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People with intellectual disability are only marginally represented in the labour market, and research has identified several school-related barriers to their labour market participation. This study uses a qualitative method triangulation with eight teacher interviews and nine individualised educational plans (IEPs) to explore how teachers prepare students with mild intellectual disability (MID) for future employment in Norway. Document analysis illustrates which work-related goals teachers incorporate in students’ IEPs. In-depth interviews with teachers provide additional information about teachers’ efforts about helping their students become valued employees. Findings from this study indicate wide variation and room for improvement in how schools prepare students with MID for employment. Recommendations for research and practice are discussed in the article. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The incongruity between academic programmes pursued and the career path among graduates in recent times suggests that career path does not always lead to programme choice and vice versa. Different occupations/professions not directly found in the area of academic programmes pursued could appeal to graduates. This study sought to examine how the various occupations/professions in Ghana appeal to university graduates. This study modelled university students’ preferences and interconnectedness among various careers/occupations in Ghana. The descriptive survey design was used. The census technique was used to capture all 144 final-year university students pursuing a BED accounting programme with a university in Ghana. Data were collected using an adapted Occupational Inventory Profile ((OIP) and data were analysed with the Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM). The study found that technological activities, mathematical computation activities, managerial-clerical activities, scientific research activities, persuasive-enterprising activities, and fine art activities significantly predicted mechanical-technological occupation, mathematical computation occupation, managerial-clerical occupation, science research occupation, persuasive-enterprising occupation, and fine art occupation. Additionally, there was also strong interconnectedness between the six various occupations among BED Accounting students in Ghana. Though the career path of BED accounting students does not generally agree with the realistic and artistic personality type, the study found that these students have a significant interest in activities and occupations in line with these personality types. This suggests that the personality of university students studied had an interest in several occupations not trained for, suggesting that they had a combination of personality types in varying degrees for the various occupations studied. Therefore, it was recommended that teaching pedagogies should vary and the government should create more employment opportunities to better prepare graduates to pursue careers outside what they were trained for. Graduates should also be equipped with skills and resources to be able to create their own jobs in their areas of interest outside or along their professional training. The theoretical and other practical implications of the findings of the study have also been adduced. © 2023 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

The informal sector constitutes a vital part of developing countries’ economy. It serves as a major source of employment and livelihood for the urban poor. However, despite its multifaceted economic contributions in many developing countries, little is known about its contribution. Hence, this study examines the role of the urban informal sector in improving the livelihoods of the participants in Hawassa city, southern Ethiopia, using primary data. A random sample of 182 informal sector participants was selected from eight kebeles using multi-stage sampling techniques. Descriptive statistics and a logistic regression model were used to analyze the data. The descriptive analysis results showed that the majority of the participants (67%) perceived that participating in the informal sector has considerably improved their livelihood. The econometric analysis reveals that informal business operators who earn a higher monthly income, those who save their income, stayed longer in the business, have access to credit and own more working capital, and those who get training opportunities are observed to have better livelihood improvement compared to their comparative group. Given the sector’s role in creating employment opportunities for the burgeoning urban labor force and improving livelihood, informal businesses should not be treated as a hostile group with a marginal role in the economy. Thus, along with designing strategies for the formalization of informal enterprises, facilitating access to finance, training programs, improving the business environment, and provision of business development services prepare youth to navigate the informal sector in the study area, in particular, and Ethiopia, in general. © 2023 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

The ever-increasing pace of innovation and technological change in the automotive industry has a significant impact on car sales and after-sales services. Ability to respond quickly to the relevant changes and innovations becomes an imperative in both sales and after-sales services. Related to this is the need to ensure adequate training of employees for the given sector. In this context, the authors of the article analyze possibilities of innovation and development strategies for the study branches Transport and Automotive Service and Repair in focus on a selected Upper Secondary Vocational School located in Bratislava, which is one of the important providers of vocational education and training of labor forces for transport and transport services in Slovakia. Main results of their analyses are summarized in SWOT and STEPE tables. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

In the article, the author considers the current trends in the development of students’ project activities in modern education. The solution of modern problems is based on the further development of new ways of thinking, practice-oriented competencies of students. The requirements of modern society for the formation of students’ competencies of teamwork, the development of skills for successful work in conditions of resource constraints are analyzed. The increased volume of world scientific literature on the problems of the introduction of innovative technologies, project forms of teaching in educational programs confirms the relevance of the research topic. The development of innovative production projects, educational technologies that not only connect learning with real life, but also actively develop the creative independent activity of bachelors, becomes relevant. The difficulties of implementing practice-oriented project-based training of students in teams under the guidance of mentors-teachers of the technical university are revealed. The need for the development of critical and inventive thinking of students, the ability to work in a team, the need to expand the thematic focus of promising projects for the younger generation in the education system is justified, the potential relevance of the proposed projects for solving real problems of business partners of the technical university using project training is considered. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The health emergency originated by Covid-19 led humanity to a virtual coexistence, where the use of information and communication technologies took a fundamental role, in terms of education, teaching continued in remote mode and for this purpose different means, techniques and characteristics were used. The present study is a review of the scientific literature, which analyzes the best techniques and strategies used in remote times, Prisma methodology was used and 127 articles were collected from databases such as IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, EBSCO, Scielo, and Scopus, which according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria allowed to identify technologies that improve academic performance in these times, such as the development of mobile applications with artificial intelligence, augmented reality, gamification among others. It is concluded that these technologies are capable of improving academic performance and those that achieve a greater incursion are those that combine two or more technologies © 2023, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning.All Rights Reserved.

Teachers serve as carriers who shoulder the important task of improving the quality of education, and their professional level affects the quality of vocational and technical personnel training. At present, the professional growth of teachers in vocational colleges has attracted more and more attention from the society. This article studies the comprehensive test and evaluation path of college teachers’ professional development based on cloud education big data platform. This article constructs a “supply-demand relationship” model between cloud education big data platform and college teachers’ professional development and expounds the comprehensive test and evaluation strategy of college teachers’ professional development based on cloud education big data platform. This article constructs a comprehensive measure index system of influencing factors of college teachers’ professional development and weights the evaluation indexes based on AHM attribute hierarchy model. By optimizing the super-efficiency SBM model, it proposes a comprehensive evaluation method considering the temporal and spatial features of college teachers’ professional development level, which is suitable for different professional teachers’ professional development features. The experimental results verify the effectiveness of the evaluation index system and evaluation model © 2023, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning.All Rights Reserved.

A university graduate must possess a set of necessary competencies that meet modern requirements. The authors identify three groups of competencies, in addition to professional knowledge. The first group includes language competences. They allow you to know the skills of business communication in a foreign language, know the international professional terminology, and understand technical documentation that has not been translated. The second group includes social competences. The language of socio-cultural communications allows university graduates to fully interact in a multicultural and multi-ethnic environment. The third group includes IT competences of the future - knowledge of different programming languages, digital services, application in practice of modern technologies, information management methods, and ways to create information systems. Today, students are focused on the needs of employers. The labor market values both professional and additional competences of university graduates. This, in turn, increases students’ requirements to the content, process, learning technologies and forms of learning activities. The article deals with the results of a survey to identify the level of student satisfaction with various aspects of the educational process. Regular assessment of student satisfaction with technologies and organization of the learning process allows: 1) identify problems and improve the quality of educational services provided; 2) shift the focus from purely professional competencies to extended multilingual: language, social, IT competencies. The results obtained can be used in the organization of the educational process in higher education institutions. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The purpose of the article is to study the process of professional adaptation of students of technical higher education institutions based on the results of social surveys, as well as to analyze the importance of integration of higher education institutions and manufacturing enterprises in training qualified professionals. Based on social research, the level of satisfaction of students with workplace training, which affects the assessment of the quality of teaching in higher education, the attitude of students to their specialization, and future career success during the internship, was determined. Information on self-assessment of students’ readiness for practice is provided. Criteria for its successful completion have been developed. © 2023, North American Business Press. All rights reserved.

Traditional learning techniques have evolved slowly and have yet to adapt the course content delivery to today's students’ approaches to acquiring new knowledge. However, micro-learning has become popular in e-Learning environments as a course design technique due to short attention spans, demand for small chunks of information, and time constraints. Hence, it has been selected for creating reading mobile applications provided to the nature of its learning approach. In order to describe the multiple iterations of design, development, and evaluation of this general framework, a methodology named Design-Based Research (DBR) is implemented. First, the article presents the abstract framework components and a cloud-based software architecture that allows a modular approach to creating such applications. The pathway developed through adapting the iPAC framework, which involves personalization, authenticity, and collaboration, is part of the methodology used to design the app under pedagogical and technological considerations. The process demanded the following phases: analysis and exploration, design and construction, evaluation and reflection, redesign and reconstruction, and final critical reflections. Four applied instruments also validate the framework implementation: The iPAC Rubric, an aphorisms checklist, a pre and post-test, a focus group, and a usability test taken by 28 students in a private university in Colombia. Findings indicated that Design-Based Research (DBR) methodology emerged as an appropriate tool to encounter the needs behind reading applications design due to its sequence of operations yields results successively closer to adequate usability standards and smooth implementation. They also reveal the positive impact of new types of texts on students’ motivation and awareness toward other reading strategies and microlearning. This impact indeed proved the proposed framework's effectiveness for designing micro-learning applications. © 2023.