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"Article"

Student employment is on the increase in many European countries. It takes many forms, from full-time employment to various types of flexible work, which involves short-term, non-standard and informal work. Despite its relevance and complexity, the connection between higher education and concurrent employment has been only partially explored in scholarly debate. This paper investigates the differing patterns of employment for university students, focusing on the role played by parental background, educational choices (i.e. field of study and residential status) and access to benefits. The analyses apply to the Italian higher education system and are based on data collected through a survey carried out among students enrolled at the University of Bologna, which has a highly developed student grant system and a large number of away from home students. Using multinomial logistic regression, the paper shows that students native of Bologna from lower socio-economic backgrounds and enrolled in the humanities and social sciences are more likely than their peers to be in employment. The findings on Right to Study are hence particularly important from a policy perspective, as they highlight the different roles that scholarships and tuition fee waivers play in employment choices whilst at university. © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This article performs a discourse analysis on the recent interest of the Israeli Ministry of Education in vocational education by examining governmental and organisational texts. This article addresses two key questions. What is the government’s justification for its renewed interest in vocational education? What are its discursive practices to promote vocational education in the context of the current neoliberal discourse on equality and meritocracy? Highlighting three major justifications and discursive practices in the Ministry of Education’s current educational policy, this discursive analysis shows that the policy is related to culture, ethnicity, and class hierarchies in Israel. The analysis also underscores ambiguity as a governmental and organisational tool and the ramifications of the government’s ethnic blindness related to the social construction of a specific reality in vocational education. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Recent research on professional services has sought to pay nuanced attention to the relationship between professionalism and public service performance. At the same time, existing literature has examined the role of co-production in local public service delivery but has primarily remained theoretical and qualitative, calling for more empirical testing. Bridging these two different streams of literature, this article is the first to investigate how co-production affects the performance of China’s vocational training service for disabled persons. Using cross-sectional data from the 2018 national survey conducted by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, our research shows that training institutions adopting a co-production approach are more likely to achieve higher employment rates (self-reported) among their trainees. Furthermore, multiple measures of professionalism are found to be positively associated with the employment outcomes of vocational training programmes. Implications for future research on professionalism and co-production in public service delivery are also discussed. © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This article proposes and illustrates a framework for thinking about how the school-to-work transitions of young people not intending to go to university can be made more equitable. This framework seeks to enrich sociological readings of VET by building on the considerable strengths of existing research on ecologies of VET provision and the life-worlds of young people navigating transitions, and bringing them together with concerns about the theoretical and practical complexity of equality that have tended to be relatively neglected in VET research to date. Its organising principle is that, in order to make young people’s transitions more equitable, we need to systematically combine analytic attention to: the multidimensional and intersectional nature of inequality; how local learning ecologies are produced at different system-levels; and how these ecologies interact with young people’s life-worlds, values and agency. We argue that identifying which aspects of local learning ecologies underpin or undermine which kinds of equality for differently resourced young people represents an important first step towards formulating a strategy for how local learning ecologies can be stimulated to become both more opportunity-rich and more equitable, and for understanding the policy and practice challenges and dilemmas that have to be negotiated in the process. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This article focuses on using action research (AR) to support preschool teacher graduate students in developing professional identity. An effective means of generating new knowledge and transforming school practices, AR has increasingly been adopted in research on education due to allowing teachers to act as researchers and directly benefit from the research process. The objective of our study was to explore how engaging in AR can enhance the development of professional identity among preschool teacher graduate students. For data, we collected journal from 30 students while and after they engaged in AR for a full year under the guidance of university teachers and preschool-based mentors. The findings, based on our analysis of five students’ journals, suggest that engaging in AR supported the students in developing professional identity and increased their confidence as soon-to-be professionals. Moreover, the students reported that the support provided by the university teachers, the preschool-based mentors, and the students’ course group was crucial to their success. Overall, our findings highlight not only the value of AR in supporting preschool teacher graduate students’ professional growth but also the importance of collaborative support for their positive professionalisation. © 2024 Educational Action Research.

This article explores the historically contingent and normative descriptions of vocational education and training (VET) as a low-status alternative in Australia’s socio-economic process of skill and knowledge development. Rather than repeating well-rehearsed shibboleths, this retheorisation of how status works applies an institutional logics perspective as a novel addition to existing research in the sector. Historical reports and contemporary discourses sourced from submissions to a parliamentary inquiry into VET’s status are used to determine which logics are used in the sector. They demonstrate that the sector’s dominant institutional logics derive from the state, market and professional orders of society. These three share an emphasis upon the use of status to determine how organisations and individuals allocate limited and valuable attention to their operating environments. The institutional logics perspective provides a meta-theoretical challenge to traditional depictions of what status represents and, in turn, suggests how public policy can be re-imagined, thus improving the sector’s standing and consequent value propositions. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Derived from an ethnography of workplace cultures and practices, this article rests on a critical application and augmentation of Communities of Practice theory in order to account for the ways in which the assessment of complex and heterogeneous workplace learning can be conceptualised. Exemplified through a series of vignettes constructed from the ethnographic data, the article foregrounds a variety of experiences of assessment–formal and informal–that characterise the trajectories of workers as participants within the Community of Practice. In addition to providing an account of a qualified and specialist workforce, this article also provides an exemplar for ethnographic research as a vehicle for exploring the assessment of workplace learning through Communities of Practice theory. This exploration is accomplished in two ways: firstly, through a critical use of certain paradigmatic elements of the theory; secondly, through the augmentation of the theory in order to address some of these past critiques whilst maintaining the epistemological coherence of the theory as a whole. The article concludes by arguing that Communities of Practice theory can be critically applied in order to generate ethnographic accounts that valorise the richness and complexity of the practices being assessed. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This paper reports on research undertaken to understand the contribution of formal Technical Vocational Education and Training (hereafter TVET) to company-level growth and transformation in the automotive sector in South Africa. The findings of this article are part of a larger research project conducted in South Africa and five other developing countries, namely, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Laos, and Vietnam, to explore the contribution of TVET programs to inclusive industrial transformation and growth in the manufacturing sectors. It argues that formal TVET training does not drive workplace changes in technology, work organisation, and product change in the automotive sector. This paper challenges the current formal TVET provision policy in South Africa to recognise other forms of training provision, such as non-formal, and informal on-the-job training, in addition to company-level factors critical in shaping the skills system if we are to understand the extent to which skills enhance growth and transformation. © 2024 Centre for Researching Education and Labour (REAL), University of the Witswatersrand. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

New Jersey (NJ) Safe Schools Program (NJSS) provides code-required trainings for NJ teachers supervising students in work-based learning (WBL) experiences. During the COVID-19 pandemic, increased use of chemical cleaning, sanitization, and disinfectant products (CSDPs) led to ventilation and other health concerns. NJSS conducted two surveys of newer NJ WBL teachers between October 2021 and June 2023, with a follow-up in fall 2022 for those who completed initial surveys before summer 2022. This study focused on questions regarding workspace ventilation; respirator and CSDPs trainings; awareness of government resources for safety and health (S&H); and demographics. Over 65% of participant classrooms have operable windows or ventilation systems, while 13% of school salons have ceiling fans. Half of participants didn’t receive training on handling CSDPs, although 90% were aware of government S&H resources. Data suggested teachers have well-ventilated workspaces and are aware of different resources available, which is important to continue post COVID-19. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

In today's highly competitive job market, the employability of graduates holds paramount significance. Employers increasingly demand fundamental competencies and diverse employability skills from the current graduates. Studies have highlighted a noticeable gap between the skills employers seek and graduates’ skills upon the completion of their studies. This gap in employability skills significantly impacts graduates, impeding their prospects of securing suitable employment opportunities. The disparities in skills and knowledge have sparked a debate on graduate employability, necessitating further research in this domain. Addressing that, the current study explored research trends, directions, and opportunities related to graduate employability. A bibliometric analysis was conducted on a dataset comprising 2335 journal articles on graduate employability published between 1981 and 2023 in Scopus and Web of Science databases. The results of bibliometric analysis revealed the most influential journal articles based on their publications, citations, and significance in the intellectual network. Through content analysis, this study shed light on the subject's intellectual structure, characterized by four major thematic clusters: (1) the attribution of broader skills to career enhancement; (2) the significance of generic skills (interpersonal, problem-solving, and communication skills); (3) the need for work-related training and employer engagement; and (4) the need for improved curriculum design to build adequate human capital. The study concluded with a discussion of practical policy implications, limitations of study, and recommendations for future research. © 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.