external dynamics in influencing intersectoral policy coordination. This paper addresses this gap by examining the case of European policy coordination in education and employment and how both internal and external dynamics can hinder or facilitate policy coordination within the EC. Based on the analysis of interviews with EC actors and various EU policy documents, the paper discusses how these internal and external dynamics have affected policy coordination, highlighting elements of both positive and negative coordination. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The articulation between Secondary Vocational School(SVS) and college, in China, is a relatively new reform, hoping to unlock the dead end of Vocational education and Training(VET). Based on fieldwork conducted in two universities in Jiangsu Province in 2018–2019, this article reports on college experience for articulated students with a VET background. The findings demonstrate that both positive and negative consequences of social skills exist at college for those students. Prior vocational school experience was shown to have an academic shock on students who were also have a complex mentality as they easily became aware of their distinctive identity as opposed to that of their peers. Further, although better-performing students demonstrated academic resilience, they nevertheless felt uncertain about transitional status and eager to redeem themselves through academic ambition, whereas more poorly-performing students had an anxiety about academia that made them prey to a pattern of struggling and giving up. Finally, the policy implications of the findings are also discussed. © 2023 National Institute of education, Singapore.

Self-assessment involves students making judgements about their own learning. Self-assessment is promoted widely due to its benefits for lifelong learning. However, students often find self-assessment mechanical, useless and redundant–indeed inauthentic. This may partly result from understanding self-assessment as an instrumental and acontextual practice. We take an alternative approach by focusing on the authenticity of self-assessment. We bring together two research areas that have rarely intersected: self-assessment and authentic assessment. How has research conceptualised authenticity with respect to self-assessment? What could we learn from earlier studies to consider authenticity more meaningfully in self-assessment design? To answer these questions, we conduct an integrative review of 40 studies. We formulate an organising framework that outlines the various dimensions of authenticity in self-assessment. We argue that authenticity is a powerful idea that may bring self-assessment from the margins of higher education to its very centre. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This study investigates the impact of project-based learning (PBL) on the perception of professional competence in Early Childhood education (ECE) among pre-service teachers in Spain. A total of 586 students from four Spanish universities participated in a pre-post test design using the ECPP-FIM scale to measure the impact of the PBL approach on the perception of professional psychomotor intervention skills of ECE. The PBL approach involved close collaboration with preschools, providing students with hands-on experience designing and implementing movement-based activities in natural contexts. Descriptive and inferential statistics, including ANOVA, were used to analyse the data. Results indicate substantial improvements in the perception of professional competence across all five areas of the ECPP-FIM scale. Moreover, students from vocational education backgrounds showed consistently higher pre-and post-test scores than those from other academic pathways. Findings support the effectiveness of PBL in bridging the theory-practice divide and emphasize the importance of integrating real-world experiences in teacher training. To conclude, this study highlights the key characteristics that an ordinary university subject should incorporate to enhance the perception of professional competence. © 2025 Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. All rights reserved.