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The importance of adapting training styles and methods to trainees′ learning styles is discussed. Such an approach should provide a basis for training strategies which can help trainers improve the performance of an organisation′s training programmes.

This is Part 1 of a multi‐part paper and examines small group training for those charged with responding in an emergency situation. To ensure both effective and efficient training it is important to understand that people learn in different ways. Their learning styles have to be taken into account for both the design and the implementation of the learning experiences. Discusses different learning styles and tools available.

Continues from Part 1 and investigates how the learning styles and training methods for individuals and groups can be matched to maximise the efficiency of the training programme. In a similar manner to identifying personal learning styles, training methods can be classified by their efficiency with the different learning‐style groups. The training methods are divided into large and small group activities together with individual training processes. The learning styles of participants are then matched to the training styles.

The purpose of this study is to further the current research on the topic of the intention to transfer training and training effectiveness by examining the gender-related training intention and work behaviour differences.

To assess the gender-related behavioural differences, a quantitative approach using surveys from employees in Saudi universities. Using the structural equation modelling multi-group analysis approach, this study analysed the data collected from 389 individuals, comprising 186 males and 153 females. Group invariance analysis was conducted before the hypotheses were tested.

The results showed that learning style and supervisor support are critical determinants of training transfer intention and the latter is critical determinant of training effectiveness across samples of males and females. Moreover, the variance explained by the model in the male sample was found to be more than that of the female sample. Interestingly, males are found to be different than females in their perception that the training effectiveness is determined by the learning style.

Findings suggest that both the learning style of employees should be considered when designing a training programme and a proper support to employees should be provided by their supervisors to get the best of training investment. This may guide decision-makers to enhance training effectiveness.

The majority of the studies concerning training effectiveness has overlooked its antecedents and much in-depth scholarly research endeavours are still required. This study attempted to provide valuable insights of the antecedents and consequences of training transfer intention and how this structure differs between males and females in a developing country context.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a selection of papers from the 10th Annual European Learning Styles Information Network Conference.

The paper looks at problems, developments in the application of style and potential styles for practice in the area of cognitive and learning styles in education and training practice, with a brief look at the papers within this issue.

The paper finds that each of the papers presented here raises a number of pertinent issues which are significant in the ongoing debate regarding the value of cognitive and learning styles in education and training practice. These are presented in the form of ten key messages.

The paper presents a useful insight into the problems, politicisation and potential of learning styles in education and training.

The learning style of individuals can be an important consideration for trainers in looking to optimize the effectiveness of training. Explores the usefulness of the learning styles approach for trainers. Considers whether training style should be matched with learning style within a training programme. Suggests that self‐direction in learning may be a more appropriate approach in developing skills beyond the confines of a training programme. Outlines a framework for trainers to consider in increasing learner self‐direction, and identifies key factors that should be taken into consideration.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the influences of expatriate characteristics, complexity of task assignment and perceived cross‐cultural differences on needs for expatriate training, and expatriate training effectiveness and to evaluate the influences of the fit between the expatriate's learning style and instructor's teaching modes on training effectiveness.

Survey methodology was adopted to obtain data from the opinions of expatriates in foreign companies within Taiwan and China. Quantitative data were used to answer the research questions. A total of 400 foreign companies, with 200 in Taiwan and 200 in China, were selected as the survey sample. Hierarchical regression analyses were adopted to test the five research questions as developed in this study.

The study results revealed that expatriates' perceived needs for training were negatively influenced by competence and adaptability to work in the overseas assignment. Expatriates' perceived needs for expatriation training were also influenced by the complexity of the task assignment, capability of host country managers, and the perceived cross‐culture differences between the home country and host country. Furthermore, the levels of fit between expatriate learning preferences and the instructor's teaching methods did moderate the relationship between the need for expatriate training and the effectiveness of such training.

First, since this study adopts cross‐sectional research design and examines the opinions of expatriates at one point in time, directional relationships may not be clear. It is recommended that future research conduct longitudinal studies to confirm the findings of this study. Second, due to the constraints of time and resources, the samples of this study are limited to expatriates working for foreign firms in Taiwan and in China. The generalization of the study results should thus be interpreted with appropriate caution. It is recommended that the same questionnaire, or an abbreviated form, could be used for expatriates in other countries, such as expatriates of multinational subsidiaries with US, Japanese, and European investment origins. Additional research will further confirm the validity and generalizability of the findings.

The training of expatriates has been recognized as one of the key elements for the success of business globalization. However, the evaluation of the effectiveness of training and development for overseas expatriates has remained largely unclear. The results of this study enabled one to understand how relevant contingency factors influence expatriate training needs and effectiveness. These findings could provide importance references for academics and practitioners when deciding on business practices.

On the basis of the full‐range theory of leadership of Bass and Avolio, several hypotheses designed to examine the relationships of transformational leadership style with group outcomes in army training teams, in differing contexts were tested. These outcomes consisted of cohesion, learning culture and members' self‐efficacy. It is the purpose of this paper to determine whether the effects of leadership style of trainers is universal across teams from various contextual backgrounds.

The population comprised 890 cadets in the basic, operations and support, and infantry tracks in an officers' training school of the Israeli Defense Forces. They were organized into 66 teams. Data were collected in two stages, by means of Form 5X of the multi factorial leadership questionnaire (Bass and Avolio). The moderation of track context on the relationships between leadership style and group outcomes was analyzed, by means of moderated regressions.

Findings do not support the universality of relationships predicted according to the theory. Only in the case of the basic track was transformational leadership style related to the group outcome of learning culture. In this track as well, transformational leadership was slightly related to group cohesion. The study points to the importance of the moderation of context in the relationships of leadership styles and group outcomes, and raises questions regarding the universality of leadership style relationships in groups according to the full‐range theory. The possible importance of group background as a moderator is discussed.

The study emphasizes recent research indications as to the importance of contextual considerations in the study of relationships of transformational leadership to group aspects.

Functional competences and effective working styles are distinguished as aspects of occupational competence. Two types of review and guidance meeting are described: progress review meetings and transitional review meetings. Possible procedures for assessing functional competences and effective working styles in each type of review are outlined, including a simple practical questionnaire for recording views of the trainer and trainee about current progress towards effective working styles. Those views are summarised on an easy‐to‐use working styles index. By comparing the versions of the index completed by a trainee and by his or her trainer, progress and plans can be discussed, and agreement reached about areas deserving special attention in future.

The big challenge in apparel recommendation system research is not the exploration of machine learning technologies in fashion, but to really understand clothes, fashion and people, and know what to learn. The purpose of this paper is to explore an advanced apparel style learning and recommendation system that can recognise deep design-associated features of clothes and learn the connotative meanings conveyed by these features relating to style and the body so that it can make recommendations as a skilled human expert.

This study first proposes a type of new clothes style training data. Second, it designs three intelligent apparel-learning models based on newly proposed training data including ATTRIBUTE, MEANING and the raw image data, and compares the models’ performances in order to identify the best learning model. For deep learning, two models are introduced to train the prediction model, one is a convolutional neural network joint with the baseline classifier support vector machine and the other is with a newly proposed classifier later kernel fusion.

The results show that the most accurate model (with average prediction rate of 88.1 per cent) is the third model that is designed with two steps, one is to predict apparel ATTRIBUTEs through the apparel images, and the other is to further predict apparel MEANINGs based on predicted ATTRIBUTEs. The results indicate that adding the proposed ATTRIBUTE data that captures the deep features of clothes design does improve the model performances (e.g. from 73.5 per cent, Model B to 86 per cent, Model C), and the new concept of apparel recommendation based on style meanings is technically applicable.

The apparel data and the design of three training models are originally introduced in this study. The proposed methodology can evaluate the pros and cons of different clothes feature extraction approaches through either images or design attributes and balance different machine learning technologies between the latest CNN and traditional SVM.