Search results

The South African vocational education and training (VET) sector is required by legislation to redefine postsecondary education, advance industrialisation and expand the job market to address unemployment in the country. Yet, VET leaders' heterogenous educational and occupational backgrounds do not enable them to address the needs of the VET sector. Continuous professional development of leaders in the education sector needs to include support structures such as mentoring.

The present study sought to investigate how VET managers in South Africa perceive three different types of mentoring – individual, peer group and expert-based key performance area (KPA) mentoring – during a part-time professional leadership development programme. Using interactive qualitative analysis (IQA), the authors collected and analysed data from focus group discussions (n = 24) and individual interviews (n = 21) from two cohorts of the programme.

The results revealed that individual mentoring represented the most important driving mechanism, followed by peer group mentoring and expert-based KPA mentoring. Participants identified leadership as a prerequisite for their development. Emotions formed the final outcome of the mentoring framework.

Based on the findings, the authors suggest investigating the role played by leaders' interpersonal competences such as emotional competence in the workplace. Additionally, research needs to clarify if and how mentoring can support leaders to develop interpersonal competences in formal and informal settings.

The study offers empirical evidence on a three-pillar mentoring framework adopted in a professional development programme for leaders in VET in South Africa. It highlights the importance of individual, social and emotional factors.

This paper aims to provide an evaluation of the new education system, based on Life Skills and Citizenship Education (LSCE), in Egyptian primary schools. This study analyzes how effective could be the implementation of LSCE in the process of constructing active democratic citizens, in particular, in the case of Egypt, highlighting problems facing the new education approach.

The study methodologies are twofold; the content analysis of the primary one new curriculum “Discover”, to assess the curriculum's strengths and weakness; and the questionnaire to the primary six students, to investigate the relationship among the twelve life skills.

Content analysis of the textbook shows that the learning process based on LSCE is appropriate for the construction of active citizens. The textbook provides Egyptian children with the necessary opportunities to learn and create, through creative participatory methods. The relationship between the social dimension and other dimensions has been proven by means of the chi-square test. The relationship between participation and the two approximately absent skills “resilience and empathy” has been clarified as both are strongly interrelated with participation. The results illuminate a strong relationship between participation and the remaining life skills.

More questionnaires are needed to assess the grade of life skills achievement among students in grade one and two, as it is regarded one of the limitations of the present study, owing to the complicated procedures and the limited time.

The research suggests the formulation of wider project-based activities to be included in the textbooks of all the primary grades. In this regard, real contribution with NGOs and local governments shall be developed to facilitate the involvement of children in actual projects, in accordance with their ages, and to encourage students to participate, as they notice the efficient results of their contribution.

The research stresses on the importance of enhancing participation, as it is proven through the chi-square test that it is strongly related to other skills.

The scarcity of analytical studies to evaluate the effectiveness of citizenship education programs on children, after the application of the new Egyptian education system.

With the advancement of technology, microlearning has emerged as a promising method to improve the efficacy of teaching and learning. This study aims to investigate the document types, volume, growth trajectory, geographic contribution, coauthor relationships, prominent authors, research groups, influential documents and publication outlets in the microlearning literature.

We adapt the PRISMA guidelines to assess the eligibility of 297 Scopus-indexed documents from 2002 to 2021. Each was manually labeled by educational level. Descriptive statistics and science mapping were conducted to highlight relevant objects and their patterns in the knowledge base.

This study confirms the increasing trend of microlearning publications over the last two decades, with conference papers dominating the microlearning literature (178 documents, 59.86%). Despite global contributions, a concentrated effort from scholars in 15 countries (22.39%) yielded 68.8% of all documents, while the remaining papers were dispersed across 52 other nations (77.61%). Another significant finding is that most documents pertain to three educational level categories: lifelong learning, higher education and all educational levels. In addition, this research highlights six key themes in the microlearning domain, encompassing (1) Design and evaluation of mobile learning, (2) Microlearning adaptation in MOOCs, (3) Language teaching and learning, (4) Workflow of a microlearning system, (5) Microlearning content design, (6) Health competence and health behaviors. Other aspects analyzed in this study include the most prominent authors, research groups, documents and references.

The finding represents all topics at various educational levels to offer a comprehensive view of the knowledge base.

There is evidence of country-level contextual variations regarding the benefits of practical experience acquired by students during higher education. This paper, therefore, analyses the benefits of student internships in the Ghanaian context.

In Study 1, two structured but distinct surveys were distributed to senior members and students of six specialised technical education institutions (TIs). Study 2 involved in-depth interviews with the heads of organisations in the tertiary education sector, including trade groups, industries and government agencies.

Internship provides soft skills, confidence, career development, sense of responsibility, employability, income, knowledge sharing and networking for students/interns. For TIs, it contributes to the professional development of faculty supervisors and helps them to update the content they teach. For employers, it unveils talented and promising students who can be employed immediately after graduation at a relatively cheaper cost.

There is still the need for additional research in different contexts: both developed and developing economies to clear doubts on the controversies surrounding the relevance of internship in the 21st century.

TIs should continue to champion student internship programmes. This study highlights the need for employers to place internship students in areas that relate to their fields of study. It also underscores the need for students to embrace internship since it is the cornerstone to their employability in the labour market.

Undeniably, student internships provide a critical platform for career beginners.

This paper contributes to knowledge by offering contextual literature in Ghana on the benefits of student internship programme for interns/students, TIs and employers, all together.

We aimed to identify factors that influence student engagement in distance learning.

The research involved a group of 671 students from economic and technical higher education institutions in Poland. We collected the data with the CAWI technique and an original survey. Next, we processed the data using principal component analysis and then used the extracted components as predictors in the induced smoothing LASSO regression model.

The components of the students’ attitude toward remote classes learning conditions are: satisfaction with teachers’ approach, attitude to distance learning, the system of students’ values and motivation, IT infrastructure of the university, building a network of contacts and communication skills. The final model consisted of seven statistically significant variables, encompassing the student’s sex, level of studies and the first five extracted PCs. Student’s system of values and motivation as well as attitude toward distance learning, were those variables that had the biggest influence on student engagement.

The research result suggests that in addition to students’ system of values and motivation and their attitude toward distance learning, the satisfaction level of teachers’ attitude is one of the three most important factors that influence student engagement during the distance learning process.

The main value of this article is the statistical model of student engagement during distance learning. The article fills the research gap in identifying and evaluating the impact of various factors determining student engagement in the distance learning process.

Unemployment is the biggest issue for all the developing countries, especially India, where millions of educated people are passed out every year from different educational institutes, but against this, the jobs are not being generated. This situation will only be addressed effectively when the government/authorities make more efforts to identify/create potential entrepreneurs. The present study investigates the relationship of entrepreneurial characteristics on entrepreneurial attitude and intention among engineering undergraduates engaged in various technical institutions in Chhattisgarh state.

Stratified random sampling was used to collect sample of 1,000 engineering undergraduates enrolled in third and fourth year at different technical institutions of Chhattisgarh state.

Structural equation modelling and hierarchal multiple regression analysis were incorporated, and the analysis revealed that the entrepreneurial characteristic was found to be a significant predictor of entrepreneurial attitude and intention of engineering undergraduates. The study also discusses managerial implications, limitations and avenues for future research.

Looking at the current scenario, the present study discusses with several factors influencing entrepreneurial attitude and intention of engineering undergraduates, which might be the only solution to a significant issue, i.e. unemployment. In addition, there is a huge lack of research in addressing unemployment issue through entrepreneurship in the state of Chhattisgarh.

India has been withstanding increasing pressure of enrolment in the higher education system, resulting in the creation of new universities in consonance with the recommendations of the Knowledge Commission (2007). Barring a few institutions of paramount excellence, the mushrooming universities fail to conform to equitability of quality and standards, that is teaching-learning-dissemination and research, except for accommodating higher gross enrolment ratio. It has resulted in an asymmetric and sporadic development of human resources, leaving a large basket of learners out of the pursuit for aspiring higher academic, research and professional enrichment. The country needs to develop an innovative common minimum curriculum and evaluation framework, keeping in view the trinity of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) across the Indian higher education system to deliver human resources with equitable knowledge, skill and intellectual acumen.

The paper has been developed using secondary information.

The manuscript has developed an innovative teaching-learning framework that would ensure every Indian HEI to follow a common minimum curriculum and partial common national evaluation system so that the learners across the country would enjoy the essence of equivalence.

This research has designed a comprehensive model to integrate the spirit of the “DEI” value proposition in developing curriculum and gearing common evaluation. This would enable the country to reinforce the spirit of social equity and the capacity to utilise resources with equitability and perpetuity.

Higher productivity in the potato value chain in Rwanda requires good quality seed potatoes. The article analyzes how innovations were introduced in the framework of a development project resulting in a partnership between a firm and two educational institutions to produce better seed potatoes, using the Triple Helix approach.

In the Triple Helix model government, academia and the private sector work together to develop and introduce innovations. This led to producing and introducing improved seed potatoes at an affordable price through a public private partnership (PPP). Interviews with experts and a survey of local producers were carried out to identify factors influencing the success of the partnership.

A Service, Training and Innovation Center (STIC) has been created to produce the first clean potato seeds in Africa on a commercial scale, based on cultivation of in vitro potato plantlets and aeroponics to produce mini-tubers. It is called Seed Potato Advancement Centre, an education–enterprise partnership, using these plantlets to produce mini-tubers through aeroponics. Seed multipliers are responsible for the next three stages of seed multiplication. The final product is the certified potato, sold to ware potato farmers. The availability of disease-free seed potatoes in Rwanda gives a boost to the potato value chains and contributes to food security. The partnership was successful because of the support from the government and donors, with the private sector and the extension services helping to implement the innovations effectively.

The limitation is that the number of experts interviewed is limited and the survey did not only deal with potato-related activities. The focus is on one region only, but the most important potato growing area in Rwanda.

STICs function as a tool for cooperation between government, private sector and the knowledge sector to achieve commercial and development goals. They function as a channel for technology transfer. They allow applied research, including agronomic research; information collection; and dissemination, networking, training, organization of outreach activities. The model can be repeated in other sectors and countries.

The paper looks at a PPP in agriculture with educational institutions. Second, the Triple Helix and value chain literature is used to study the introduction and implementation of appropriate innovations, while factors determining the success of the partnership were identified. This concerns the first production of clean seed potatoes in Africa on a commercial scale.

This paper aims to identify the level of contribution of different levels of education to remaining in unemployment as well as the transition from unemployment to employment in Egypt.

In this paper, transition probabilities matrix differentiated by gender, age groups, educational levels, marital status and place of residence based on worker flows across employment, unemployment and out of labor force states during the period 2012–2018 using Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey of 2018. The results point to the highly static nature of the Egyptian labor market. Employment and the out of labor force states are the least mobile among labor market states. This is because employment state is very desirable and the out of labor force is the largest labor market states, especially for females. Also, this study examines the impact of different educational levels separately on remaining in unemployment and transition from unemployment to employment state using eight binary logistic regression models.

The main results of transitions from unemployment to employment are relatively large for males, elder-age, uneducated workers as well as workers who are not married and urban residents, and the results of the logistic regression models consistent with the transition probabilities matrix results, except for few cases. Based on the above findings, there is enough evidence to accept the null hypothesis that no education has a positive significant impact to transition unemployed individuals from unemployment to employment, while less than intermediate as well as higher education have a negative significant impact to transition unemployed individuals from unemployment to employment.

This paper proposes to address the problem of the unemployment among highly educated which is much higher compared with illiterates and try to understand the impact of different levels of education separately on the transition from unemployment to employment, to help the policymakers to eradicate the gap between education and the demand of the labor market in Egypt.

This paper delves into the critical role of women in the domains of architecture, engineering, construction and urban planning, particularly within the context of the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the imperative of achieving gender parity. Concentrating on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, this paper explores the profound importance of women as essential contributors to urbanisation and sustainable development. It scrutinizes the existing gender disparities within the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industries; evaluates prevailing women empowerment indices in diverse sectors; and presents a strategic framework for harnessing women’s engagement to cultivate inclusive and sustainable urban cultures in the GCC. This conceptual paper introduces an actionable framework that can serve as a guiding agenda for empowering women in the AEC sectors by incorporating their socio-cultural, economic and ecological contributions towards creating sustainable cities.

Centring its focus on Gulf Cities, this paper employs a comprehensive approach to examine the current gender disparities within the architecture, engineering and construction sectors. It probes potential barriers and advocates for leveraging women’s participation to foster inclusive and sustainable urban development in the GCC. The study introduces the Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) for the Gulf AEC industry elucidating how these measures are translated into a tailored framework.

The paper presents a practical framework that provides actionable guidance for engaging various stakeholders, including governments, academia and industry players, to empower women within the AEC industries. An “Agenda for equitable AEC industries for sustainable urban development: Our Common Gulf Cities” is culminated in a Women Empowerment Index for the AEC Industry (WEI-AEC) designed to serve as a guidance tool to monitor progress within industry, governments and academia.

Future research endeavours could advance the framework by conducting institutional support analyses, multi-stakeholder collaboration studies and practical testing of the framework within real-world scenarios.

The findings of this study can guide and influence a diverse range of initiatives, including policy development, educational strategies, corporate endeavours, awareness campaigns, capacity-building programs, skill enhancement initiatives and knowledge exchange among the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

This conceptual paper introduces a practical framework that can serve as a roadmap for implementing the study’s potential to shape policies, educational programs and corporate initiatives aimed at advancing both gender equality and the development of sustainable cities.