Workplace mentors play a crucial role in supporting degree apprentices, as guides and advocates in the workplace and partners in the tripartite meetings with the university. The mentor can help to facilitate relevant work-based opportunities and identify appropriate credit-bearing workplace projects…
This article investigates the impact of authentic learning on student employability within postgraduate Human Resource Management (HRM) programme in New Zealand. Focusing on a consultancy project course at a large New Zealand university, the study examines how work-integrated learning, as a form of …
This article examines how Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) lecturers in a South African college conceptualise a humanising pedagogy within Work Integrated Learning (WIL) practices. Against a backdrop of high youth unemployment and persistent skills mismatches, the study conside…
The fourth industrial revolution has led to a tremendous increase in the demand for IT specialists. Until recently, this sector had traditionally recruited university graduates, but given the shortage of candidates, it has turned to individuals with vocational training, finding that they are capable…
This study investigates the influence of personality traits, extracurricular entrepreneurship education and own business in the family on students’ entrepreneurial intentions. Grounded in the Big Five personality theory, the research examines how traits such as openness to new experiences (ABEX), ex…
This paper examines the relation between the nature of updates in training curricula and graduates’ skills and wages. Using vocational education and training (VET) curriculum texts as data, we apply natural language processing methods to identify the nature of changes in curriculum updates based on …
This paper aims to determine what motivates small firms to offer apprenticeship training. The current state of research provides various indications. While research focusing on the specificity of small firms identifies the important role of the owner and their personality, values, attitudes and expe…
Partnerships with local public sector agencies, enterprises and tertiary institutions offer a means to inform young people about post-school pathways into working life and occupations that schools alone cannot achieve. Informing about those pathways is an important, yet, complex educational goal for…
The benefits of growth in university enrolments are contingent on the articulation of university expansion with changes in other areas, particularly the economy. The costs of a mismatch are felt at the societal level, but especially by individual graduates. This article describes problems faced by p…
This study explores the experiences of leaders who have led organisations and teams through an extended period of crisis management whilst completing a UK work-based master’s programme. This paper examines contemporary approaches to work-based learning and explores the effect of organisational and w…
Historically, males from low socio-economic backgrounds have been a difficult demographic for educators to reach and engage. Despite efforts to widen participation in Australia, males who would be considered ‘first-in-family’, remain severely underrepresented in higher education. For those who do at…
Derived from an ethnography of working cultures and practices at a bike shop in the North of England, this paper rests on a critical application of social practice theories of literacy (Literacy Studies) in order to explore the complex and heterogeneous literacy practices of cycle technicians. Drawi…
While European governance of individual policy sectors has received considerable academic scrutiny, less attention has been paid to the development of intersectoral coordination. This paper charts the emergence of a supranational boundary-spanning policy regime (BSPR) in education and employment in …
While much attention has been paid to European policy arrangements in individual policy fields, European intersectoral policy coordination has been mostly an overlooked phenomenon, especially within the sectors of education and employment. Thus, in the introductory paper for this Special Issue, we o…
In England, a new model of apprenticeship was initiated in whose stated intention was to ‘put employers in the driving seat’. Regulation of the new model was focused on the mandatory 20% of apprentices’ work time allocated to off-the-job training offered by colleges and other training providers. Bas…
In the hairdressing occupation emotional labour has often come to overshadow other vocational skills. The present study, using ethnographic methods, explores how students and teachers in vocational education and training (VET) for hairdressers in Sweden describe and explain the emotional labour bein…
This study explores the lived experience of apprentices on a degree-level programme and their perceptions of how elements of apprenticeship study that aren’t components of traditional degree study–i.e. off-the-job training–impact their learner journey. This article undertakes a thematic analysis fol…
Educational researchers identify the transition from post-secondary education to the labour market as a critical point for the success of the student, and for society more broadly. This transition is often explored as a distinct phase between education and work that can be assessed based on pre-dete…
The creative industry is a sector where digitisation inevitably changes work practices and the skill requirements are high. The rapid digitisation makes it imperative for workers to acquire digital skills beyond mere technical use. The aim of this study is twofold: (1) to offer a deeper analysis of …
Ιn a policy context in which the harmonisation of HE curricula towards connection with the labour market is pursued, the article seeks to elucidate under-theorised and over-aggregated accounts of the role of the field of study in graduate employability and to investigate it from a new analytical ang…
