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This article proposes a framework for capability development of adult educators (AEs) in Singapore. Globalisation, demographic changes and digital innovation, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, have accentuated the importance of adult education and changing role of AEs. The immediate implications of these effects on the professionalism of AEs and the significance of their development trajectories are acute. With an increased focus on the need to ensure AEs are current in both their pedagogic and domain competences, we introduce discussions on the need to develop a conceptual framework to generate a deeper understanding of their knowledge, skills, attitudes, beliefs and practices of AEs. This framework can be used by practitioners as a tool to facilitate professional reflection and development, and by policy makers to support continued improvements to the quality of adult education. Our overall aim is to promote the importance of varied and continued opportunities for the professional development of AEs at policy, organisational and individual levels. © The Author(s) 2022.

Smartphones and computer-based technology have revolutionized different development sectors including education. The current review describes the existing literature on Web-Based Learning (WBL) as a novel methodology applied in teaching and learning, and its potential effectiveness in teaching and learning chemistry. Further, the study intends to reflect on how the WBL could be applied in the Rwandan context of teaching and learning chemistry as the country adopted the competency-based curriculum (CBC) in 2015. This review is a narrative overview in which much of the existing literature such as books, articles, and other online literatures related to the study were reviewed. The literature was obtained from different electronic databases including Scopus, ERIC, ISI web of knowledge, academia, web of science, digital library, and google scholar. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Motivation: Skills formation and training have been singled out as key policies to adapt to contemporary labour-market challenges such as automation and skill-biased technological change particularly in middle-income countries such as those in Latin America. However, limited knowledge about the effects of training policies in Latin America hinders adaptation to these transformations. Purpose: This article contributes to the limited knowledge to date about the impact of skills formation in Latin America, with reference to Chile, a country usually considered a successful case of educational achievement and employment but sharing many of the development problems of its Latin American peers. By doing this, it provides empirical evidence to substantiate existing theories explaining these problems. Methods and approach: Using available longitudinal data from Chile (Encuesta de Protección Social, EPS), we analyse the causal effects of training on the transitions from unemployment to employment through a difference-in-difference (DiD) strategy. Findings: Results suggest that there is a small but significantly positive effect of training in reducing post-training unemployment, as yearly unemployment among individuals attending training while unemployed is reduced, on average, by two weeks. Policy implications: Results confirm the low and highly segmented incidence of training in the region, highlighting the need to discuss the design of training programmes to improve their effects, including the creation of differentiated programmes for unemployed and employed workers. For the former, it is important to strengthen labour intermediation to overcome problems of social capital; for the latter, it is key to achieve the stronger incorporation of employers in the discussion on training and industry standards. In both cases, it is crucial to create institutions promoting stronger co-ordination between the interested actors. © 2023 ODI.

In this article, the authors examine the role of labor immigration as a source of institutional change. They use a “most different systems” comparative case study analysis of the Danish and Australian construction sectors to examine the impact of increased labor migration on skill-sourcing practices in countries with distinct national skill formation and industrial relations institutions. Drawing on 73 interviews with industry stakeholders, the authors find that labor migration has produced liberalizing pressures in both Denmark and Australia, albeit in ways that differ from each other. The article contributes to comparative institutional scholarship by illustrating how labor migration can promote or support institutional change in a liberalizing direction by disincentivizing coordinated skill formation. Findings suggest that while national institutions mediate external pressures, such as labor migration, such pressures may affect the incentive structures that can either maintain or erode national institutions. © The Author(s) 2023.

Background: Teaching 21st-century skills is widely recognized as an important task of higher education. However, an overview of which skills students need to obtain a sustainable career is missing. Using the Framework for 21st Century Learning (P21, 2019a) and the model of sustainable careers (de Vos et al., 2020), we aimed to take stock of current knowledge on which 21st-century skills are considered important for social sciences students’ sustainable career development and how these skills contribute to their career sustainability. Methods: For this systematic review, we searched EconLit, ERIC, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), PsycINFO, Scopus, Sociological Abstracts, and Web of Science on May 28, 2021. We selected peer-reviewed empirical articles that were published between 2003 and 2019 and addressed graduates' and employers' perspectives on the skills needed for social sciences graduates’ career sustainability. Twelve articles met all our selection criteria and were included for a thematic analysis after quality appraisal. Results: The included articles operationalized the career sustainability of social sciences graduates mostly in terms of finding a job and maintaining employment, to a lesser extent as high job performance, job satisfaction, and work engagement. Communication and problem solving skills were most frequently reported by both social sciences graduates and employers as crucial for a sustainable career. In addition, critical thinking, initiative and self-direction, and social and cross-cultural skills were also reported as important skills. None of the studies investigated mechanisms that would explain how these skills would exactly contribute to social science graduates’ career sustainability. Discussion: The results of this review showed that studies to date have addressed only a limited number of career sustainability indicators. Moreover, explanatory mechanisms have largely been ignored. This is an important gap in the literature that future studies would need to address by building on the existing sustainable career development models. © 2023 The Authors

Although it is widely acknowledged that non-engaged youth (NEY) face different disadvantages in their school-to-work transitions, less attention has been paid to examining the impact of career interventions on NEY's career competency and social well-being. In our study, using data collected in the CLAP@JC community intervention project, we systematically investigated the effects of six career interventions—developing interest, awareness, and motivation (DIAM); semi-structured learning (SL); career counseling (CC); learning through service, volunteering, and caring (LSVC); workplace learning (WL); and facilitating pathway choice and implementation (FPCI)—on NEY's social well-being directly or indirectly through career competency. Two types of data were collected: data about career competency and social well-being, namely from 665 NEY aged 13–29 who participated in both the baseline and four-month follow-up surveys, and aggregated data about career interventions from baseline to follow-up along with NEY's demographic information provided by social workers responsible for supporting the participating NEY. Among our results, the effects of SL and WL on social well-being were significantly mediated by career competency, whereas the effect of LSVC directly contributed to social well-being instead of indirectly through career competency. Moreover, the effects of DIAM, CC, and FPCI were not significant in promoting NEY's career competency and social well-being. Overall, our findings suggest that career interventions involving learning through experience and deep interactions with relevant stakeholders in the workplace have more significant effects for improving NEY's social well-being through career competency. The empirical findings of our study yield practical implications for future career interventions with NEY. © 2023 The Author(s)

Introduction: This work presents a prospective analysis of the key aspects involved in the Spanish radiographer's perception of the weaknesses of the current educational curriculum in terms of teaching staff's qualifications and composition in the clinical training and core subjects. The goal is to show clinical training and professional's perception of the teaching quality and to characterise the weakness detected within the context of the European radiographer's academic system. Methods: The perception of the quality of the training received by the professionals was collected through an anonymous survey. A total of 758 valid responses were received, and were analysed to three hypotheses: the variability of the teachers’ qualifications in the core subjects, the variability in terms of internships time carried out by the students, and assessment about teaching quality of the teachers. Results: The results prove there is a huge variability and little academic affinity of the teachers' degrees with the core subjects. On the other hand, the results shows there is a scarcity of clinical training hours in Spain, especially compared to European standards. It was demonstrated that teachers with a specific radiographer degree obtained the best scores. Conclusion: It is mandatory to adjust the criteria for selecting clinical imaging teachers to improve the teaching quality in Spain and increase the clinical training period of the Spanish radiographers to match their European counterparts. Implication for practice: Improving the training of Spanish radiographers will contribute to standardising the training quality of the whole European profession. © 2023 The College of Radiographers

For internationally producing companies, training and recruiting skilled workers is particularly challenging. At various international locations, companies often encounter a “skills ecosystem” that differs to a greater or lesser extent from that of the home country. This article considers this problem and examines German companies in Germany and China and, conversely, Chinese companies in China and Germany. Specifically, it examines (1) how the training cultures of companies differ between the home country and abroad, (2) which influencing factors determine the training cultures realized in each case, and (3) what influence the respective nationally prevailing skills ecosystems specifically exert. The findings from these four perspectives document that German companies in Germany use the formal vocational training system of dual training, whereas German companies in China are strongly influenced by the local training culture of in-company learning. Moreover, Chinese companies in China also use this training, and only cooperate to a limited extent with the formal school-based vocational education and training system. These findings show that Chinese companies in Germany do not adopt the dual training system used in Germany. This article analyses these results and discusses the reasons behind them, drawing of a distinction between institutional logic and internal logic. © 2023 by the authors.

Ethiopia and China share a common educational agenda in cultivating and obtaining competent vocational graduates who fulfill the need of the modern, technologically advanced industrial workplace. Unlike most evidence, the present study adopted Self-determination Theory to understand Ethiopian and Chinese higher Vocational education and Training (VET) college students’ learning motivation. Hence, this study recruited and interviewed 10 volunteers senior higher VET students from each setting to unfold their satisfaction with psychological needs. The study’s main finding affirms that although both groups felt the autonomy of choosing the vocational field they sought to master, their learning process was submissive to their henpecked teaching method, which ultimately restrained the participants’ feeling of competence for being enclosed in less practical training space. As per the study findings, we forward feasible policy and practical implications suggested for meeting the motivational needs of VET students and promoting learning stability. ©: © 2023 Khalid et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The Billion Oyster Project and Curriculum and Community Enterprise for the Restoration of New York Harbor with New York City Public Schools (BOP-CCERS) program is a National Science Foundation (NSF) supported initiative and collaboration led by Pace University. One of Pace University's NSF projects is STEM+C (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics plus Computing) designed to work with teachers and students in New York City public schools. This article presents results of a study conducted on the STEM Summer Institute at Pace University in Summer 2022. The purpose was to engage both teachers and students in harbor restoration and experiential learning in New York City including learning about vital ecology projects related to New York's harbor such as oyster restoration, which is critical to cleaning pollutants in the New York Harbor. Findings revealed that students indicated improved oyster knowledge and restoration skills, scientific skills, collecting and analyzing data, and knowledge about STEM careers. Participating teachers indicated a positive impact on their knowledge of content and harbor restoration, pedagogical knowledge used to engage students in hands-on scientific learning, and methods of engaging and motivating their own students. Moreover, teachers indicated a positive outcome for exposing their students to STEM career options. © 2023 The authors.