Search Results for
"Students"

This paper aims to provide insights into the education of construction industry professionals. This is thought to be important for the appropriate development of future construction industry leaders to meet employer requirements. The study does this by first providing a background on undergraduate construction management programs offered at the tertiary or university level. This gives an understanding on what these students are commonly exposed to in these programs and some insight into their preparedness as supported by the previous research and academic literature. The study flows onto providing practical secondary data from education and industry sources on the topic. This then culminates in a discussion piece by the authors. The discussion analyses information sourced on various teaching aspects within construction management programs as well as what is deemed important to industry to determine what is required of construction professionals today. The study found that having basic technical and managerial understandings is well understood but there is a growing emergence of the need to further develop graduate knowledge within areas such as soft skills, technology and sustainability with a greater exposure to industry. This paper has been conducted at the global level and not specific to a region contributing broad knowledge to educators and industry and concludes with some recommendations on the education of construction professionals. © CITC 2025.All rights reserved.

This Work-In-Progress paper underscores the impact of a 6-week summer internship program for high school upperclassmen in a cohort of participants. The purpose of this study is to explore how participation in the internship program affects students’ STEM career interests. Lent, Brown, and Hackett’s 1994 Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) provides the theoretical framework for this investigation of different elements of career interest. Kolb’s 1984 experiential learning theory connects SCCT to the internship experience. The high school students in this study were assigned to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and guided through a research project on a STEM topic of their choosing by two immediate supervisors. These topics were required to be related to the host employer’s work and have ample current literature available to explore. The internship also featured cohort-based activities including site visits to museums, workplaces, and learning institutions. Other features include professional development sessions, guest speakers, and a culminating event where participants presented their work and research via scientific posters to a diverse audience. The study underway employed surveys and semi-structured interviews as the primary data sources to investigate students’ experiences and how they relate to STEM career interests. In addition to the pre-survey, post-survey, and exit interviews, we also collected secondary data from weekly reflection writings from each participant. Quantitative data from each survey will be analyzed using a Wilcoxon signed rank sum test to determine differences between pre- and post-responses. Qualitative data will be coded using reflexive thematic analysis to identify themes and sub-themes of students’ experiences. Currently, the analysis is in the data familiarization stage. The expected results include increased self-efficacy and an emphasis on the importance of an engaged supervisor for developing student’s career interests. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2025.

Abstract – This chapter outlines an augmented reality project developed as part of a master’s course on eTourism within a curriculum. It discusses opportunities to foster community engagement with local tourism actors and experiential learning for international students. It also contributes to the literature on experiential education in this field. Moreover, the chapter discusses cross-cultural learning implications as international students were asked to study a local destination. Results show how the introduction of a practical project into the tourism curriculum proved to provide better learning of the application of eTourism, and a powerful pedagogical approach to raise global citizenship awareness. © 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited

International organisations have pressed countries to prepare students for the knowledge economy by building real-life competencies into national curricula, and the OECD’s PISA has assessed competencies like collaboration and creative problem solving. But is there really a deficit in competencies that schools must address? This review of empirical studies in anthropology and cultural psychology documents that people learn and practice many key competencies in everyday life. However, the situation affects practice, and school-like assessments are situations ill-suited to eliciting everyday competencies. The inaccurate deficit model and questionable assessments paint a misleading picture of how to solve underemployment in the knowledge economy. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The article addresses school-to-work transitions among young women in a strongly male dominated professional sphere–the transport industry. Drawing on interviews with two girls over the time span 2015–2022 and visits to their upper secondary school 2016–2019, the study focuses on how power structures related to gender play out in the positioning that takes place in school and workplaces: How the girls were positioned socially and in relation to professional qualification, and how they positioned themselves in these respects. The findings indicate significant changes in discourse and practice when the girls transitioned from students to employees, changes which in the article are discussed in the framework of ‘inequality regimes’ and through the lens of the ‘glass funnel’ metaphor. Linking the funnel metaphor to the framework of inequality regimes broadens the picture to consider how young people are exposed to generally increasing inequalities in labour markets where institutions and organisations are affected by neoliberal economic policies, weakened collective protection of workers and wider wage gaps. With individualisation and insecurity, young people like the two girls in focus in this article, are increasingly left to fend for themselves in a harsh labour market. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

While immigrants and their children display bold educational aspirations, less is known about the relationship between their aspirations and educational outcomes. Using longitudinal survey data on students in upper secondary education in Barcelona, Spain, and Bergen, Norway, coupled with register data from Norway, we ask how the aspirations of students with immigrant backgrounds are connected to their educational outcomes, and in what way this differs between the cities. We find that, compared with their native peers, youth with immigrant backgrounds in Bergen have higher aspirations and those in Barcelona have somewhat lower aspirations. There is a higher mismatch between educational aspirations and outcomes for youth with immigrant backgrounds in both contexts. We argue that such empirical investigations are important, to avoid portraying immigrant aspirations as either a springboard to future success or as a ‘trap’, but rather as a part of pragmatic considerations and adjustments in varying contexts. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Seventeen years following the introduction and subsequent adoption of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) in Tanzanian secondary schools, teachers continue to grapple with its implementation. This research, guided by the curriculum framework, aims to uncover the underlying issues hindering the seamless execution of CBC and explore the various strategies employed by Biology teachers to address these challenges. The study involved 32 participants, including heads of schools, heads of Biology departments, Biology teachers, and students. Data collection methods encompassed interviews, focus group discussions, document reviews, and observations, with thematic data analysis yielding significant insights. The findings illuminate that Biology teachers encounter several hurdles, including insufficient knowledge, to effectively implement CBC, irregular and inadequate staff training related to CBC, insufficient teaching and learning resources, and inadequate laboratory space for equipment storage. In response to these challenges, Biology teachers have resorted to improvisation for missing laboratory equipment and have leveraged neighbouring schools’ and colleges’ laboratories to facilitate biology practical sessions. In light of these findings, the study recommends the implementation of regular in-service teacher training programmes specifically tailored to CBC, alongside the provision of necessary teaching and learning resources. These measures are essential to facilitate the seamless execution of the CBC and enhance the overall educational experience. © 2023 Royal Society of Biology.

Phenomenon: Professional identity formation is a key component of health professional education. Changing expectations of healthcare requires more than competencies, but also an ingrained responsibility to patients, with our values and behaviors aligned with community expectations of patient-centered health professionals. Research into professional identity formation has focused on nursing and medical training, and, although allied health professionals make up one third of the workforce, research is uneven across these disciplines. Health professions educators from these under-researched disciplines have less guidance for how to support students’ professional identity, meaning students may graduate with less mature professional identities. This systematic literature review synthesizes the research on professional identity formation across nine similar allied health disciplines. The purpose is to guide health professions educators in the formation of professional identity in allied health students. Approach: We carried out a systematic literature review, registered on Prospero, following the PRIMSA framework, to find, appraise, and synthesize research on professional identity for nine allied health professions. We synthesized extracted data using a narrative synthesis with convergent qualitative meta-integration of qualitative and quantitative data. Results: Our database searches combined with ancestry and forward searching resulted in 70 studies that met inclusion criteria. Studies came from 17 countries, from seven of the included disciplines (art therapy, dietetics, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, podiatry, psychology, and speech pathology) and from undergraduate, postgraduate, and new graduate perspectives. We found professional identity was influenced by the places of learning (curriculum and clinical experiences or placements), interactions with people (relationships with academics, peers, supervisors, patients,and role models), and educational practices engaged (dialogue, reflection, processing challenges), each acting on the individual person (student or new graduate) who also brought unique characteristics and experiences. Insights: This model of influences can inform health professions education to enable students to develop and graduate with a stronger professional identity formation. © 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This study aims to describe the role of dual education in improving students’ academic achievement and mitigating youth unemployment in Kazakhstan. To examine this issue, a survey was conducted among 496 students from technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions. The survey results were analyzed using SPSS program to address four hypotheses. Our survey showed that dual education students are more confident in their demands in the labor market, are more satisfied with the results of their studies, and have higher academic achievement than school-based education students. © 2024 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Approximately 25% of vocational education and training (VET) applicants in Germany hold a university entrance diploma (Abitur). These students enter VET even though they could enter higher education (HE); the latter typically yields higher incomes and better career prospects. We extend research on the question of why students choose this seemingly less optimal career path by exploring the interplay between local labour-market conditions and social background. We focus on students’ path through (post-)secondary school and combine data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) with regionalised data to analyse students’ (1) aspirations for an Abitur in 9th grade, (2) chances of obtaining an Abitur (3), aspirations for HE over VET in 12th grade and (4) the transition to HE versus VET after obtaining an Abitur. Our results speak to the presence of two theoretical concepts: the ‘discouraged worker effect’ and ‘hedging’. In tight local labour markets, students from lower-status families are discouraged from entering VET and continue in general school. Hence, they aspire an Abitur and obtain an Abitur to avoid the VET market at first. Later, they use their Abitur as a hedge to take advantage of this higher educational credential in contested VET markets. © 2024 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.