Search Results for
"Vocational education"

An off-campus practical course is one in which students receive practical training in a vocational workplace outside of their educational institution. These courses focus on practical skills rather than academic knowledge and are essential for students to gain real-world experience and develop skills needed in the modern workforce. The research objective is to explore the continuous development of off-campus practical courses using the Outcome-Based education (OBE) framework. The study used both qualitative and quantitative research methods, with 900 structured questionnaires distributed and 847 valid responses collected from students and teachers. The quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS software, and the qualitative data were analyzed using NVivo software. The findings highlight that off-campus practical courses improve students’ problem-solving skills, practical application abilities, industry-relevant performance, and engagement compared to traditional classroom-based education. Theoretically, this study contributes to the growing body of research on OBE by demonstrating how off-campus practical courses, when aligned with OBE principles, can better equip students with the skills required by modern industries. The study enriches the OBE framework by providing evidence of how it enhances not only technical knowledge retention but also fosters critical competencies such as problem-solving, industry-specific performance, and engagement. Practically, the study provides insights for educators and industry stakeholders to design off-campus programs that align with both academic and vocational outcomes. The novelty of this study lies in its exploration of how off-campus practical courses can be continuously improved to better prepare students for the challenges of the contemporary workplace. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2025.

The medicines development workforce has grown to be a multidisciplinary, interprofessional global body of broadly qualified graduate professionals working with and around the biopharmaceutical industry. To satisfy their demands of fitness for work, they must meet the changes and challenges of a rapidly developing technological and competitive field. This has generated a need for a harmonised, mutually recognised vocational programme of competencies and capabilities, based on an academic foundation, which for the adult learners in medicines development goes above and beyond their original medical and scientific specialisms. This review proposes that professional competencies and capabilities developed in pharmaceutical medicine, a specialty concerned with the discovery, development, evaluation, registration, monitoring, and commercialisation of medicines and medical products, provides a comprehensive solution for the educational needs in medicines development. To justify this proposition, it summarises the 60-year evolution of education and training in pharmaceutical medicine. It demonstrates how expanding the pharmaceutical medicine syllabus has aligned it with almost every aspect of the development process of modern medicines. This perspective proposes a vision for the future where pharmaceutical medicine professional competencies and capabilities fill the educational void for the medicines development workforce. This is suggested to pave the career path that supports the professional identity of physicians, scientists, and other professionals working to develop medicines. © The Author(s) 2025.

Purpose: To assess the relevance and comprehensiveness of the proposed curriculum, examine stakeholder perspectives on curriculum effectiveness, and validate it using a developmental model framework. Design/Methodology/Approach: A qualitative research design was employed to explore the perspectives of stakeholders in Ghana’s hospitality sector. A focus group discussion with 30 participants, including faculty, industry experts, and students, was conducted to analyse the data. Thematic analysis identified key patterns and insights, guiding amendments through member checking to ensure validation and accuracy. Research Limitation: The focus group format had limited participants' ability to share sensitive or critical feedback about existing curriculum structures, potentially affecting the comprehensiveness of validation insights. Findings: Stakeholder perspectives highlight the curriculum’s effectiveness in integrating technology, sustainability, and experiential learning, while striking a balance between theory and practice. These validate the curriculum using a developmental model framework, demonstrating its potential to enhance career readiness and industry adaptability while identifying areas for further improvement. Practical Implication: These insights guide educators and industry stakeholders in enhancing hospitality education, fostering a skilled workforce, and sustaining Ghana’s hospitality sector as a key economic driver. Social Implication: This creates a generation of hospitality professionals committed to environmental stewardship, cultural sensitivity, and social impact, contributing to Ghana's broader sustainable development goals. Originality/Value: This study employs a developmental model framework to validate the curriculum, emphasising comprehensive skill development, instructor proficiency, and hands-on learning experiences. © African Journal of Applied Research Arca Academic Publisher.

This research paper investigates effective strategies for teaching Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), specifically emphasizing electricity and magnetism, in the context of electrical engineering education within vocational schools in Indonesia. The study aims to address the challenges faced by educators in delivering these essential concepts and identify innovative approaches to enhance student learning outcomes. STEM education plays a vital role in fostering critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity among students, preparing them for careers in various fields, including electrical engineering. However, teaching complex subjects like electricity and magnetism demands effective pedagogical methods that bridge theoretical knowledge with real-world applications. This research explores the current practices of vocational schools in Indonesia, investigating the extent to which hands-on learning experiences are integrated into the curriculum to develop practical skills. Using a mixed-methods approach, qualitative data is collected through interviews with educators and industry professionals, while quantitative data is gathered through surveys or questionnaires. The research uncovers effective teaching strategies that promote active student engagement, such as interactive demonstrations, real-world case studies, laboratory experiments, and project-based learning. The outcomes of this research contribute to the advancement of STEM education in vocational schools, particularly in the domain of electrical engineering. By exploring and implementing effective teaching strategies, educators can cultivate a skilled workforce that meets the demands of the rapidly evolving technology sector, fostering innovation and sustainable growth in Indonesia. © 2025 Author(s).

Background The Registrar Clinical Encounters in Training (ReCEnT) project is an Australian general practice vocational training programme with integrated and interdependent education and research functions. Trainees (registrars) contemporaneously document in-consultation clinical experience and actions. Objectives Using a realist lens, we elucidate the mechanisms underpinning project outcomes to answer questions around programme effectiveness, impacts, sustainability and the lessons and findings that are translatable to other primary care training programmes. Methods The context, input, process and product framework was used. As a means to understand the interactions between each of the interdependent components, it allows for inferences regarding causal mechanisms for specific outcomes. Results Context: ReCEnT occurs within an apprenticeship-like model of general practice vocational training entailing a central supervisor/apprentice relationship. ReCEnT has demystified the content and characteristics of registrar consultations. Input: multiple stakeholder involvement is both advantageous and a logistical challenge, with the programme's success dependent on registrars, practices and training providers providing detailed and accurate data, with prompt subsequent processing. Process: contemporaneous consultation data collection in different stages of training constitutes a component of registrars' programmatic assessment. Product: individualised feedback provides educational benefit through reflection. Clinical and educational research questions can be addressed with resulting research translation feeding back into the programme model and government policy. Clinical behaviour change is also evaluated. Conclusion ReCEnT is unique, globally, in its scope and longevity (2010-present). Creation of meaningful, individualised feedback facilitates reflection and provides both immediate educational benefits and the substrate for further research, programme and policy design and targeted formal teaching and learning. © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2025.

The East and West German labour markets are still characterized by large differences in migrant shares and thus workforce diversity. While in West Germany immigration was a rather established mechanism in order to recruit additional workers especially in the 1960s and early 1970s, East Germany has still only a small share of migrants among the workforce. For many years, young migrants in West Germany struggled to take up vocational education and training (VET) positions and therefore had to take up jobs with lower task levels more often. With remarkable demographic changes in the East, the numbers of East Germans who took up VET positions in the West fell considerably from 2007 onwards. We analyse to what extent this decline in East German apprentices in the West led to growing opportunities for migrant youth in West Germany. For this purpose, we use employment registry data from the Federal Employment Agency as well as population data from the Federal Statistical Office. We consider small-scale information on NUTS-3-levels and control for occupational differentials, as well as apprenticeships occupation. Thus, we compare regional occupation clusters where competition between East German and foreign youth took place. © The several contributors 2025. The moral rights of the authors have been asserted. All rights reserved.

Context: For many years, dual training programmes have been transferred from German speaking countries to other countries. It has been repeatedly pointed out that this transfer is made particularly difficult by the need for co-operation between numerous different stakeholders. Despite various transfer activities, however, the scientific findings on the topic to date are rather limited. Approach: This study therefore identifies and discusses the principles for successful cooperation in the Mexican vocational training system in the tourism sector. Two research questions are addressed, the first following a deductive research approach and the second an inductive one: 1) Which of the principles for successful co-operation named in the research literature can also be found in Mexico? 2) Which other or further principles are relevant in the Mexican context? The tourism sector in Mexico is especially suitable as an object of investigation as, over a number of years there has been an intensive implementation of dual training structures here. Based on 70 expert interviews with the various stakeholders in three regions of Mexico, principles for successful co-operation were developed. Findings: The findings show that a large number of interacting principles are necessary for successful co-operation between the players. A total of 18 principles were identified in the categories of relationships, control efforts and embedding. Seven of these principles had not been explicitly identified in the existing scientific literature. Some examples of the new principles identified are: Regarding the "relationships" category, the findings identified the identification and selection of partners as a previously non-existent principle. The aspect of contracts at an international and national level was also recognised as an independent principle from our data, which can be assigned to the category "control". Internal security is also an important aspect for the learning centres and can be subsumed under the category of embedding. The newly generated principle of the length of the practical phases can also be categorised as embedding. Conclusions: These principles are discussed and interpreted both in the context of existing scientific approaches and specifically in the Mexican context. The work reveals the high degree of interdependence between the principles. Individual principles can therefore not be considered in isolation. The review and extension of the principles can provide important stimuli for both VET transfer research and educational governance research. © 2025, European Research Network vocational education and Training. All rights reserved.