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Identifying the constraints hindering industry-education integration (IEI) in vocational education is a critical prerequisite for promoting its high-quality development. However, existing research has yet to establish a systematic solution to this core issue. Therefore, this study takes Shenzhen, China, as a case study and adopts an empirical research approach to construct an analytical framework of “factor identification-mechanism analysis-strategy formulation,” aiming to thoroughly investigate the key constraints on IEI development in vocational education. First, based on a literature review and questionnaire survey, the study identifies 12 critical constraining factors of IEI. Subsequently, through expert interviews and Interpretative Structural Modelling (ISM), it reveals the underlying mechanisms of these constraints, classifying the 12 factors into five hierarchical levels. These factors form 16 constraint pathways, with inadequate policies, weak foundations for school-enterprise collaboration, insufficient institutional commitment, and ineffective communication mechanisms identified as critical bottom-level factors. These indirectly influence intermediate factors such as hardware/software conditions, alignment of talent cultivation philosophies, education-market demand matching, collaboration channel efficiency, and stakeholder interest fulfillment. Consequently, they diminish corporate engagement enthusiasm, blur responsibility-rights boundaries between stakeholders, and dampen faculty participation motivation, ultimately impeding IEI progress. Finally, the study proposes targeted countermeasures, emphasizing tripartite collaboration among the government, vocational institutions, and enterprises. Key strategies include strengthening legal safeguards, consolidating industry-education collaboration foundations, and proactively fulfilling educational responsibilities. The findings resolve the dilemmas constraining IEI development, providing policymakers with evidence-based references and offering practical guidance for deeper collaboration between vocational institutions and enterprises. This study holds significant theoretical and practical value for advancing high-quality vocational education. © 2025 Yu 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.

Introduction: Teacher engagement (TE) is crucial since it substantially impacts students' academic achievement, personal growth, and general well-being. While extensive research has explored TE in various university settings, there is a noticeable gap in studies focusing on the context of health professions education (HPE). In HPE, TE is key in fostering/developing clinical competencies, critical thinking, communication, and teamwork skills essential for effective healthcare delivery. However, the literature on TE in HPE is fragmented and controversial, with conflicting findings regarding its relationship to student outcomes and professional satisfaction. Our scoping review aims to explore and address these gaps. Methods: This study followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) methodology. Seven online databases were used to identify relevant literature. Out of 249 articles, 18 were selected for analysis. Results: Studies on TE used varied dimensions and measurement tools, making it challenging to understand the concept consistently. Also, five studies employed the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9), two used the Engaged Teacher Scale (ETS), another two used a Chinese adaptation of the work engagement scale, and one used both the UWES-17 and a faculty engagement questionnaire. Qualitative studies highlighted key factors such as job satisfaction, feedback, autonomy, and professional development opportunities. The outcomes were categorized into personal satisfaction, teaching practices, student engagement, self-efficacy, job satisfaction, retention, and teaching performance. Conclusion: The analysis demonstrates a growing interest in TE within HPE, though there is a notable lack of consistency in how it is defined and measured. Further research is essential to deepen this understanding and to develop targeted strategies that cultivate a mutually beneficial and sustainable teaching and learning environment. © The Author(s) 2025.

Background/Objectives: School violence represents a significant concern for educational communities worldwide, affecting student well-being and academic development. While prior research has documented prevalence rates and risk factors, limited studies have examined social–cognitive factors associated with antisocial behavior specifically within vocational education contexts using integrated analytical approaches. This exploratory cross-sectional study examined social–cognitive factors—specifically self-reported attitudes about aggression norms, prosocial attitudes, and school climate perceptions—associated with violence-supportive attitudes among Greek vocational students. Methods: A cross-sectional design employed validated self-report instruments and traditional statistical methods. The sample comprised 76 vocational high school students (38.2% male; ages 14–18; response rate 75.2%) from one school in Patras, Greece. Validated instruments assessed attitudes toward interpersonal peer violence (α = 0.87), peer aggression norms across four subscales (α = 0.83–0.90), and school climate dimensions (α = 0.70–0.75). Analyses included descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations with bootstrapped confidence intervals, MANOVA for multivariate group comparisons, independent samples t-tests, propensity score matching for urban–rural comparisons, polynomial regression for developmental patterns, and path analysis for theoretical model testing. Results: Strong associations emerged between perceived school-level and individual-level aggression norms (r = 0.80, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.71, 0.87]), representing one of the strongest relationships documented in school violence research. Violence-supportive attitudes demonstrated inverse associations with prosocial alternative norms (r = −0.37, p < 0.001, 95% CI [−0.55, −0.16]). Significant gender differences emerged for teacher–student relationships (d = −0.78, p = 0.002), with females reporting substantially more positive perceptions. Propensity-matched urban students demonstrated higher aggression norm endorsement compared to rural students across multiple indicators (d = 0.61–0.78, all p < 0.020). Polynomial regression revealed curvilinear developmental patterns with optimal teacher relationship quality during mid-adolescence (ages 15–16). Path analysis supported a sequential association model wherein school-level norms related to individual attitudes through prosocial alternative beliefs (indirect effect β = −0.22, p = 0.002, 95% CI [−0.34, −0.11]). Conclusions: This preliminary investigation identified social–cognitive factors—particularly normative beliefs about aggression at both individual and environmental levels—as strongly associated with violence-supportive attitudes in Greek vocational education. The exceptionally strong alignment between school-level and individual-level aggression norms (r = 0.80) suggests that environmental normative contexts may play a more substantial role in attitude formation than previously recognized in this educational setting. Gender and urban–rural differences indicate meaningful heterogeneity requiring differentiated approaches. Future research should employ longitudinal designs with multi-informant assessment and larger multi-site samples to establish temporal precedence, reduce method variance, and test causal hypotheses regarding relationships between normative beliefs and behavioral outcomes. © 2025 by the authors.

We investigated the factors that predict young Korean job seekers’ employment intentions toward small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from social and psychological perspectives. Conducting an online survey with 700 job seekers aged 19–29 years, we assessed their intention in regard to employment with SMEs. The results revealed that information quality had the most significant effect on SME employment intention, followed by subjective norms and attitude. Information quality significantly predicted attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. Furthermore, educational level and place of residence moderated the effect of information quality on attitude and subjective norms, with a stronger effect for nonmetropolitan residents compared with metropolitan residents. Our findings suggest that to improve attitudes and subjective norms among metropolitan residents and highly educated young job seekers in Korea, it is important to improve the quality of information about SMEs. © 2025 Scientific Journal Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved.

The collaboration between higher education (HE) and education technology (EdTech) companies plays a vital role in developing digitallyembedded learning in the contemporary digital era. The partnership between HE and industry is widely recognized as a means to promote innovation. Moreover, it provides advantages to companies striving to fulfill client requirements. The HE-industry collaboration has garnered increasing attention in academic research. However, there is a lack of studies on the actors’ perspectives and on the required processes and other elements for conducting effective HE-EdTech collaboration in developing learning and teaching in HE. This study addresses this research gap by examining the interprofessional collaborative development process involved in the creation of video-supported collaborative learning. The qualitative research examines the factors of successful collaboration between HE and EdTech companies within the knowledge-building ecosystem framework, using ethnographic data. The findings indicate that the establishment of a knowledge-building ecosystem for the development of digitally-embedded learning in based on collaboration between key actors: teachers, teacher educators, EdTech companies, HE institutions, and students, the end-users and ultimate beneficiaries. The collaboration is manifested in open innovation, practice-based research, and research-based service development processes, and relies on goal setting, continuous dialogue, reflective assessment, commitment, and trust as key elements. © The Author(s) 2024. 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).

The cultivation of entrepreneurship in students has become an increasingly pertinent goal within global educational systems. Previous research examining the impact of entrepreneurial education programs on students’ entrepreneurial intentions has yielded conflicting results. This article delves into the hypothesis that this relationship is influenced by endogenous factors, such as locus of control and self-efficacy. It posits that the role of these variables contributes to elucidating the ambiguities prevalent in the literature. Employing the Theory of Planned Behavior, as a theoretical framework, this study investigates the connection between entrepreneurial training programs, endogenous factors, and entrepreneurial intention. The analysis is based on a sample of Italian students who participated in the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students’ Survey (GUESSS). The hypotheses were tested using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) and subsequently fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). The results affirm that entrepreneurial intention is positively influenced by a combination of exogenous and endogenous factors. The study offers insights for a more profound understanding of entrepreneurial training dynamics and the development of flourishing and dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystems. Furthermore, it demonstrates that integrating the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) provides a useful framework for capturing the complex nature of the entrepreneurial intention phenomenon. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024.

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of mind mapping in the standardized training and education of internal medicine resident physicians in nephrology. Sixty trainees undergoing rotations in the Nephrology Department at Chengdu University Affiliated Hospital between January 2021 and December 2023 were randomly assigned to control and observation groups, each comprising 30 trainees. The observation group received mind mapping teaching, while the control group received traditional teaching methods. The clinical thinking training of the two groups was then compared. The observation group outperformed the control group in all aspects of the Mini-CEX assessment, including medical interviews, humanistic care, clinical judgment, communication skills, overall performance, and total score, with statistical significance (P < 0.05). However, there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups in the areas of physical examination and organizational effectiveness (P > 0.05). Furthermore, the observation group achieved higher scores than the control group in the final theory exam, skill exam results, and satisfaction, with statistically significant differences (P < 0.05). Mind mapping not only aids in the consolidation of fundamental memorized knowledge but also enhances clinical thinking skills, thereby playing a pivotal role in assisting resident physicians in establishing a comprehensive knowledge base in nephrology and improving the effectiveness of their training. © The Author(s) 2025.

Background: Pharmacy internships are an important part of pharmacy education in Poland; they are an integral part of professional studies. The first two internships are held after the third and fourth year of study during the summer break and last for four weeks. The study aims to analyze the didactic process of the pharmacy students taking place during the summer internship in community and hospital pharmacies in Poland. The analysis emphasizes the acquisition of skills built on the master-student contact, and the results are based on trainees’ feedback. Methods: The research tool was a questionnaire addressed to fifth-year pharmacy students who had previously completed summer internships in both community and hospital pharmacy. The survey contained 17 questions that sought to gain insight into their perceptions of the internship’s supervision and guidance of work by tutors and pharmacy staff, involvement in different workplace routines and comparison between formal education and everyday practice. The data collection was carried out in the academic year 2015–2016 among the ninth-semester pharmacy students from four Medical Universities in Poland. Information about internships performed in community and hospital pharmacies were collected separately. Results: The paper presents the results of selected questions related specifically to the legitimacy of summer internships and learning about professional responsibilities. Altogether 447 questionnaires, evaluating summer internships in both community and hospital pharmacies were collected. For the majority of students the summer internship made them aware of the profession; however, the internship in some pharmacies did not always provide them with all aspects of pharmaceutical practice. 14–40% of students admitted that their mentors did not introduce the internship program at the beginning of the internship. Only 35–46% of students performed drug formulations on a daily basis. Less than 30% of respondents indicated that drug formulary process in community pharmacies was the same as they have learned at university. Almost every day or very often students were involved in checking or spreading out the drugs delivered to the pharmacy from the wholesale institution. Only two universities conducted regular audits of the internship process by the supervisors (academic teachers). Conclusions: The summer internship of pharmacy students complements the opportunity to acquire practical skills in the training of future pharmacists. The quality of this didactic process should be subjected to constant verification. What is important is that pharmacists who are tutors of students participating in summer internships should obtain an academic support in the area of education and training, relevant to the professional preparation for the didactic process. Similar rules for summer internships should be developed, despite maintaining distinctiveness, across faculties. The students’ responses indicate varying levels of mentor involvement in the implementation of practical vocational training. What is worrying is the lack of substantive and practical supervision during the internship. © The Author(s) 2024.

With global calls by governments and other actors to train more scientists, the science education community must pay closer attention to the role classroom teachers play in supporting scientist formation. This requires for educators, however, an intuitive grasp of what a scientist must be. Whereas a definition of the scientist has frequently been left open in some science education perspectives, this paper sketches an explicit discussion of the concept of scientist that could be useful in a scientist pedagogy. Particularly, this article focuses on unraveling the implicit understandings of the scientist that consider ascribing the label as recognition under a single scientific enterprise, laying out the requirements for student-scientists to be seen as engaging in comparable scientific endeavors as career scientists and for students to begin seeing themselves as scientists. This paper lays out how scientists are definable by their scientific output (i.e., research), by their responsibility for the quality of these outputs (by judgment or recognition by other scientists), and by their synthesizing of beliefs to produce these outputs. Perspectives on how to prepare learners to be scientists are then laid out. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2025.

The study investigated the challenges faced by teachers in virtual learning environments in a developing country from their own perspectives. To achieve its objectives, a descriptive survey method was employed. A questionnaire was developed and distributed–after checking its validity and reliability—to a sample of 452 teachers selected through stratified random sampling. The findings indicated that teachers faced a moderate level of challenges overall in virtual learning environments. The results also revealed statistically significant differences in the challenges faced by teachers across all domains based on school type, with public school teachers reporting more challenges than those in private schools. However, no significant differences were found in most challenge domains based on gender, except in two specific domains: “challenges related to learners” and “challenges related to school administration,” where female teachers reported greater challenges. Additionally, no significant differences were identified across any domains of challenges based on teaching experience. The researchers recommend that the Ministry of Education create centers to evaluate virtual learning apps, expand teacher training, and enhance parental involvement in distance learning. © 2025 by the authors of this article.