Gender equity is an area of concern within STEM, where women are underrepresented in education and career roles. Increasing the representation of women in STEM and removing negative gender stereotypes are necessary actions, both of which can be fostered during formal education through employability initiatives and in the workplace. This study…

Haute couture-making techniques are critical competencies to be mastered by fashion engineering education (CEE) graduates. However, until now, many graduates have been unable to master these techniques optimally. Various studies and field phenomena confirm that they are unprepared for supporting knowledge (SK), socio-cultural, and psychological…

Purpose: Although doctoral education has experienced substantial development in recent decades, it remains an elite, hence fragile, dimension of university policy and practice. This study aims to articulate perspectives to guide the next phase of strengthening and growth. Design/methodology/approach: Working from theoretical and empirical research…

We aim to develop and test tasks designed to assess professional competence at the university's formation stage. The system of internal competency assessment utilizing the requirements of professional standards in the IT industry enables bachelor's degree graduates to assess their level of preparation for professional activities. Our study…

Teacher education reforms worldwide have reinforced a narrative that 'high-quality' teaching and teachers are the most significant contributors to raising education achievement, reducing societal inequities, and boosting economic development. Consequently, countries have put substantial efforts into regulating initial teacher education (ITE) to…

The work-ready capabilities of graduates are a critical quality concern for universities: some emerging professional disciplines continue to face claims of theory-practice gaps. The diversity of perspectives on the quality of graduate work-readiness suggests that this is a wicked problem that cannot be absolutely solved but that can be resolved by…

An accepted role of universities is to prepare students for their careers and lives. However, what should or could be taught and how, in order to better prepare students for their futures, is contested. In this study, we interviewed 18 New Zealand university teachers about their experiences of developing students' employability capabilities within…

Purpose: Flatter organisational structures and nonlinear career trajectories mean intrinsic value and subjective career success are increasingly important for motivating, guiding and rewarding contemporary workers. While objective measures of career success have been well explored, more research is needed to understand the dimensions of subjective…

Purpose: In today's highly competitive global business environment, there is a growing demand for professionals who possess well-developed soft skills. Such abilities include flexibility, effective communication and other skills. Soft skills are personal attributes and qualities that are more closely related to the emotional side of human beings.…

A growing literature examines PhD graduates working beyond academia. These studies are critiqued for rarely addressing the sectoral and organisational structural factors that influence actual work. So, we examined how the non-academic, contextually situated, organisational job specifications of fifteen PhD graduates interacted with their daily…

Although school development can be viewed as an emerging responsibility of teachers, special needs education in Germany does not leave sufficient room for non-teaching tasks, leading to a knowledge gap in the professionalisation of pre-service teachers with regard to school development upon entering the profession. This study focused on the…

The purpose of this article is to present the results of an exploratory analysis of the level of perceived achievement of the complex thinking competency in a group of engineering students in their last semester at a university in Western Mexico. Its intention is to identify whether this population has the necessary skills to be able to meet…

This study examines the role of science education in fostering self-reliance and driving economic development in Nigeria. Using a systematic literature review (SLR) method, we analysed 16 empirical studies and reports to evaluate the impact of science education on key economic indicators such as employment generation, GDP growth, and industrial…

To understand what to improve in initial teacher education to better prepare teachers for their profession, we asked alumni (N = 93) from three Swedish initial teacher education programs, what in their education they thought had benefited them the most in preparing them for a teaching career, and what they thought was lacking given their…

Dispositional employability can be understood as a psychosocial process that facilitates the enactment of behaviors directed toward career self-management. This investigation aimed to test the validity of a measure of dispositional employability to predict salient career outcomes in university students. Two studies using distinct samples of…