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The purpose of this conceptual paper is to illuminate the problems that are associated with defining and identifying talent and to discuss the development of talent as a contributor to employability.

The world of work is characterised by new and rapidly changing demands. Talent management has recently been the target of increasing interest and is considered to be a method by which organisations can meet the demands that are associated with increased complexity. Previous studies have often focused on the management of talent, but the issue of what exactly should be managed has generally been neglected. In this paper, the authors focus on discussing the substance of talent and the problems associated with identifying talent by using the following closely related concepts: employability, knowledge, and competence.

Employability is central to employee performance and organisational success. Individual employability includes general meta‐competence and context‐bound competence that is related to a specific profession and organisation. The concept of employability is wider than that of talent, but the possession of talent is critical to being employable. In this paper, the authors suggest a model in which talent includes individual, institutional, and organisational‐social dimensions.

The illumination of different meanings of talent management and the substance of talent is crucial to the practical implication of central human resource development practices, such as training and development.

The paper shows that clarification of the conceptual boundaries and the presentation of a typology that is relevant to the understanding of talent are central to the creation of valid talent management systems that aim to define and develop talent.

Employability includes the ability to find employment and remain employed. Employability includes both hard and soft skills, including formal and actual competence, interpersonal skills, and personal characteristics. This paper aims to focus on illuminating perceptions engineering graduates have regarding employability. More specifically, the aim is to explore how engineering graduates perceive, invest in, manage, and develop their employability.

The study highlighted in the paper draws on a longitudinal qualitative study and the empirical data include recurrent interviews with 20 recent graduates from Master's level engineering programs in information technology.

The results of the paper indicate that hard formal and technical vocational skills are considered to be of declining importance. Generally, these skills are considered less important in relation to one's individual employability compared to different forms of soft skills and personal attributes. The meaning of employability is typically viewed relationally and contextually and is associated with the specific place in which one works. The responsibility for managing and developing one's employability lies with each individual.

The results have practical implications for higher education and engineering curriculum design related to the enhancement of graduate employability.

The results of the paper indicate that engineering graduates have educational expectations that are not entirely consistent with current university practices. The study respondents indicated that the educational program should focus less on the substantive content of the engineering curriculum, and instead focus more on generalist competence and soft employability skills, including interpersonal skills.

The purpose of this paper is to place all of the contributions to this special issue into a theoretical framework and to highlight the role that the so‐called “information age mindset” has in the facilitation of employability skills.

The paper discusses the major themes of this special issue.

Undergraduate students do see the importance of technological innovation in the classroom but they see the development of experiential or work‐based skills to be more important.

Future curriculum design should consider the expectations and attitudes of the modern day undergraduate student to ensure that potential employability is maximised.

The findings are placed into the wider context of the emerging field of evolutionary educational psychology.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of talent development, define its scope and identify the issues involved in formulating talent development strategies in organisations.

The paper reviews the relatively scant and fragmented literature on talent development processes.

The literature review revealed that talent development is usually discussed as part of a wider talent management process. The literature highlights issues concerning who is the talent to be developed, what competencies should be developed, who drives development, what is the appropriate pace of development and what is the architecture to support the development.

The paper is solely theoretical in nature; however, it does identify gaps for further research.

The paper raises a number of important questions that should be considered by organisations when they engage in talent development.

The paper contributes to a perceived gap in the literature and highlights the issues that come within the terrain of talent development.

This paper aims to develop an efficient and accurate numerical method that can be used in the design process of the waterways in a hydropower plant.

A range of recently published (2002‐2006) works, which aim to form the basis of a shape optimization tool for flow design and to increase the knowledge within the field of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and surrogate‐based optimization techniques.

Provides information about how crude the optimization method can be regarding, for example, the design variables, the numerical noise and the multi objectives, etc.

It does not give a detailed interpretation of the flow behaviour due to the lack of validation data.

A very useful flow design methodology that can be used in both academy and industry.

Shape optimization of hydraulic turbine draft tubes with aid of CFD and numerical optimization techniques has not been performed until recently due to the high CPU requirements on CFD simulations. The paper investigates the possibilities of using the global optimization algorithm response surface methodology in the design process of a full scale hydraulic turbine draft tube.

The economic depression of the mid‐1970s gave reasons to question many presuppositions taken almost for granted earlier. This was the case with the welfare state too, which was seen to be in crisis. This study focuses on one particular aspect of the welfare state, namely, its acceptability or legitimacy among the citizens of Finland.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the themed section of History of Education Review on “The History of Knowledge and the History of Education”, comprising four empirical articles that together seek to bring the history of education into fuller dialogue with the approaches and methods of the nascent field of the history of knowledge.

This introductory article provides a broad overview of the history of knowledge for the benefit of historians of education, introduces the four themed section articles that follow, and draws out some of their overarching themes and concepts.

The history of knowledge concept of “arenas of knowledge” emerges as generative across the themed section. Authors also engage with problems of the legitimacy of knowledges, and with pedagogy as practice. In addition, focusing on colonial and postcolonial contexts raises reflexive questions about history of knowledge approaches that have so far largely been developed in European and North American scholarship.

The history of education has not previously been strongly represented among the fields that have gone into the formation of the history of knowledge as a synthetic, interdisciplinary approach to historical studies. Nor have historians of education much engaged with its distinguishing concepts and methodologies. The themed section also extends the history of knowledge itself through its strong focus on colonial and postcolonial histories.