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The purpose of this study is to identify the professional skills and competencies of accountants that support a successful implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The authors further investigate the extent to which professional accountants have developed these skills through professional training.

In the survey, Indonesian accountants were provided with a list of 47 skill items under nine categories of professional skills and were asked to rate the importance of each skill item and to indicate the level of priority given to the development of the skill items in the professional training they have undertaken. Their responses provide insights into the skills needed for applying IFRS and the adequacy of professional training in providing these skills.

The authors find that accounting judgement is considered to be the most necessary skill for applying IFRS. Likewise, the findings show that ethical skills and certain generic skills are also perceived to be necessary for adequate application of IFRS, while skills relating to cultural sensitivity are viewed as least important. The findings further demonstrate that professional training programmes need to emphasise the development of judgement and other relevant skills that are important skill categories for applying IFRS.

This study extends the literature on IFRS implementation through a specific focus on the professional skills required by accountants.

These findings have important policy implications for the standard-setters, regulators, auditors and to professional training providers across the world, such as professional accounting associations, accounting firms and educational institutions, for evaluating the content of the training and education programmes being delivered to accountants to prepare them with the relevant skills for applying IFRS.

This study is one of the first to examine the importance of various types of skills necessary for accountants in applying IFRS and the extent to which these skills have been developed through the professional accounting training provided.

Starting in the late 1950s with the creation of the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA), followed by the formation of other professional organisations both in the USA and Europe, there was a growing sense that research management was indeed a profession. One goal was the creation of professional standards that would lead to a standard training curriculum and, ultimately, a professional credential, and there have been many attempts at developing research administration certification. Now, in the US, accreditation through the Research Administrators Certification Council (RACC) exam has become ubiquitous, whereas in other parts of the world, certification by portfolio is more common. This chapter will compare and contrast the salient features of certification, certificates, and degree programs in research administration and review their development and growth over the past 30 years. The chapter will discuss their relative merits and how they work to advance the profession of research administration.

Scholarly studies on mentoring have mostly focused on traditional mentor–mentee relationships, with little or no emphasis on how institutionalized mentoring activities that include different pedagogical approaches could be used to enhance the professional development of academics. To address this knowledge gap, this article examines how an institutionalized multilevel mentoring program could be used to enhance the professional development of early-career academics and academics in designated groups in a South African university.

The data for the study were gathered from 18 mentees and 2 program administrators using semi-structured interviews. The data gathered were assessed by way of thematic analysis that involved a detailed process of identifying, analyzing, organizing, describing and reporting the themes that were developed from the data set.

The findings revealed that when mentees participate in different mentoring and professional development activities that are structured based on different pedagogies, they can engage in higher-order thinking processes and develop multidisciplinary experiences within an expanded professional learning community. Enabled by the situated learning setting, mentees can negotiate the meaning of their professional practice within a professional community and comprehend the nuanced pedagogical approaches including scaffolding learning used by mentors to shape their career trajectory and guide them to secure promotions.

The current study contributes to the scholarly discourse on situated learning by showing that mentoring could be planned and implemented as a pedagogical endeavor with diverse learning activities and structured as a form of professional development program within a professional community.

This study aims to explore vocational teachers' perceptions regarding workplace learning that align with students' training models and collaborative teaching involving specialised professionals within the context of industry-university collaboration.

Using a qualitative approach, the study conducted nine semi-structured interviews from three subject areas to better understand how vocational teachers’ work-based learning enhances their pedagogical practice in guiding students’ professional training. Thematic analysis was adopted to identify patterns that emerged from concepts and theories related to coding categories.

The authors identified three key components: vocational teachers’ workplace learning in connection with students’ training models, collaborative teaching with specialised professionals and teachers’ regular interactions with enterprises. The findings demonstrate that vocational teachers’ engagement in workplace learning pertaining to specific subjects provides a valuable avenue for enhancing curriculum design with collaboration with industry experts. This is key for supporting vocational students’ transitions into the workplace and ensuring their knowledge and skills are tailored to the industry-standard practice.

The data are limited to the review of interviews from three vocational subject areas as the representative sector in the study. However, this research implies effective knowledge transfer between workplace settings and vocational institutions, and vocational teachers need to integrate work-based vocational knowledge and skills in a relevant and applicable way across diverse classroom settings.

Fostering collaborative partnerships with local industries and professionals can be a primary way to facilitate authentic learning experiences that are linked to a specific vocational field and bridge the gap between diverse classroom learning and real-world work scenarios.

This study combines contemporary workplace learning theories with the conceptual understanding of vocational teachers’ involvement with industry-specific practice. Connecting teachers’ knowledge to the industry extends the input and collaboration from professionals and field experts to the diverse vocational classrooms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship among training design, trainee motivation and work environment on the transfer of learning for teachers enrolled in a continuing professional education (CPE) training program and the confirmation of potential positive, predictive relationships of trainee motivation, work environment and training design to transfer of learning. This study investigated the contribution of training efficiency and relevance as measured by the training design; work environment as measured by work autonomy, work complexity and work variability; and trainee’s motivation of training (learning- and job-oriented) to the transfer of knowledge and skills from the training program to their workplace. Both direct and indirect effects of mentioned components on the learning transfer were explored.

This study included 160 teachers working in high-needs schools with large numbers of English learners (ELs) Southwest USA. Teachers in this study primarily needed professional development to empower them and enhance their instructional capacity for ELs and economically challenged students. During the recruitment, participants completed a demographic information (e.g. gender, ethnicity, number of years teaching, age, educational background) survey.

A mediation model with training design as the mediating factor was developed and analyzed. The results revealed that training design fully mediated the relationship between trainees’ work environments and the transfer of knowledge, skills and attitude acquired from the training to their workplace. Furthermore, it partially mediated the relationship between learning-oriented motivation and the transfer of learning. These findings further amplify the significance of CPE program training design and foster important considerations for future research regarding the isolation of specific training design aspects that significantly contribute to the mediation of these relationships.

Considering the significance of learning transfer in developing professional knowledge and skills for target employees and trainees, confirming the mediating effects of training design on training transfer holds critical implications for future research. Specific and purposeful attention needs to be given to the design of CPE training. Investigations into the effects of training design and successful elements such as the training platform (online, hybrid or in-person), sample size, group structure, facilitation and participant demographics are warranted.

The finding of this research provides a preliminary guide for scholar-practitioners. Results of the study confirmed the role that learning-oriented motivation, job-oriented motivation, work variability or flexibility, work complexity and training design play in transfer of learning. In practice, training professionals will be more comfortable pinpointing the factors that lead to the transfer of learning or the lack of it.

Learning transfer has been found to be imperative for target employees and trainees to develop professional knowledge, skills and attitudes. Results of this study reveal variables that promote the positive transfer of learning to the workplace.

The training and education of peers represents an important milestone in the peer's journey to work within organisational settings. Historically, peer support occurred based on a mutual relationship whereby one peer often with more experience provided support and guidance to another. However, as peers began to move into organisations staffed by professionals, a standard of training and education became needed if peers were to be accepted. This chapter outlines these issues, as well as discussing the training standards, the academics and soft skills needed. Some of the challenges peers face during their education and their continued development will be discussed. This chapter will focus on the training of peers for mental health and substance use settings in addition to other emerging areas in social inclusion.

The study discusses the professionalization of academic leadership in Israel by analyzing and comparing two different training programs: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s (HUJI) program and the CHE-Rothschild program. The HUJI program began in 2016 to train the professoriate to take charge of leadership positions alongside a separate program for administrative staff, while the CHE-Rothschild program was launched in 2019 to train academic leaders, both professors and administrators from universities and colleges nationwide. The analysis reveals two “ideal types” of collegiality: While Model A (exemplified by the HUJI program) bifurcates between the professoriate and administrative staff, Model B (exemplified by the CHE-Rothschild program) binds administrative and academic staff members through course composition, pedagogy, and content. The study suggests a pattern of redefinition of collegiality in academia: we find that while academic hierarchies are maintained (between academic faculty and administrative staff and between universities and colleges), collegiality in academia is being redefined as extending beyond the boundaries of the professoriate and emphasizing a partnership approach to collegial ties.

This study aims to examine the entrepreneurship profiles of migrants and refugees relying on a neo-configurational approach that increases understanding of causal complexity, equifinality and causal asymmetry patterns to high entrepreneurial intentions in the two groups.

Using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method, the authors analysed 52 respondents – migrants and refugees. The findings show the existence of equifinality in which different configurations can lead to high and low entrepreneurial intentions, underlying that traumatic experiences have a major role in entrepreneurial intention. It also demonstrates that core conditions are associated with refugee’s configurations and causal asymmetry. The cross-sectional character of this research impedes the searching for a better causal relationship. The lack of studies that approach the subject of refugees makes it challenging to develop a robust theory in this sense.

The paper highlights five main configurations – two related to migrants’ profile and three related to refugees’ profile – that enable expanding the current knowledge and practices to better customize practices to increase entrepreneurial intention.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research using a configurational approach to explore migrant and refugee entrepreneurship intention profiles.

Burdened by undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and overweight and obesity as a consequence of both internal conflict and the global nutrition transition, Iraq is in need of adequate public health nutrition education to mitigate nutrition-related outcomes and risks. To address nutrition-related health outcomes, trained nutrition professionals are warranted. This paper examines current nutrition-affiliated programs offered across post-secondary institutions in Iraq.

An electronic review of universities and colleges’ websites, department webpages and academic programs’ homepages and resources of all the private and public universities in Iraq was conducted to find programs related to nutrition, nutrition sciences and dietetics.

All identified programs belonged to the governmental sector, were administered and financed by the Iraqi Government and were under the purview of the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. The review highlighted a predominant focus on food sciences in agricultural departments rather than public health or clinical nutrition. Advanced education in topics such as human metabolism, medical nutrition therapy and public health nutrition are required to adequately address over- and undernutrition in Iraq.

The current state of public health and nutrition-related postsecondary education in Iraq warrants an increased emphasis on clinical and public health nutrition education. Despite a commendable focus on food science studies, the country’s ongoing challenges with obesity, nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases and conflict-associated food insecurity signal an urgent need for balancing this focus with grounding in postsecondary training in public health nutrition.

This study aims to examine the rationales for and obstacles to developing a national qualifications framework (NQF) in Japan. From a research perspective, it attempts to propose a model of a qualifications framework in the national context to provoke further political discussion in developing the Japanese Qualifications Framework (JQF).

To propose a possible model of a qualifications framework in the Japanese context, this study employs a qualitative document analysis approach to known NQFs. Next, based on documents and the literature, including government data and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Tokyo Convention (2011a, b), this study analyzes the motives and challenges in developing the JQF.

Japanese motives to develop the JQF can be summarized in four conditions: (a) International expectations along with the Tokyo Convention and establishment of the National Information Center, (b) avoiding qualification holders’ disadvantages in mobility, (c) quality assurance of qualifications with a competence-based approach and (d) lifelong learning by promoting recognition of diverse learning. The challenges in developing the JQF are (a) fitness with the traditional employment system and (b) multiple stakeholders’ involvement. The current priority in developing an NQF in Japan is to make educational qualification information “visible” based on legal grounds, particularly entrance requirements, to facilitate mobility.

This study explores the possibility of the JQF by summarizing the background and roles of NQFs worldwide and clarifying the motives and challenges for developing the JQF. This study provides suggestions for the possible qualifications framework model in the Japanese context from academic and practical perspectives in Japan, where official discussions on establishing an NQF have not progressed. Ensuring the international compatibility of qualifications so that qualification holders can smoothly take the next step in their studies and employment is important.