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Higher engineering institutions strive towards educating globally competent students, and this article examines curricular approaches to global competence education. Based on qualitative interviews, it explores engineering educators' perspectives on student preparedness, their experiences with global competence integration, and their attributions of responsibility for such learning. In its findings, the article highlights educators' doubts about engineering graduates' preparedness for global workplaces. Moreover, it retraces a variety of educators' approaches to integrating global competence learning and highlights the challenges they face in this endeavour. The article further shows how engineering educators perceived global competence education as important and acknowledged their own role in supporting it, but attributed the main responsibility for ensuring students' competence development to institutional management. The article concludes with a discussion on the potential consequences of the educators' perceptions and examines possibilities for a strategic institutional approach to global competence education. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

IMPACT: Skills development for economic growth is an international priority. Vocational education and training (VET) is globally an instrument to deliver skills training to the public. Internationally, public servants working in VET, and specifically in the UK, are not immune to mental health challenges and poor well-being, at significant cost to the public purse. This article argues that VET staff’s well-being should be prioritized and sustained by proactively managing work stress and work–life balance. The authors propose a more strategic, future-orientated and preventative approach. Policy-makers, line managers and human resource professionals would do well by investing in VET teachers’ and administrators’ psycho-social well-being and therefore limit the consequent costs associated with mental health related productivity issues, absenteeism and turnover. A sustainable people management approach, investing in a healthy work-context, will outweigh the costs and harmful effects of performance problems, absences and turnover in the public service. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The active participation of community college lecturers in architecture-related Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programs is essential to maintaining educational quality and aligning pedagogy with industry advancements. Despite this importance, many lecturers face significant challenges that limit their involvement. This study adopts a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach to examine existing research published between 2020 and 2024, sourced from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. A total of fifteen relevant articles were selected through a rigorous process involving identification, screening, eligibility assessment, and inclusion. Thematic analysis was conducted to uncover key issues affecting CPD engagement. The findings reveal persistent barriers, including limited resource access, time constraints, lack of institutional support, technological resistance, and inadequate digital skills. To overcome these challenges, the study offers several strategic recommendations: the development of CPD programs tailored to the unique needs of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) lecturers, enhanced collaboration between academia and industry, increased access to digital tools, and the establishment of institutional structures that promote innovation and lifelong learning. This review not only deepens the understanding of obstacles to CPD participation but also presents actionable, evidence-based strategies to support the professional development and instructional effectiveness of architecture lecturers in community colleges. The study concludes by advocating for future research to explore the impact of CPD engagement on lecturers’ competencies and student performance across diverse program models. © 2026, Malque Publishing. All rights reserved.

Ordinarily, African countries suffer severe resource constraints. Resource constraints refer to insufficient means to meet sustainable economic growth demands. Regarding entrepreneurial activities, a supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem is needed for the large uptake of and sustained interest in entrepreneurship. It is on record that African countries’ dilapidated infrastructure and maladministration, including weak institutions, are reasons sustainable entrepreneurial activities have been less than optimal. The recent COVID-19 pandemic no doubt extended the challenge of entrepreneurship on the continent. Using Pickering and Byrne’s (2014) systematic quantitative assessment technique, we identified, assessed and interpreted available research evidence that assisted us in exploring the impact of resource constraints on African entrepreneurial ecosystem formation, development and growth. We noted that COVID-19 added complexities to perennial questions about making African entrepreneurship ecosystems fit for supporting entrepreneurship development. Although African economies were already constrained in many ways, including their business environment, we conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic brought challenges and opportunities for business management and entrepreneurship. While businesses could adapt in many cases, several aspects—such as government regulations, consumer behaviour shifts and global supply chain disruptions—were beyond their control. Navigating these uncertainties required agility, resilience and an ability to innovate, but it also highlighted the vulnerabilities and risks inherent in the modern globalised economy. This study synthesised the evidence on how COVID-19 intensified longstanding resource constraints within African entrepreneurial ecosystems, revealing that the compounded effects on business education, infrastructure and regulatory processes not only deepened small and medium enterprise (SME) vulnerabilities but also uncovered context-specific opportunities for resilience and innovation that have not been previously documented. Some implications and recommendations for future research are flagged. However, more importantly, we are convinced that African entrepreneurship has long suffered several political, economic, social and technological challenges that compromised its capacity to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we conclude that a supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem is crucial to SME development. As such, this study reinforces the need for the government to reconsider its approach to supporting SMEs. © 2025 SAGE Publications. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

South African correctional centres reflect the nation's broader societal complexities, influenced by its diverse population and historical context. As the country navigates issues of crime, rehabilitation, and reintegration, the increasing presence of foreign national offenders adds further layers of complexity. While global research has explored themes of guilt and innocence, it often lacks relevance to the experiences of offenders, especially in developing countries like South Africa. This paper examines the guilt–innocence paradox as perceived by incarcerated offenders in South African correctional centres, where anti-social attitudes, diverse cultures and traditions, and historical and economic factors converge. Furthermore, the paper draws on cognitive dissonance, narrative identity, and neutralisation theory to explore how convicted foreign national offenders manage their moral identity. In-depth, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 40 offenders incarcerated at Baviaanspoort, Kgoši Mampuru, Krugersdorp, and Zonderwater correctional centres using a qualitative approach. The findings indicate that the participants’ guilt–innocence paradox is shaped by factors such as denial of involvement in crime, self-perception, attribution of blame to various sources, including victims, family background, social and environmental impact, and discrimination within the criminal justice system. This study contributes by amplifying the voices of incarcerated offenders and advocating for rehabilitative strategies and sustainable reintegration practices. © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Introduction: The school-to-work transition (SWT) is complex for young people. The postpandemic era, characterized by rapidly evolving economies and technologies, has augmented the complexity of negotiating such pathways. Despite this, young people—understood here through the lens of emergent adulthood—are often positioned as wholly responsible for navigating their own pathways beyond school. Methods: A pragmatic case study approach was used to analyze qualitative data collected from three SWT partnership programs (UniHub, Australian School-based Apprenticeships [ASbAs], and Regional Learning Pathways [RLPs]) aimed at young people (2018–2023) in regional areas of Tasmania, Australia. For each program, participants were interviewed (N = 6 [UniHub]; N = 23 [ASbAs]; N = 44 [RLPs]) and surveyed (N = 350 [UniHub]; N = 21 [ASbAs]), and data were thematically analyzed to identify the role of boundary-crossers in SWT partnerships. Results: Boundary-crosser work emerged as a key component of the sampled SWT partnerships. Enabling features of boundary-crossing work in partnerships include accessibility, support contextualized to the region and individual—like reducing barriers to equity—and using clear communication approaches. This role redistributed responsibility in the SWT to a partnership between schools, pathways, and young people. Conclusions: Whereas literature and policy underscore the economic and developmental importance of SWT, the contribution of this article is research and data that nuance understanding of how SWT partnerships can share the responsibility of the SWT by designing in the program a boundary-crosser role. The concept of boundary-crosser work in SWT partnerships offers a novel approach for policymakers in policy and practice to rethink how the SWT is supported. © 2025 The Author(s). Journal of Adolescence published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for Professionals in Services to Adolescents.

This article aims to present the results of an analysis of the level of perceived achievement of the complex thinking competency in a population of engineering students at a technological university in western Mexico. The intention was to contrast the levels of achievement perception of this competency and its sub-competencies in two sample groups, one with first-semester students and the other with students in their last semester, to identify if there was an equitable development between men and women. Methodologically, we employed multivariate descriptive statistical analyses, confirming the development gap between genders. Although both men and women perceived developing the competency and its sub-competencies, women had more limited results, which, at the end of their university career, led them to be surpassed by their male peers. © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Preparing students with disabilities for employment after high school is a foundational pillar of transition planning and college and career readiness. However, there is limited guidance on how best to prepare students for their employment goals. A multi-method scoping-literature review was conducted to gain an understanding of the programmatic supports and elements of employment preparation programs for students with disabilities within peer-reviewed literature, as well as other considerations for implementation. We extracted data from conceptual and quantitative articles on job preparation programs. In total, 20 peer-reviewed articles met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Findings indicate inconsistent application of instructional and implementation supports, intervention content, and resources needed to administer employment preparation programming. Implications for research and practice are discussed to support future implementation of employment preparation programs. © 2025 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This article investigates the intersection between Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and the field of audiovisual and media production. The study is grounded in a systematic literature review, through which a curated selection of publications was analysed to extract data relevant to the application of PBL within this domain. The analysis led to the identification of key insights and the formulation of practical recommendations, particularly regarding the often-overlooked need for institutional and pedagogical support for educators implementing PBL. By addressing both theoretical and practical dimensions, this research contributes to the ongoing discourse on active learning methodologies in creative and practice-based educational contexts. Ultimately, this study seeks to serve as a valuable resource to support the effective implementation of PBL in the audiovisual and media production fields. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.

Background: Research has identified employment as a social inclusion priority for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and has emphasized person-centered vocational training as a predictor of future employment. The Impact Project is a summer program offered by project partners in British Columbia, Canada, that provides youth with IDD vocational training to improve their employment experiences in preparation for future employment. Objective: This study explicates the importance of soft skills in vocational training identified by youth and their parents/carers regarding attained employment experiences during the Impact Project (2020–2022). Methods: This study evaluates qualitative data from youth and their parents/carers who reflected on their vocational training and attained employment experiences. Results: Qualitative findings highlight the significance of soft skills, namely confidence, social capital, and job readiness in the youth's employment experiences and outcomes. Youth and parent/carer observations about these soft skills add insight to understanding positive employment outcomes from the Impact Project. Conclusion: Qualitative data from the Impact Project (2020–2022) illuminate how soft skills contributed to the youth's employment experiences. These findings contextualize quantitative employment outcomes and can guide vocational training programs for youth with IDD in preparation for future employment. © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).