Journal Article

The present article connects a secondary analysis of quantitative data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) with the theoretical approach of ‘literacy practices' and related research results from the so-called New Literacy Studies (NLS) tradition, which follows a cultural practices paradigm. According to the literacy as social practice approach, the analysis of adults' literacy and numeracy practices could provide relevant policy information about how to address target groups in adult literacy and basic education. Thus, a Latent Class Analysis was carried out with the German PIAAC dataset in order to differentiate the adult population by their uses of literacy, numeracy and ICT. As a result of this procedure, three subgroups of adults can be distinguished by the frequency in which they use selected skill-related activities. Surprisingly, an adult's individual literacy level does not clearly predict group membership. A further interesting result is that participants in one of the groups seem to compensate for the few chances they have to use their skills at work by using them more often in their everyday life. Both results contribute to the need to draw a more differentiated picture of adults with lower literacy skills.

Purpose: When learning in the workplace is conceptualised as a social process, different social or cultural features of workplaces may enable or constrain students' learning. The purpose of this paper is to understand the views of students, workplace supervisors and university academics concerning sociocultural features that influenced work-integrated learning (WIL) experiences. Design/methodology/approach: An interpretive case-study methodology, incorporating questionnaires and semi-structured interviews was used to determine the views of stakeholders involved in WIL experiences in a sport undergraduate degree., Findings: Students' learning was enhanced when they participated in authentic activities, worked alongside colleagues and could assume increasing responsibility for roles they were given. Social experiences, interactions and activities provided them with opportunities to access individual, shared and tacit knowledge, to learn about language, processes and protocols for interacting and communicating with others, and to become aware of the culture of the workplace. When students successfully acquired this knowledge they were able to 'take-on' the accepted characteristics and practices of the workplace community - an outcome that further enhanced their learning. Practical implications: Students need to understand the social and cultural dimensions of how the work community practices before they begin WIL experiences. Practical ways of addressing this are suggested. Originality/value: This paper conceptualises WIL as learning through the 'practice of work communities' whereby through the activities of the community students can access knowledge in a way that may differ from what they are familiar with from their experiences within the university environment.

Economic inequality is one of the biggest challenges facing society today. Inequality has been recently exacerbated by growth in high- and low-wage occupations at the expense of middle-wage occupations, leading to a 'hollowing' of the middle class. Yet, our understanding of how workplace skills drive this process is limited. Specifically, how do skill requirements distinguish high- and low-wage occupations, and does this distinction constrain the mobility of individuals and urban labor markets? Using unsupervised clustering techniques from network science, we show that skills exhibit a striking polarization into two clusters that highlight the specific social-cognitive skills and sensory-physical skills of high- and low-wage occupations, respectively. The connections between skills explain various dynamics: how workers transition between occupations, how cities acquire comparative advantage in new skills, and how individual occupations change their skill requirements. We also show that the polarized skill topology constrains the career mobility of individual workers, with low-skill workers 'stuck' relying on the low-wage skill set. Together, these results provide a new explanation for the persistence of occupational polarization and inform strategies to mitigate the negative effects of automation and offshoring of employment.

We investigated whether a set of indicators of the employability dimensions proposed by Fugate, Kinicki, and Asforth (i.e., career identity, personal adaptability, and human and social capital) are related to university graduates' employment status and five indicators of the quality of their jobs (pay, hierarchical level, vertical and horizontal match, and job satisfaction). We analyzed a representative sample of university graduates (N = 7,881) from the population of graduates who obtained their degree from the University of Valencia in the period 2006-2010. The results showed that indicators of human and social capital were related to employment status, whereas indicators of human and social capital and career identity were related to distinct job quality indicators. These results support the validity of the conceptual model proposed by Fugate et al. to investigate employability in samples of university graduates.

The fissuring of business structures fundamentally changes the nature of employment and work in industries and the economy as a whole. This article describes the core elements comprising fissuring, distinguishes them from the narrower concepts of contingent work and alternative work arrangements, and provides an estimate of its size. Work restructuring arising from fissuring alters wage determination inside and outside firms affected by it and provides an alternative explanation for a growing empirical literature on earnings inequality. The fissured workplace perspective requires different policies for the workplace and labor market than traditional approaches including those regarding worker rights and protections, employment responses to the business cycle, workforce education and training, and job and career mobility.

In after-school programs, skill-building is a holistic process by which adolescents - guided by adults - achieve mastery. Developmental theories such as Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model position youth as active learners; however, little is known about the specific actions youth use to enhance their learning during skill-building opportunities. Qualitative analysis of 49 semi-structured observations of enrichment activities at a high-quality after-school program showed that adolescents used four types of actions while completing a project: inquiry, contribution, self-regulation, and peer education. These behaviors indicated youths' level of cognitive engagement. Instructors' practices related to questioning, monitoring, group management, and sharing control demonstrate the range of instructional practices that can be used in response to teens' use of the four types of learning actions. This study presents a theoretical model of the skill-building process that illustrates how teens' behaviors interact with staff practices and the demands of project-based learning.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the career development and employability needs of undergraduate information technology (IT) students at an Australian university, and their relation to students' career interest. While many factors and stakeholders contribute to student career development, this study focused specifically on the student experience. Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) is used as an approach to understand the students' needs of career development and employability. Design/methodology/approach: An online survey was completed by 126 IT students to record information about students' career development and employability background and needs. Findings: The results demonstrate that SCCT helps understand the factors that impact on IT students' career development, with their outcome expectations and self-efficacy informed by prior studies in IT and their need for access to 'IT professionals' to contribute towards their career interest. In addition, IT students rely on academic achievement and experiential learning, rather than career resources, to guide their career development and employability., Research limitations/implications: The data collected in this study are limited to one discipline (IT) at one university, which necessarily limits the generalisability of the specific results. Practical implications: Career development is a complex, life-stage-dependant and discipline-specific process that varies for every decision maker. This research makes an important contribution in presenting the IT student experience and demonstrates how an appropriate career development model can help understand students' needs. This outcome will help educators better support IT students to build the career interest. Originality/value: This study explored the often-overlooked student experience of career development, providing valuable insight into IT students' needs.

Luxembourg exhibits strong transnational traits within its skills regime, defying any neat fit with existing educational typologies. It is characterised by its high-skill economy, cross-cultural characteristics, and central location within the European Union. As such, Luxembourg has developed a hybrid strategy of responding to labour market challenges, and by that, to skills development. Our institutionalist analysis finds that Luxembourg is involved in transnational skills development in three complementary ways: (a) employers in Luxembourg extensively recruit skilled workers at the European and global levels, but also (b) heavily rely on the distinct skills sets of cross-border commuters from the neighbouring regions of Belgium, France, and Germany (the Greater Region). Furthermore, (c) Luxembourg combines institutional elements of these neighbouring countries - representing distinct models of capitalism and welfare - within its own education system. In combining the specific strengths of different national skills regimes, institutional bricolage represents a core feature of Luxembourg's highly stratified system of skill formation. Our analytical framework refers to two major comparative political economy perspectives, namely the welfare state and varieties of capitalism approaches, to analyse how Luxembourg has responded to deindustrialisation by creating a domestic transnational labour market.

The creative industries workforce requires employees that use ICT applications to solve the knowledge related tasks at work. The aim of this research is twofold: (1) to see if previously cited twenty-first century digital skills are suited to the creative industries workforce and (2) to investigate the extent to which skill development get attention in current organizational practices. In-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 24 managers and senior executives of creative organizations based in the Netherlands. As a guideline for the interviews, a conceptual twenty-first century digital skills framework was used. This framework presented the following seven core skills supported by the use of ICT: technical, information management, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving. The following five contextual skills that play a role when using ICT were also presented: ethical awareness, cultural awareness, flexibility, self-direction, and lifelong learning. The results support the importance of twenty-first century digital skills, however, there seems to be insufficient attention to the levels of these skills; they play a minor role during the selection and evaluation procedures. Often it is assumed that existing digital skills are sufficient. Managers are encouraged to improve on developing requirements necessary for future employees as well as measurements to ensure current employees skill levels. The developed framework might be used as a management tool for indicating skills that need to be assessed among professionals working in the creative industries.