Purpose: This paper examines architecture as an example of the evolving context of qualifying routes in UK professions. Design/methodology/approach: The background and current state of architectural education, qualifying routes and regulatory frameworks in the UK is presented as a case-study, and compared with practices in professional education…

Graduates who typically have L1 English, have majored in one foreign language (FL, L2) or more at university and have gone on to occupy FL posts in the UK civil service have reported mismatches between their pre-employment L2 learning and the tasks they face in the workplace. Such reported divergences in UK civil service capability have not,…

Recognition of the huge variation between professional graduate degree programmes and employer requirements, especially in the construction industry, necessitated a need for assessing and developing competencies that aligned with professionally oriented programmes. The purpose of this research is to develop a competency mapping framework (CMF) in…

Introduction: The unique challenges to learning and participation in education associated with visual impairment are well documented in the literature, as is the importance of addressing these challenges through ensuring practitioners who support them are equipped with appropriate knowledge, understanding, and skills. We use a bioecological…

Although there is now an accepted need for initiatives that support older people's well-being, little attention has been paid to the role of those facilitating such activities. This research explored the benefits and challenges for those working in facilitating musical activities with older people. The research was undertaken at three UK case…

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an intergovernmental economic organisation with 35 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade. The Organisation for works with countries to develop skills strategies tailored to specific needs and contexts. The Organisation prepared a global…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the benefits of reclaiming the idea of professional competence and challenges fragmented approaches to academic qualification and professional recognition. It is argued that academic programmes that are integrated with the requirements for professional recognition can resolve the potentially…

The UK government aims to increase both the number, and also the status, of workers with intermediate-level skills, with a view to creating a "modern class of technicians" who can help to bolster economic growth and prosperity. This article considers the prospects for such a policy by focusing on one particular, but neglected, group of…

In this paper, we explore how the use of a specific mentoring model focusing on the evolution of the relationship between mentor and mentee, may influence the incidence of failure. In our research we employed a case study methodology to examine a regional public service mentoring scheme in the UK where a developmental relationship mentoring model…

Study Programmes were introduced in 2013 so that every post-16 provider could offer their learners coherent study programmes with breadth and depth, enabling learners to progress successfully to employment, apprenticeships, or higher education. Study programmes should include: at least one substantial qualification; English and mathematics for…

This article explores two case studies of the literacy practices of assessment in the vocational curriculum. Previous studies have identified learning in the vocational curriculum as being assessment-driven and that subjects often associated with limited levels of literacy actually require multiple literacy practices from students. Drawing upon…

For highly educated refugee professionals who flee to the UK, gaining a university qualification is one of the key strategies which can be used to re-establish a professional identity and find employment, and yet little is known about their experiences in higher education. This article utilises Bourdieu's framework of field, capital and…

This paper presents a multiple ("n"?=?23), longitudinal case study of the construction of personal employability by Chinese students at a UK university. It draws on the work of Brown and Hesketh to frame notions of employability in order to understand how these students engage with the international and Chinese labour markets from their…

This article presents findings arising from the first UK application of a revised 70-item lecturer self-efficacy questionnaire recently developed for use in the Australian higher education context. Intended to probe and systematically measure confidence in the core functions of research, teaching and other academic or service-related activities…

The analysis presented in this paper offers different examples of how timing issues have adversely affected a series of innovations in education and training. The term "'temporal discontinuity" is used since the problems cannot simply be characterised as "'undue rushing" or "impatience on the part of policy makers."…