Search Results for
"Students"

Purpose – The main purpose of this study is to determine how competency-driven entrepreneurship education (CDEE) affects one's entrepreneurial intention (EI) by examining the interplay between entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and entrepreneurial passion for inventing and founding (EPIF). Additionally, it is one of the pioneer research studies to evaluate parameters related to EI in the public sector universities in the Xinjiang Uygur region of China. Design/methodology/approach – A research sample of 379 students was used to evaluate the constructs' hypotheses. Partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed for the data analysis. Findings – This study indicated that CDEE has a favorable, significant impact on EI. The relationship between CDEE and EI was partially mediated by ESE, but not by EPIF. Originality/value – This study situates CDEE within the Xinjiang Uygur region of China, a unique economic and socio-cultural setting where entrepreneurship is underexplored due to traditional employment preferences, regulatory constraints and limited venture financing. Moreover, self-efficacy is a common mediator; our study advances originality by testing its mediating role alongside EPIF, thereby integrating both cognitive and affective dimensions. This dual-lens framework highlights that in regions like Xinjiang, self-efficacy rather than passion becomes the stronger bridge between CDEE and EI. It is offering a fresh theoretical contribution and practical insight. © 2025 Emerald Publishing Limited

The effective integration of environmental engineering principles (EEPs) into national systems is a critical lever for achieving sustainable development goals. This study investigates the systemic barriers and enabling strategies for incorporating EEPs into a key sector—higher education—within the context of Uzbekistan. A mixed-methods approach was employed, utilizing surveys and semi-structured interviews with 300 professors, administrators, and postgraduate students. The results reveal a significant gap between awareness and implementation: while 65% of faculty and 82% of administrators demonstrated high awareness of sustainability concepts, only 8% perceived the current curriculum integration as comprehensive. Critical barriers were identified, including an overcrowded curriculum (rated 4.6/5), a deficit in faculty expertise (4.4/5), and a lack of localized teaching resources (4.2/5). Conversely, stakeholders strongly favored (92% support) solution-oriented strategies such as project-based learning addressing real-world environmental problems. The study concludes that successful integration necessitates a systemic overhaul, not merely curricular additions. Key recommendations for policymakers and institutional managers include strategic curriculum redesign, substantial investment in faculty capacity building, and the development of context-specific educational resources that address Uzbekistan's pressing environmental challenges, such as water resource management and climate change mitigation. This systemic analysis provides a transferable framework for embedding sustainability principles into national educational structures to foster environmentally literate professionals. © 2025, Ecozone, OAIMDD. All rights reserved.

Purpose – To enhance career readiness and promote equitable school-to-work transition, this study examines how the development of employability skills influences vocational school students' career success during internship, assessed through both subjective (perceived job success) and objective (job mobility and pay) indicators. The research further investigates the moderating role of geographic location (urban vs rural) in shaping these relationships. Design/methodology/approach – This study adopts a longitudinal survey design to examine the influence of employability skills on vocational students' career success, with a specific focus on the moderating role of geographic location. Data were collected from vocational school students in rural (Sichuan) and urban (Shanghai) China at two time points – prior to their internships (T1) and near the completion of their placements (T2). This design enables an assessment of regional differences and investigates how both the initial endowment and subsequent development of employability skills shape career success within a culturally diverse and contextually distinct setting. Findings – The path modeling analysis shows that both the initial endowment and the development of employability skills significantly predict perceived job success among vocational school students. The endowment of employability skills is less important for objective criteria, while an increase in employability skills is related with greater job mobility, suggesting internships contribute to building human capital, particularly among underrepresented groups. Geographic location moderates only the relationship between employability skills and perceived success, indicating that rural students can offset contextual disadvantages through skill development. These findings offer empirical support that internships provide a relevant context for individuals to develop their employability skills and respond to calls for cross-cultural, longitudinal career research. Research limitations/implications – This research was conducted across vocational schools in both rural and urban regions of China, with measurement instruments specifically designed to assess the general employability skills of vocational school students. Practical implications – The findings highlight the vital role of employability skill development during internships, especially for students from rural or socially disadvantaged backgrounds. As career paths become increasingly nonlinear and mobility-driven, educators and policymakers must promote equitable access to high-quality internships that intentionally cultivate employability skills to enhance students' perceived job success and career mobility. Vocational institutions can address geographic disparities by embedding soft and technical skill-building strategies into their curricula, thereby enabling students to better navigate the school-to-work transition and ensuring that graduates are equipped with the competencies necessary for sustainable career success in an evolving and competitive labor market. Social implications – This study highlights critical social implications related to educational equity and workforce accessibility. While geographic disparities in education are well-documented, the findings suggest that rural vocational students can mitigate such disadvantages by actively developing employability skills. This reinforces the role of education as a social equalizer. For policymakers, the results underscore the need to allocate resources and design targeted interventions that enhance skill-building opportunities in under-resourced rural schools. Enhancing employability through accessible, quality vocational training can support social mobility, reduce regional inequities and promote inclusive economic development by equipping youth across geographic contexts to succeed in an evolving labor market. Originality/value – This paper makes an original contribution by empirically examining the dynamic interaction between individual employability skills and contextual factors through two-wave longitudinal data. It offers nuanced insights into how both the initial endowment and subsequent development of employability skills during internships predict subjective and objective career outcomes. Situated within the context of China's urban–rural divide, the findings demonstrate that students from rural areas can mitigate structural disadvantages through targeted skill cultivation. Moreover, the study underscores the role of internships as vital platforms for developing employability competencies. These insights advance career theory, inform education policy and guide the design of more equitable vocational curricula. © 2025 Emerald Publishing Limited

With rapid development of information technology, virtual simulation technology has gradually integrated into the teaching system of vocational colleges and has become an important means to improve teaching quality and effect. However, the existing teaching feedback mechanism is often single and lagging, and it is not easy to comprehensively and in real time reflect the teaching effect and students’ learning status. Therefore, this study aims to explore how virtual simulation technology can optimize the multi-level feedback mechanism in the information teaching of vocational colleges to realize the precise regulation and personalized guidance of the teaching process. Vocational colleges pay attention to cultivating practical skills, and virtual simulation technology can provide a working environment close to accurate, effectively making up for the shortcomings of traditional teaching. However, the lack of adequate feedback mechanism makes it difficult to maximize the teaching effect. This study constructed a multi-level feedback system based on virtual simulation technology, including three levels: real-time interactive feedback, phased evaluation feedback and comprehensive analysis feedback. In the experiment, we selected 1000 students and 50 teachers from three vocational colleges as the research objects and carried out a one-semester teaching practice. The experimental results show that after the introduction of a multi-level feedback mechanism, students’ academic performance has improved by 20% on average, their practical skills have improved by 25%, and their learning satisfaction has reached 90%. At the same time, teachers’ teaching efficiency has increased by 15%, and their teaching satisfaction has reached 95%. In addition, the accuracy rate of real-time feedback of the system reaches 88%, the accuracy rate of phased evaluation reaches 92%, and the accuracy rate of comprehensive analysis reaches 95%. Virtual simulation technology optimizes the multi-level feedback mechanism in information teaching of vocational colleges, which can significantly improve teaching and students’ learning effects, and provide strong support for innovation and development of vocational education. © The Author(s) 2025

This chapter focuses on the use of active learning strategies in entrepreneurial learning with an example of case-based learning to prepare university students for the future of work. The chapter aims to expand the understanding of the benefits of planning and applying a combination of active learning strategies with an example of case-based learning in the entrepreneurial learning programme of the faculty of business education. The author used a qualitative approach in terms of an exploratory systematic review of the literature concerning the role of active learning in entrepreneurial learning (EL). Based on the analysis of the findings, the author concludes that the solution to effective entrepreneurship education is the use of active learning activities to stimulate students’ mindset to develop entrepreneurial skills. The practical implications are that the use of active learning in EL can develop a spirit of creativity and empower students to become job creators instead of job seekers as HEIs prepare them for work environments in wage or self-employment after graduating. © 2026 by IGI Global Scientific Publishing. All rights reserved.

This chapter discusses the evolving relationship between artificial intelligence and education by arguing that AI should empower educators rather than replace them. While AI offers significant benefits such as personalized instruction, improved lesson planning, and enhanced assessment capabilities, education fundamentally requires human connection, empathy, and adaptive instruction that AI cannot replicate. We suggest a five-pronged model that redefines educators’ roles in light of AI advancements and in conjunction with the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) technology integration framework. Our model posits the role of educators with AI integration as Innovators, Instructional Designers, Facilitators of Critical Thinking, Ethical and Moral Guides, and Social-Emotional Mentors. The chapter explores practical applications of AI for content creation across curriculum planning, presentational instruction, interactions, and assessment, and offers guidance for educators to effectively integrate AI while maintaining pedagogical oversight and the human element of teaching. The role of educators worldwide is rapidly evolving in the face of ongoing technological advancements, especially with artificial intelligence (AI) recently emerging as a disruptive tool in many facets of the educational landscape. We now live in a world where educators have real concerns about the potential impacts of AI on education, including benefits and unintended consequences. Some have documented threats to teaching and learning, such as academic integrity concerns (Perkins, 2023), that prompt maintaining a cautious and balanced approach to AI integration. Yet, AI can also be a powerful tool to transform how teachers design, deliver, and adapt their curriculum (Adigüzel et al., 2023). As our classrooms grow increasingly more diverse, AI offers educators the ability to create tailored materials that cater to individual learning needs (Kolluru et al., 2018), streamline lesson planning (Bucchiarone, 2024), and enrich the overall learning experience (Barrios-Beltran, 2024). AI’s potential to enhance education is also linked to several positive learning outcomes, including enhanced engagement, motivation, and skill development (Xu, 2024). Furthermore, this growing body of research serves to highlight several important impacts on education. First, there is a need for educational stakeholders to better prepare students and teachers for the appropriate use of AI. AI competencies need to be integrated into content curricula to assist learners in developing such skills and appropriate uses, and we need to provide more AI professional development for educators at all levels. Second, the role educators play in terms of shaping the use of AI is still evolving. Notably, the presence of AI in education has significantly increased the imperative for educators to better understand AI tools, their uses and misuses, and to leverage them in their teaching and learning practices. As Velander et al. (2024, p. 4086) note, “This ʼnew normality’ requires teachers to be able to teach about different aspects of AI related to different subject topics as well as different age groups.” We argue here that the role of educators should be redefined to empower them to harness the potential of AI, rather than be replaced by it. By integrating AI-driven methods, teachers can not only save time (Fitria, 2023) but also unlock new creative possibilities in the classroom (Habib et al., 2024) that have the potential to empower them to meet the unique challenges of modern education. To further illustrate these opportunities, this chapter explores how educators must transform their roles as educators to successfully integrate AI into their instructional practices. Whether you are a veteran educator or new to teaching, this chapter will provide actionable insights and examples to help you integrate AI into your educational practices. © 2026 by IGI Global Scientific Publishing. All rights reserved.