Search Results for
"Vocational education"

Entrepreneurship education significantly impacts students’ entrepreneurial competencies, intentions and behavior. Higher vocational education Institutions (HVEIs) play a vital role in China, and they have recorded milestone achievements that foster economic growth and stimulate students’ entrepreneurial mindsets. Applying underpinning theory, this study aims to examine the effect of entrepreneurial education (EE), knowledge (EK) and self-efficacy (ESE) on intention (EI) through the mediating role of entrepreneurial attitude (EA). Using a self-administered survey, cross-sectional design and stratified random sampling technique, this study targeted students enrolled in five HVE institutions in Guizhou, China and collected 416 completed questionnaires. The sorted results revealed that EE positively impacts EI and EA. In contrast, EK and ESE positively impact EI and EA. While this last (EA) positively impacts EI, it also mediates the relationship between EE, EK and ESE on EI. The originality of this study linked the underpinning of entrepreneurship theory with the five supporting theories to explain the relationships among constructs and cover the holistic picture of EE-EI from personnel, environmental and cognitive perspectives. The study recommended that educational managers prioritize developing entrepreneurship curricula and more practices to foster students’ entrepreneurial knowledge and skills for better future entrepreneurial careers. EE is a necessary program, and HVEIs potentially impact the industry and the future of the Chinese economic agenda. This study has several socioeconomic implications and contributes to the Chinese sustainable development agenda. © The Author(s) 2025.

With the sustainable development of the global construction industry and the rapid development of the intelligent building industry, colleges and universities worldwide are stepping up the training of comprehensive talents in intelligent application in the construction profession. Therefore, establishing a cross-regional and perfect construction talent training system has become a critical research and practice topic for university researchers. This study uses computational procedures to fit mathematical theories, coupled model analysis, and other innovative training framework systems. It also analyzes the problems and shortcomings in talent training from three aspects: the current status of industrialization of higher education construction at home and abroad. Combined with the current status of talent training in higher education and the different needs of various countries for architectural talents, a Chinese-style "six-stage multi-module innovation optimization" training framework and a "construction talent training model" are proposed to improve the innovation system. Through in-depth research, a talent training goal system and improvement strategy adapted to the development of China's construction industrialization have been established. The research results effectively compensate for the shortcomings of higher vocational education in this field. The framework of this study can serve as a beacon for deepening education in the construction profession in various countries around the world, guiding higher vocational education to move towards the training of high-tech and high-skilled talents. © 2025 The Author(s)

This study investigates sustainability challenges in agricultural machinery education through a 2021–2023 survey of 238 students from Chinese agricultural universities. Quantitative analysis identifies three critical issues: inadequate cultivation of craftsmanship spirit (mean=2.46), shallow university-industry collaboration (mean=2.39), and misalignment between training programs and societal needs (mean=2.54). To address these challenges, we propose an innovative industry-education integration model characterized by tripartite (government-university-enterprise) cooperation. This model establishes a "triple-chain" linkage mechanism (innovation-talent-industry chains), which includes: (1) joint laboratories (87% participation rate in experimental group), and (2) digital twin platforms for agricultural machinery training. Empirical results indicate substantial significant improvements in vocational certification pass rates (73% in the experimental group vs 35% in control group) and patent conversion rates (37%). A controlled longitudinal experiment across three regions further underscores the model's effectiveness in enhancing craftsmanship spirit (Cohen's d = 1.82) and aligning curricula with industry demands. The research contributes novel insights by integrating regional agricultural characteristics into education policy design, offering a replicable framework for sustainable talent cultivation in agricultural engineering. © 2025

vocational education and training (VET) suffers from declining interest and is often perceived as non-attractive. This view may deprive young people of a potentially rewarding and satisfying career. There are also a variety of challenges in vocational didactics and in the cooperation between education systems and trades. In this article, it is argued that one reason for this is epistemological and that there is a lack of a proper recognition of vocational expertise. Thus, the aim is to contribute to an exploration of vocational expertise and its connection to knowledge, a vocation, agency and discuss how this becomes relevant for VET. The empirical material consists of earlier video-recorded workplace studies which are revisited and reanalysed. Here importance is given to tacit knowledge and practical wisdom. The analysis is underpinned by knowledge and practice theories, and it is concluded that vocational expertise could be defined as a specific kind of knowing that is cultivated through the acquaintance with a vocational practice in which the expert has the agency. This conclusion is supported by a conceptualisation of a vocation as a practice of social, cultural, and historical value for its practitioners as well as for the society. In other words, agency is a given and needs to be embedded and recognised in expertise. Finally, there is a discussion of possible implications for VET. © The Author(s) 2025.

The CDIO approach had been implemented in the CNC lathe retrofit manufacturing process to support learning in vocational schools, such as SMK and polytechnics. This research aims to evaluate the improvement of technology-based student competencies that are relevant to the needs of industry 4.0. The stages in this method are divided into three, namely the initial identification of the problem or project, designing the model and electrical sub-components and analyzing the improvement of process evaluation results. The implementation actively involves the collaboration of 4–6 students from various cross majors by appointing one student as a leader who is supervised by a lecturer as a project manager and an instructor as a project facilitator. Validation of the project takes place upon completion of the project activities, with student groups submitting a report detailing the project implementation design, logbook, and final deliverables. This documentation is comprehensively reviewed by the project manager, faculty team, and an interdisciplinary expert committee to assess the validation results of the activity, which will be integrated into the relevant course assessment. This evaluation and validation review relates to a 13-point institutionally developed instrument that is linear to the discipline-specific graduate outcomes. The results of the analysis show that the majority of respondents from students and lecturers agree that the CDIO approach strengthens the understanding of technical concepts and practical skills through structured learning stages, from designing to operating prototype products. In addition, it can also integrate through aspects of collaboration, problem solving, and innovation that support the needs of modern industry. • The implementation of CDIO (Conceive, Design, Implement, Operate) is essential in vocational faculty, vocational high schools (SMK), and polytechnics, particularly for CNC-based universal turn drill retrofit manufacturing projects, as this methodology promotes practice-oriented learning, industry relevance, and aligns with a 12-standard framework • Through a Likert scale-based data collection method, this study measured the level of understanding, technical skills, and user satisfaction with the concept of CNC retrofitting. • The success of this method is measured through several parameters, including increased student competence, active involvement in the project, and the final product produced with an average approval percentage score above 70 %. © 2025 The Author(s)

Introduction: While it is well-established that structural obstacles such as low local employment opportunities negatively affect adolescents’ school-to-work transitions, the impact of individual agency in relation to these obstacles is understudied. Hence, we focus on the key research question of how adolescents’ goal-striving resources—tenacious goal pursuit (TGP) and flexible goal adjustment (FGA)—affect successful transitions from secondary school to vocational education and training (VET) against the backdrop of structural obstacles in the local context. Methods: We measured transition success in terms of a) the start of a VET position, b) concordance between attained and aspired VET position, c) deviance from the aspired position and d) satisfaction with the attained VET position. We examined our research questions in a longitudinal design, using data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). Our sample consisted of adolescents who graduated in 2012/2016 with the aspiration to start VET (N = 3382; MAge = 16.77; nFemales = 1524). We conducted multiple regression analyses to answer our research questions. Results: We found interaction effects of TGP × FGA on three out of four indicators of transition success. Their direction did not only depend on the outcome variable under examination but also on the structure of the local context: High levels of both TGP and FGA are helpful in favorable contexts—that means when local unemployment is low—but maladaptive when structural obstacles are high. Conclusion: We recommend that support programs for adolescents that aim to enhance goal-striving resources should consider these complex interrelations. © 2025 The Author(s). Journal of Adolescence published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for Professionals in Services to Adolescents.

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence across industries necessitates systematic AI literacy development in higher vocational education to prepare students for AI-driven professional environments. This study develops and validates a comprehensive competency-based ladder development pathway specifically designed to enhance AI literacy among vocational students. The research employs a mixed-methods approach combining theoretical framework construction, empirical investigation, and practical implementation validation. The three-tier pathway model integrates foundational cognitive, skills application, and comprehensive innovation layers to address diverse learning needs while maintaining progression standards. Through empirical investigation involving 2850 students across 15 institutions, the study identifies distinct learner profiles and competency deficits, informing personalized development strategies. The validation experiment with 420 participants demonstrates significant improvements across all competency dimensions, with overall AI literacy gains of 56.0% and sustained retention rates exceeding 85% at six-month follow-up. The innovative pedagogical approaches incorporate project-driven learning, experiential methodologies, and hybrid delivery models to optimize competency development. The comprehensive evaluation framework provides robust assessment tools that balance formative and summative approaches while maintaining alignment with industry standards. Results indicate that students in the ladder pathway intervention achieved 34.7% higher cognitive assessment scores, 42.3% superior performance on skills application tasks, and 28.9% better innovation competency outcomes compared to traditional instruction. This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of competency-based AI education while providing practical implementation guidance for enhancing workforce readiness in the artificial intelligence era. © The Author(s) 2025.

The promise of knowledge society is clean, creative, and expressive work. Technological advancements would relieve humans from the tedium and hardship of labor, and access to knowledge and expansion of higher education would diminish the existing social inequalities of industrial society. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Switzerland's mechanical and electrical engineering industry, this article illustrates how the work experiences of apprentices challenge the image of labor in a knowledge society ostensibly freed from all forms of material, technological, and social constraint. I demonstrate that the persistence of the tedium and potential danger of industrial work, of organizational hierarchies, the decreasing social validation of mechanical and manual labor, and expectations and aspirations to singularity make youth increasingly interested in other kinds of employment and training. The article takes the work and learning relations in the Swiss mechanical and electrical engineering sector as a symptom of emerging tensions around the division of labor and valorization of different forms of skills, and the meaning and motivations of work in late capitalism. I argue that future anthropological studies of work and education in de-industrialized settings might do well to examine the social critique of industrial work in concert with its aesthetic critique. © 2025 American Anthropological Association.

Ecological sustainable development model is a green ecological model and a prerequisite for economic sustainable development. Higher education is vocational education and vocational training for relevant personnel, aiming to cultivate more professional talents and skilled workers for the country and society, so as to achieve the goal of social development. This paper aims to use advanced technical means to construct an ecological sustainable development model for higher education. Based on relevant computer technology, this paper proposes a support vector machine (SVM) model and a BP (back propagation) artificial neural network algorithm to analyze and study the ecological sustainable development model. Through experimental analysis, it is known that in the survey of teachers, 199 teachers believe that resources should be effectively utilized in the network environment. This part of teachers accounts for the largest proportion, which is 25.51%, while the proportion of teachers with academic theoretical knowledge is the smallest, which is 7.06%. This shows that teachers should strengthen technical learning. In the process of distance education, practical operation is far more important than theoretical knowledge, and teachers’ skill training also affects the sustainable development of education. Finally, the calculation results show that the experimental method has certain significance for the analysis of ecological sustainable development of higher education. © The Author(s) 2025.