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Secondary career and technical education (CTE) provides high school students the opportunity to gain occupational skills for in-demand 21st century jobs linked to college and career readiness (CCR). All students, including those with a disability, can benefit from CTE. Secondary CTE is a predictor of positive post-school outcomes for students with disabilities (SWD; Mazzotti et al., 2021). This study explored the Perkins Collaborative Research Network (PCRN) data associated with secondary CTE and SWD participation from school years 2014-2015 to 2018-2019 to establish a baseline in enrollment. The data provides a point of reference and trends to better understand serving SWD in CTE and sheds light on access, equity, and inclusion framed in policy and practice articulated by Harvey et al. (2020). The findings can also inform continued work associated with a CCR framework for SWD (Morningstar et al., 2017).

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The study explored the influence of work experience on adult part-time students' academic success as defined by their cumulative grade point average. The sample consisted of 614 part-time students from four polytechnic institutions in Malaysia. The study identified six factors to measure the perceived influence of work experiences - positive belief, negative belief, intrinsic motivation, learning orientation, deep learning approach, and surface learning approach. The results indicated that lower academic success was associated with higher negative belief, lower intrinsic motivation and adopting surface learning approach. Students with a deeper learning approach, greater intrinsic motivation, and greater learning orientation tended to perceive higher positive belief. In contrast, students who favored surface learning approaches were more likely to perceive negatively the impact of work experiences on their academic learning. The best-fitted path model demonstrated students' academic success was affected negatively by negative belief and weakly by intrinsic motivation. Other factors did not have significant direct effects on students' academic success. These findings suggest that the success of adult part-time students does not rely on their positive attitude alone, but also could depend on the effectiveness of the classroom environment, teaching and learning strategies, and assessment methods.

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Teacher retention is an important issue which can influence the delivery of quality education. However, only a few factors have been identified in the area of career and technical education that may influence teacher retention. The purpose of this study was to identify specific factors that may influence the retention of trade and industrial teachers in the state of Kansas. The major findings were as follows: (a) these teachers felt their educational preparation was good except in the area of student organizations; (b) trade and industrial teachers indicated a strong commitment to improving student performance, the reputation of the school, and student engagement; (c) gaining student respect was rated as an extremely important part of social integration into the school; (d) for their first year teaching experience, the respondents agreed with most items except that they were undecided about managing student behaviors effectively and confidence in curriculum development; and (e) teachers mostly agreed with the items that indicated they possessed the needed skills and abilities in their current teaching position.

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The integration of career and technical education (CTE) and academic curricular content represents a challenge for CTE professionals. Currently, little is known about the process of integrating science into secondary CTE programs. Grounded theory method was employed to create information about CTE teachers' perspectives of and experiences with the process of CTE and science content integration. From the perspective of the CTE teachers involved, integrating CTE and science content resulted in their programs of study being adapted into something very different than they were before the process of integration was begun. The CTE teachers revealed that evolutions in their programs of study and themselves were associated with three other categories within the grounded theory: connecting; enacting; and futuring. The findings indicate that the process of CTE and science content integration represents a deep and complex episode for CTE teachers. The findings also reveal that the process of CTE and science content integration requires connecting to others, putting ideas into action, and an orientation towards the future.

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Workforce preparation, including career and technical education (CTE), provides opportunities for people to become successful participants in the global workplace. To accomplish this purpose, people must be equipped with knowledge and skills necessary to fulfill personal interests and goals, develop leadership skills, and become qualified and competent members of the workforce. CTE educators are challenged with determining the best ways to prepare people for work when, in many cases, the types of work those people will perform does not yet exist. Twenty-first century jobs are evolving rapidly with some jobs going away and other types of work appearing. For CTE to remain relevant, a framework is needed that will shape and guide research and curriculum development to address an increasingly volatile and uncertain future. This article describes and explains such a framework. [The authors] argue that three key components - career navigation, work ethic, and innovation - can support educational and vocational outcomes that will be lasting and durable in the 21st century workplace.

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College and career readiness is a concern in both business and education arenas. Employers are calling for entry-level employees with basic academic skills and educators are being held accountable for student achievement in similar academic areas. In this environment, WorkKeys has emerged as a set of assessments that could respond to the needs of both employers and educators and signal to test takers their readiness for further education or a career. In Alaska, state policymakers selected WorkKeys for use with high school juniors in an effort to measure both college and career readiness. A study was conducted in one urban Alaska high school regarding juniors' perceptions of college and career readiness related to WorkKeys scores. Findings indicated a gap between student perceptions of college and career readiness and college-ready WorkKeys scores, and perceived value in the use of WorkKeys assessments. Results and implications for educational leaders and policymakers are presented.

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This study examined the use of dexterity as an indicator of future performance of beginning welders. This could lead to the selection or recruitment of participants for welding training programs. With a high demand for welders, it is imperative that welding training programs be efficient at producing certified welders. The time required to train certified welders is one of the obstacles training programs face. Many occupational fields have tried to predict a student's future performances before admitting them into a training program by analyzing their dexterous ability. This study utilized the complete Minnesota Dexterity Test to examine Participants' dexterity during a welding training program. Upon completion of the training program, participants performed tests welds that were overseen by a certified welding instructor (CWI) who visually inspects each weld. All three dexterity tests were found to have statistically significant relationships with the visual pass/fail rates for basic shielded metal arc welds.

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Using national jobless data and education statistics, this study examines the systemic association between Korea’s youth unemployment trend and the workforce supply structure in which the youths’ educational attainment patterns plays a key role. Focus is given to how type and length of education are correlated with employability. The findings of this study include the following: (a) Youth joblessness is becoming chronic and structural – despite the economic fluctuation, youth jobless rates have remained around 7 per cent over the past five years; (b) With the college enrollment expansion, not only is the number of jobless college graduates increasing, but the percentage of unemployed college graduates among all jobless youth groups has continued to rise during the past decade; (c) Contrary to the increased female working population, employment of female university graduates has declined; (d) In terms of job placement, two-year college graduates continued to perform better than those with a four-year degree; similarly, career and technical education (CTE) graduates performed better than non-CTE graduates; and (e) High school graduates without occupational skills are the highest at-risk youth group. The findings suggest that some degree of youth joblessness is generated by supply dynamics such as the tendency toward a four-year degree rather than a two-year CTE program and ongoing disdain for CTE. Consistent with previous findings, this study found that labor market advantage comes from occupational skills, not length of schooling. Thus, it can be concluded that encouraging students to go to college without a specific career plan may entail an unintended consequence, chronic youth unemployment; furthermore, given the labor market shortage of technicians, CTE would be effective in preventing youth joblessness.

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Promoting inclusive and equitable postsecondary learning environments is a global priority Postsecondary institutions, particularly community colleges' career and technical education (CTE) programs, are increasingly held accountable for achieving education-related sustainable development goals (SDGs) and are expected to provide knowledge of the SDGs and implement them through practice and action. Community colleges rely on multi-level governance frameworks such as voluntary local review (VLR) to substantiate and institutionalize education-related SDG objectives. Though the VLR has been identified as a process for facilitating multi-level collaborative learning, the nature and process of implementing the approach has not been clearly defined and is not well understood. To identify key concepts and main research themes that present sustainability education and inclusive and equitable learning in community colleges, as well as to identify research gaps, a systematic literature review on sustainability education in workforce education and development (WFED) as well as inclusive and equitable learning in community colleges was conducted. The review found that VLR is critical for obtaining new knowledge about education-related SDGs and suggests that community colleges use the VLR to improve organizational contextual features and organizational change, internal structural features and organizational design, and external environment and influencing factors.

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This qualitative study explores the efficacy of community college career and technical education programs through employer perspectives. Participants for this study were cultivated from a variety of industries and disciplines. Predominant themes that emerged from this study include education, authentic experience, the value of career and technical education, workplace social structure, apprenticeship, and aptitude. Employers appear to be ambivalent regarding their perspective of community college career and technical programs. Employers are looking for employees who can be integrated into the workplace social structure easily, and they articulate competencies generally gained after completing a two-year degree program. Participants reported that new employees lack employability skills, a higher order of thinking, metacognition, mature nature of competency, social mobility, motivation, and positive self-efficacy. Therefore, this study concludes that the hiring of community college career and technical graduates is contingent on the applicants' job-related skills and social competency.

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