Search Results for
"learning"

The rapid transformation of the 21st-century labour market requires students to be highly psychologically adaptable, especially in dual education systems where academic and work-based learning occur simultaneously. This study examines resilience as a psychological and pedagogical protective factor among students in dual vocational education and dual higher education programmes. Using a quantitative research design with validated scales measuring resilience, motivation, satisfaction, and stress, the research investigates how individual and contextual factors influence students’ adaptability. The results showed that vocational education and training students exhibited greater resilience, greater learning satisfaction, and lower levels of stress than those in higher education. Regression analysis confirmed that resilience positively contributes to academic success, while supportive mentoring and a structured learning environment enhance emotional stability and motivation. The analysis highlights that autonomy and pressure to perform are associated with higher levels of stress in higher education, underscoring the critical role of mentorship and peer support in improving adaptability. These findings emphasise that resilience is not only an individual capacity, but also a pedagogical and organisational construct; its systematic development should be integrated into the dual education framework to support student well-being, learning effectiveness, and long-term professional adaptation. © 2025 by the authors.

Purpose – This study develops and validates a novel iterative competency development framework to address limitations in current education for sustainable development (ESD) models within professional learning contexts. It responds to the growing demand for sustainability competencies among mid-career professionals and the inadequacy of static, one-off ESD interventions. Design/methodology/approach – Anchored in Kolb’s experiential learning theory, this research adopts the structured–pragmatic–situational methodology to explore iterative learning processes in the post-baccalaureate program for carbon-zero sustainable development in Taiwan. Two rounds of focus group interviews (n = 14, n = 8) were conducted, followed by cross-case thematic synthesis. Findings – Findings demonstrate that sustainability competencies emerge through recursive cycles of experience, reflection, conceptual integration, and application. Key constructs – such as professional identity reconfiguration, sectoral reflexivity and the novel sequencing insight (the prioritization of theory before practice) – underscore the transformative potential of the iterative model. Participants developed strategic, systemic and anticipatory competencies through sustained engagement with real-world challenges. Originality/value – This study contributes a theoretically grounded and empirically tested framework for embedding sustainability competencies into professional education. The model bridges experiential learning with systems-based sustainability competencies and provides actionable guidance for higher education institutions aiming to deliver lifelong, adaptive, and transformative sustainability learning. © 2025 Emerald Publishing Limited

This study explores the individual experiences and perspectives of pre-service teachers regarding the use of e-portfolio blogs during their academic studies. Additionally, it examines the long-term effects of maintaining and promoting e-portfolios after graduation. The students engaged in reflective learning through e-portfolios, using Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle as a structured framework for their reflections. This study was conducted at a university in Malaysia and involved diploma-in-education students preparing to become teachers upon completing their program. Data collection occurred both during the study program and again one year after participants’ graduation. Through semi-structured interviews and an in-depth analysis of the e-portfolios of 15 participants, the study identified several key findings. Participants indicated that e-portfolio use extended beyond the classroom, supporting professional growth and strengthening their sense of professional identity. They emphasized that maintaining e-portfolios supported them in developing a clearer professional identity while simultaneously cultivating a credible online presence. Many also viewed their e-portfolio blogs as practical evidence to demonstrate competencies during career applications and interviews. This investigation highlights that e-portfolios offer a practical approach to support continuous and authentic assessment, thereby promoting lifelong learning and encouraging future career advancement. In contrast to traditional assessments, such as quizzes, written tests, or essays, typically administered at the end of a semester, e-portfolios support continual reflection, evaluation, and development. Despite completing formal study programs, e-portfolios remain an important tool. They help share knowledge and experiences through digital media among future teachers, supporting ongoing professional development. In this way, e-portfolio blogs enhance authentic assessment practices and offer practical responses to the challenges posed by AI-driven evaluation in higher education. © The Author(s) 2026.

This study explores the core competencies required for sales and marketing roles in the rapidly evolving NEV sector. Adopting an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design, it employs a big data-driven approach to construct a competency framework: web crawlers collected NEV-related recruitment data across over 20 major Chinese cities, the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model identified core competency items, and a multi-dimensional consensus scoring process via the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) refined the framework. The resulting validated model comprises nine thematic clusters, reflecting a shift from internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle sales’ traditional skill set. Beyond enriching conventional competencies (customer reception, sales service, CRM, sales support), it highlights emerging capabilities: live-streaming/short-video marketing, digital media operations, and ecosystem-oriented resource collaboration. Further, NGT-based multi-dimensional evaluations (frequency, importance, difficulty) generated a four-quadrant matrix, offering actionable guidance for vocational education and corporate training (VET) curriculum design. Theoretically, this study redefines digital-era automotive sales roles: not mere product sellers, but core actors in user experience co-creation and ecological value integration, which enriches discourse on sales role evolution. © 2025 by the authors.

Kazakhstan’s 2025 Water Code aims to institutionalize Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), but its success is threatened by a persistent “implementation gap” between policy requirements and the workforce’s practical competencies. This study provides empirical evidence of a persistent misalignment between water-related higher education and emerging governance demands in Kazakhstan by conceptualizing the implementation gap as a human-capital deficit. We conducted a repeated two-wave survey of students enrolled in “Water Resources” programs (n1 = 39, n2 = 82) to empirically diagnose this gap and examine changes in educational preferences over time. The findings reveal an overwhelming demand for dual education (97.6%), alongside a statistically significant shift (χ2(1) = 33.53, p < 0.001) from theory-oriented learning (56.4% to 4.9%) toward practice-oriented formats (30.8% to 62.2%). Key reported constraints include limited access to modern laboratories (47.6%) and insufficient real-world professional experience (28%). Taken together, these results indicate a structural misalignment between academic training and the competency requirements implied by ongoing water-sector reforms. The study concludes that dual education may function as an institutional mechanism for narrowing the policy-to-competence gap, supporting efforts to operationalize the 2025 Water Code and advance Sustainable Development Goals 4 and 6. © 2026 by the authors.

Quality Teaching is essential for preparing learners for the 21st century. This study proposes a conceptual framework for Quality Teaching embedded in three domains, identifying its focuses and characteristics. We address two questions: What are the focuses of the literature describing Quality Teaching? What are the main characteristics of Quality Teaching in the three domains? A systematic literature review involving 152 articles published between 2000 and 2025, based on the PRISMA guidelines, was conducted to identify key characteristics and theoretical constructs regarding three focuses: teachers, learners, and the education system. The thematic analysis yielded 740 themes related to Quality Teaching. Over half of the themes were related to pedagogy, approximately a quarter to technology, and less than a fifth to social–emotional learning/teaching (SEL/SET). The results suggest that Quality Teaching involves quality pedagogy and high-level socio-emotional proficiency. Professionalization in digital learning technologies also contributes positively to advancing Quality Teaching. Therefore, Quality Teaching requires ongoing training leading to high proficiency in skills, methods, and practices. This study outlines essential components for teacher education and professional development programs. Its novelty lies in systematically highlighting both the distinctive and integrative combined contributions of three professional domains—pedagogy, SEL/SET, and technology—to the enhancement of Quality Teaching in educational systems (focuses), narrowing the gap between theory and practice. © 2025 by the author.

This study aims to develop and test a conceptual model comprising six hypotheses focusing on the impact of Augmented Reality (AR) on students’ academic self-efficacy. The research addresses the need to explore how AR technology can improve students’ academic self-efficacy by examining the relationships between AR technology features, task value, usage intention, and personal cognitive approach. A total of 340 students participated in this research, completing online questionnaires as part of a controlled experiment. The Structural Equation Modeling-Partial Least Square was used to assess, test, and analyze the conceptual model. The results of this study indicate that the personal cognitive approach, tech features, and task value implemented by students all positively affect their academic self-efficacy in learning. The personal cognitive approach directly contributes to influencing task values and technological features. Task value and tech features contribute to improving usage intention in students while learning with AR. The personal cognitive approach and the usage intention of use contribute directly and significantly to enhancing students’ academic self-efficacy. Overall, implementing a personal cognitive approach, tech features, task value, and usage intention positively boosted students’ academic self-efficacy in learning with AR. © 2026, International Journal of Information and Education Technology. All rights reserved.

Set in the vocational education and training sector in England, this article draws attention to how top-down, centre–periphery approaches to curriculum design and development in vocational education fail for at least three reasons. First, they misconstrue the nature of knowledge. Second, they lead to perfunctory and fragmented approaches to curriculum design, coupled with mechanistic measures of quality and achievement, which often require little more than “one-off” and superficially assessed demonstrations of performance. Finally, they underplay the role and importance of the teacher as researcher and artist in putting the cultural resources of society to work in creative curriculum design and pedagogy. Teacher artistry is pivotal in animating and heightening the vitality of vocational curricula. It is through this artistry that teachers make theories, ideas and concepts in vocational subjects and disciplines accessible and meaningful to all learners in coherent ways in the contexts of their learning and their lives. The consequences of the epistemic faux pas underpinning centre-to-periphery models of curriculum design and development are highlighted in this article in vocational tutors’ accounts of experiences of problems and issues in curriculum design, development and assessment encountered in their practice. Participants in the research teach in a variety of vocational education settings, including Apprenticeships and Higher-Level Technical Education; English Language at General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) level; Health and Social Care; Information and Communications Technology; Construction (Plumbing); Digital Production, Design and Development and High-Tech Precision Engineering. Data are analysed and reported through systematic, thematic analysis This article draws upon qualitative data derived from a study funded by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) in England over a two-year period from 2021 to 2023. The research population consists of a group of eight practitioner–researchers working in three colleges of Further Education (FE) and one Industry Training Centre (ITC) in England. All of the teachers of vocational education reported here volunteered to participate in the study. Research methods include semi-structured interviews, analysis of critical incidents and case studies produced by practitioner–researchers from across the FE and Skills sector in England. © 2025 by the author.

Inclusive education aims to ensure equitable access to quality education for all students, including those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This research analyzes the attitudes and competences of non-university Spanish teachers regarding the inclusion of students with ASD, considering relevant variables in previous studies such as teacher training, prior experience, and educational context, among others. The study involved a sample of 2310 teachers in active service during the 2023–2024 school year. Data collection was conducted through two questionnaires: the INTEA-EDG questionnaire, designed to measure teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards the inclusion of students with ASD, and the CEFI-R questionnaire, which evaluates teachers’ competencies and skills for inclusive education. The results reflect a generally positive attitude towards the inclusion of students with ASD in mainstream schools, although significant variations were found depending on variables such as previous experience, teaching specialization, and specific training received. Based on these and other findings, the study highlights the need to strengthen initial and continuous training in inclusive education and attention to diversity of students with ASD, promote early positive contact with students with ASD, and foster collaborative work and the design of inclusive learning environments. © 2026 by the authors.

Purpose – To explore and synthesise evidence for a better understanding of the use of Community of Practice (CoP) in the workplace learning of student nurses. Design/methodology/approach – This systematic review examined peer-reviewed literature on the impact of CoP membership for student nurses during their placements in various settings. A content analysis was conducted using tabular, descriptive and narrative methods to identify and report key themes. Findings – From 58, 670 resultant articles, only 14 were included for data charting and content analysis. Most of the literature is based on research looking at placement experience of undergraduate student nurses. All articles are qualitative in nature involving CoP in clinical settings in different countries. Content analysis has highlighted several contributions of CoP membership for workplace learning among student nurses: (1) active engagement in workplace discourses, (2) building a stronger sense of professional identity among student nurses and (3) gaining a collective voice in engaging organisational stakeholders around relevant issues. Originality/value – This synthesis findings should guide nursing education stakeholders in creating better placement approaches and interventions that can strengthen placement outcomes. On the other hand, findings also suggest a conflict: a structural paradox associated with short-term membership in long-term CoPs. To address this, the model “Transient CoP” is proposed; however, its theoretical standing remains preliminary and requires extensive validation through further research. © 2026 Emerald Publishing Limited