Vocational Domain Research Articles

The road less travelled: Exploring the reluctance of vocational students towards higher education in Portugal

AbstractDespite rising participation rates in Portugal, a gap persists between general and vocational upper secondary students' transition to higher education (HE). This study employs a qualitative methodology, specifically through content analysis of focus group discussions, to explore the factors influencing vocational students' reluctance towards higher education, amidst specific policies designed to aid their transition. Empirical findings suggest that vocational students may exhibit reservations stemming from self‐perceived academic deficiencies, impacting their self‐confidence in continuing their education at a HE level. Nevertheless, confidence in market‐valued practical skills might motivate HE consideration within a vocational domain. Their practical focus also makes HE seem less immediately applicable in the labour market. Many prioritise integration into the workforce for short‐run objectives, seeking breaks, experience and financial earnings. Aiming for earning and practicality, many lean towards the labour market over HE, even considering emigrating to achieve financial stability. The study emphasises the need for Portuguese educational policies to align vocational training with HE, supporting diverse student ambitions and holistic career paths.

Enhancing English as a foreign language communicative competence among engineering undergraduates through English medium instruction

Introduction. The actuality of this research paper is determined by new approaches to the content and organization of professional training for bachelor students in view of UNESCO requirements to sustainable development of modern engineering education. The practical experience gained in the course of teaching in a technical university revealed the fact that English medium instruction contributes to the development of both professional and communicative competences of a global engineer. The current study aims to design a professionally-oriented module-based English medium course targeted at the formation of English as a foreign language competence of non-native bachelors and prove its efficiency in training practice. Materials and methods. The methodological basis for this study was a competence-based and module-based approaches to teaching academic subjects through English for Russian-speaking bachelor students majoring in nuclear physics and technologies. There were 113 undergraduate students of the 3d and 4th years of study who took part in the experimental study carried out on the basis of National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University (Russian Federation). Results. In the course of the research, a module-based English medium course (EMC) was developed and introduced in a four-year bachelor training, which offered trainees deep and rich language practice on a variety of topics referred to their vocational domain and regular assessment of the target competence development throughout the implementation of the target training course. The obtained results indicated that trainees’ target competence significantly enhanced, in particular, their vocabulary and oral communicative skills. The most striking results were demonstrated by trainees whose levels of the target competence increased significantly and reached advanced level (63.2%). Conclusion. The EMC course designed in compliance with the main principals of competence-based and modulebased approaches had a positive effect on future engineers’ EFL communicative competence development, thus, contributing a lot to their successful career progression as highly professional engineers on the global arena.

Vocational Domain Identification with Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing on Wikipedia Text: Error Analysis and Class Balancing

Highly-skilled migrants and refugees finding employment in low-skill vocations, despite professional qualifications and educational backgrounds, has become a global tendency, mainly due to the language barrier. Employment prospects for displaced communities are mostly decided by their knowledge of the sublanguage of the vocational domain they are interested in working. Common vocational domains include agriculture, cooking, crafting, construction, and hospitality. The increasing amount of user-generated content in wikis and social networks provides a valuable source of data for data mining, natural language processing, and machine learning applications. This paper extends the contribution of the authors’ previous research on automatic vocational domain identification by further analyzing the results of machine learning experiments with a domain-specific textual data set while considering two research directions: a. prediction analysis and b. data balancing. Wrong prediction analysis and the features that contributed to misclassification, along with correct prediction analysis and the features that were the most dominant, contributed to the identification of a primary set of terms for the vocational domains. Data balancing techniques were applied on the data set to observe their impact on the performance of the classification model. A novel four-step methodology was proposed in this paper for the first time, which consists of successive applications of SMOTE oversampling on imbalanced data. Data oversampling obtained better results than data undersampling in imbalanced data sets, while hybrid approaches performed reasonably well.

Teaching Languages for Specific Purposes: Perceptions, Methodological Perspectives, Practical Issues and Challenges

Abstract. Language skills are becoming increasingly important in organisations and businesses who want to be competitive on an international level. Mastery in foreign languages is considered not just an excellent tool to bridge gaps between people coming from different countries and to create strong sentimental and professional relationships, but above all an instrument that enables workers to considerably improve their career prospects. Knowing how to use a language in specific circumstances and purposes gives people a very strong bargaining power, especially in the labour world. Whereas up to twenty or thirty years ago, speaking a foreign language was a very important prerequisite for just a few, like managers or diplomats, today it has become of fundamental importance in all professional circles. In fact, in today’s European society, languages and intercultural play a fundamental role in getting to know different people and in obtaining professional and economic development. This explains why today there exists a need to diversify the language training market with courses in foreign languages for specific purposes, be it for tourism, for call centers, for business and so on, focusing on acquiring the necessary terminological, interdisciplinary and intercultural skills needed for specific jobs. Such courses imply addressing the immediate and very specific needs of the learners involved, having as their driving force, both in the preparation stage as well as in the development stage, the needs analysis of the learners. In terms of implementation and methodology, such courses have to be totally learner-focused, practically oriented and, above all, applied to professional contexts, providing a method of learning, teaching and assessing basic skills or abilities in the language, not simply according to the particular needs of the students but also in line with the specific requirements of the vocational domain. This obviously presents a number of challenges which need to be discussed and analysed from both the educators’ and the students’ point of view, given that such courses need to address the immediate and very specific needs of the learners involved, which in turn should serve as the basis for informed curriculum practices, such as syllabus design, materials development and instructional design. It also necessitates a threefold framework design, consisting of an individual theoretical component of learning, an individual practical component as well as the provision for group work and practice. All this has serious ramifications on teacher training and formation courses, and requires methodical collaboration and cooperation from all stakeholders involved, be it the educational institutions offering the course, the employer or any authority requesting the course as well as the learners themselves.

Vocational interests assessed at the end of high school predict life outcomes assessed 10 years later over and above IQ and Big Five personality traits.

Vocational interests are important aspects of personality that reflect individual differences in motives, goals, and personal strivings. It is therefore plausible that these characteristics have an impact on individuals' lives not only in terms of vocational outcomes, but also beyond the vocational domain. Yet the effects of vocational interests on various life outcomes have rarely been investigated. Using Holland's RIASEC taxonomy (Holland, 1997), which groups vocational interests into 6 broad domains, the present study examined whether vocational interests are significant predictors of life outcomes that show incremental validity over and above the Big Five personality traits. For this purpose, a cohort of German high school students (N = 3,023) was tracked over a period of 10 years after graduating from school. Linear and logistic regression analyses were used to examine the predictive validity of RIASEC interests and Big Five personality traits. Nine outcomes from the domains of work, relationships, and health were investigated. The results indicate that vocational interests are important predictors of life outcomes that show incremental validity over the Big Five personality traits. Vocational interests were significant predictors of 7 of the 9 investigated outcomes: full-time employment, gross income, unemployment, being married, having children, never having had a relationship, and perceived health status. For work and relationship outcomes, vocational interests were even stronger predictors than the Big Five personality traits. For health-related outcomes, the results favored the personality traits. Effects were similar across gender for all outcomes-except 2 relationship outcomes. Possible explanations for these effects are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Combining concept maps and interviews to produce representations of personal professional theories in higher vocational education: effects of order and vocational domain

This article presents the use of personal professional theories (PPTs) in Dutch higher vocational education. PPTs are internalised bodies of formal and practical knowledge and convictions that professionals use to direct their behaviour. With the aid of high-quality representations of students’ PPTs teachers can access, monitor, and support the professional development of students. Two qualitatively equivalent techniques for representing PPTs are (computer-supported) concept mapping and interviewing. The article reports on a study of the effects of combining these techniques to determine whether (1) this results in higher quality representations and (2), if so, whether technique order will make a difference. The study was conducted in two very different vocational domains: accountancy with 29 participants and teacher education with 20 participants. The results of a counterbalanced quasi-experiment with two factors (i.e. domain and order) show in both domains that combining the techniques improves quality but that the order in which the techniques are applied does not matter. This order independence has practical importance as the combination of first conducting a computer-supported analysis of a student generated concept map and subsequently discussing the results with the student, fosters learning and is well suited to educational practice.

The Importance of Achievement Goals and Attitudes Towards Education for Explaining Adolescents' Career Decision Self-Efficacy

Previous research has acknowledged the relevance of individuals' perception of own abilities related to the vocational domain, namely career decision self-efficacy beliefs, for their professional success. In the present study, such beliefs were examined among a group of high school seniors who are facing the process of choosing what professional path to pursue after high school. In addition, students' achievement goals and attitudes towards education were also explored. Results indicate mastery approach, performance avoidance and work avoidance goals, as well as participation in extracurricular activities and attitudes towards education, as significant predictors of career decision self-efficacy. Findings indicate the relevance of academic experiences for the development of career decision self-efficacy and provide novel evidence regarding the complex relationship between individuals' educational and vocational considerations, and may be informative for designing future vocational guidance interventions targeted at adolescents transitioning into colleges or the job market, or individuals undergoing similar occupational transitions.

Competence-based education to develop digital competence

The competence approach to learning and teaching has been described by several theoretical models. These formal models are often not integrated with concrete educational activity. On the contrary, this article proposes a practical implementation of the competence approach in education. The model of reference is the Comprehensive Competence-based Education framework, defined for the vocational education and used to analyse the curriculum of some vocational schools in the Netherlands. The framework is here applied to Digital Competence. This specific vocational domain represents the field where the applicability of framework has been tested. Moreover, this is used as a starting point for the operationalisation of an educational model for the digital competence.

Subject Specific Didactical Competence of VTE Teachers from the Perspective of Studies on Teacher Thinking

The subject specific didactical competence is the keyword in the vocational education reform and development in China. To identify its nature and structure, to find a way of its development attracts the most political and research interest. The study on teacher thinking (teachers’ cognition research) since 1980s have given a new perspective to the discussion on teachers competence and revealed its character and structure in many aspects. These findings have great impact on the teacher education and professional development but stay rather unnoticed in the VTE teacher education discussion in China. First, leading questions and the theoretical backgrounds which have driven the study on teacher thinking are briefly reviewed. Then, Leading empirical research on mathematics teacher COACTIVE and two research on VTE teachers in German are introduced. This leads to the conclusion that how important it is to reveal teachers practical knowledge for the description and development of VTE teachers subject specific competence, and that the knowledge about teachers knowledge about specific vocational domain as a highly valued black box is actually seldom studied in detail. Two studies in Shanghai on VTE teachers and teacher students with the goal to reveal the teachers thinking (teachers self-conception, their didactical thinking) are then reported. Possible content focus and methodological ideas are then discussed.

Características vocacionales de estudiantes universitarios ciegos y deficientes visuales: una aproximación cualitativa

RESUMENSon bien conocidos los condicionantes vocacionales que influyen en los estudiantes universitarios en función de características como el sexo, nivel socioeconómico o grupo vocacional al que se adscriben. Sin embargo, poco se conoce de las características vocacionales de estos estudiantes cuando están afectados por una discapacidad. La aproximación cualitativa, a través de entrevistas semiestructuradas, es la vía que permite conocer con detenimiento las necesidades y características de estos estudiantes para establecer un asesoramiento de calidad. Esta metodología nos muestra que dicho asesoramiento debe centrarse, básicamente, en tres campos: el socio-personal, el de autonomía e independencia personal, y el propiamente vocacional a través de servicios ofertados por la institución universitaria, como el llevado a cabo en la Universitat de València; pero sin restringir la actuación a este momento educativo. Este trabajo trata de realizar una primera prospección que sirva de base para establecer servicios especializados en la atención a estudiantes con discapacidad visual.ABSTRACTVocational characteristics related to sex, socioeconomic status or vocational group influencing higher education students´ vocational behaviour are well known. However, the vocational characteristics of students that suffer from some kind of dissability have been less studied. The qualitative apporach with it use of semi-structured interviews is the best way to find out the needs and unique characteristics of these students in order to deliver quality counseling services. Qualitative methodology shows us that vocational and career counseling should be based on three domains: the socio-personal domain, the personal autonomy domain, and the vocational domain. An example of counseling directed to the vocational domain could be the use of University-based counseling services, but should not be restricted to this educational level. This research attempts is a first step to develop specialized counseling services for students with some kind of visual impairment.

Association between psychiatric state and outcome following traumatic brain injury

This study aimed to explore the relationship between current post-traumatic brain injury psychiatric disorders and psychosocial outcome. A total of 100 participants and 87 significant others were interviewed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Diagnosis. Participants with mild to very severe traumatic brain injury up to 5.5 years post-injury. The Sydney Psychosocial Reintegration Scale assessed changes in vocational status, relationship status and independent living status. The vocational domain of the Sydney Psychosocial Reintegration Scale revealed the greatest degree of change. Current depression and/or anxiety contributed significantly more variance to the regression models than did any other variables. Pre-injury psychiatric disorders and substance use disorders were not predictive of any outcome variables. Longer post-traumatic amnesia duration, fewer years of education, male gender and greater time post-injury were predictive of certain outcome domains. There were no significant differences between traumatic brain injury participants' self-report and the reports of their significant others regarding psychiatric symptoms or outcome measures. The presence of current depression and anxiety are strongly related to poor outcome in terms of vocational status, relationship status and independence. The causative direction of these relationships is unclear. Using a 3-domain outcome measure has shed some light on the factors that contribute to different aspects of outcome following traumatic brain injury.

Great(er) Expectations

Great(er) Expectations

Assessment, training and quality: Evaluation of some vocational rehabilitation programmes

Aim of this contribution is to illustrate some topics of recent research in the vocational rehabilitation domain. First, three evaluation studies of new vocational rehabilitation programmes in vocational rehabilitation centers are described. These studies concern individually tailored educational programmes and tele-tutoring. This is followed by the presentation of a study concerned with the development and validation of an instrument for diagnosing planning competence. Thirdly, the development of an objective, standardized tool for monitoring the quality of rehabilitation processes during vocational training will be presented.

Vocational Psychology: Using One of Counseling Psychology's Strengths to Foster Human Strength

At several points in the history of their field, counseling psychologists have emphasized that fostering human strengths is part of their mission. Vocational psychology is an area of counseling psychology that has focused consistently on human strengths. In keeping with the Major Contribution's theme, this article examines the following: (a) theoretical models and constructs of vocational development and processes; (b) empirical research on positive functioning in the vocational domain; (c) the actual and potential impact on research, practice, and training of vocational psychology's focus on positive human functioning; and (d) how vocational psychology fits within the person-environment interaction (PEX) framework, with particular attention given to expanding exploration and assessment of PEX's “person” component.

Dispositional and maturational development through competency‐based training

Presents a perspective on vocational learning that proposes that vocational competence is dependent upon dispositional development, which in turn, results in moves towards maturation. Reports research with unemployed adults engaging in vocational training and resulting in four findings. First, while training packages describe assessable outcomes in competency‐referenced terms, trainees describe learning outcomes in non‐competency referenced terms. Second, vocational trainees describe their learning in terms of dispositional outcomes; that is, in terms of values, interests and attitudes. Third, dispositions can be categorised in terms of maturational concepts. Fourth, trainees made moves towards maturation as a result of CBT/NEIS training over the six‐week period of the course. The findings have important ramifications for all future VET/CBT trainees since it is the researcher's formative theory that maturation is a subset of competence in every vocational skill domain.

Family Interaction Patterns and College Student Career Development

We examined whether and how family interaction patterns relate to role salience and vocational identity in a predominantly Anglo-American college student sample (107 women, 65 men). Results indicated significant links between perceived emotional closeness and structural flexibility in the family-of-origin and higher levels of participation in, commitment to, and value expectations for home and family roles. Levels of work-role salience and vocational identity were not significantly related to family-of-origin interaction patterns. Appraising and attending to family-of-origin dynamics may be useful in career assessment and counseling that involves helping clients understand and fit family into their life-careers. Ultimately, determining with more certainty the precise degree of transportability of the family circumplex model to the vocational domain will require continued research in this vein.

Relational Dimensions in Career Development

In an effort to contribute to an enhanced conceptual understanding of the interconnection between communion and agency in the context of career development, relational dimensions from Josselson's (1992) model are examined and applied to the vocational domain. The attributes of each of these relational dimensions are discussed and illustrated in the context of career development and work experience, with a particular emphasis on vocational exploration as a core process across the life span. The relevance of each relational dimension to exploration is exemplified with the goal of illuminating the connections between work and interpersonal functioning.

The Swedish model and manufacturing industry:

During the post-war period profound changes have occurred in the cluster of institutions and organisations called “The Swedish Model”. This article deals with those changes and with their interplay with other social changes. More specific, changes in the system for industrial vocational training, an early and cherished domain for the Swedish model-type of co-operation, are related to transforming industrial structure and to changes in industrial work organisation. The article results in an economichistorical explanation of how the very centrally managed model of the 1960s was transformed to a more local one.

An Intelligent System for Case Review and Risk Assessment in Social Services

This article reports on the development and implementation of DISXPERT, an intelligent rule-based system tool for referral of social security disability recipients to vocational rehabilitation services. The growing use of paraprofessionals as caseworkers responsible for assessment in the social services area provides fertile domain areas for new and innovative application of intelligent system technology. The main function of DISXPERT is to provide support to paraprofessional caseworkers in reaching unbiased and consistent assessment decisions regarding referral of clients to vocational rehabilitation services. The results after four years of use demonstrate that paraprofessionals using DISXPERT can make assessments in less time and with a level of accuracy superior to the vocational rehabilitation domain professionals using manual methods. This article discusses the problem domain, the design and development of the system, uses of AI technology, payoffs, and deployment and maintenance of the system.

Extending the limits of complex learning in organic amnesia: Computer training in a vocational domain

This study explored the limits of learning that could be achieved by an amnesic patient in a complex real-world domain. Using a cuing procedure known as the method of vanishing cues, a severely amnesic encephalitic patient was taught over 250 discrete pieces of new information concerning the rules and procedures for performing a task involving data entry into a computer. Subsequently, she was able to use this acquired knowledge to perform the task accurately and efficiently in the workplace. These results suggest that amnesic patients' preserved learning abilities can be extended well beyond what has been reported previously.