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This study aimed to identify the views of educators on the status of the teaching profession taking into consideration the enacted Teaching Profession Act (TPA) in Turkey. The study aimed to reflect the views of participants from different backgrounds as much as possible. A qualitative research pattern and a case study model were adopted. The results identified the issues and content to be considered in the TPA. The results showed that the content of current TPA was limited. Participants emphasized that a participatory approach should have been adopted to prepare a comprehensive TPA. The participants requested a profession act that includes the qualifications framework of the teaching profession and professional rights of teachers. Participants also stated that the principles that protect the prestige and status of the teaching profession should be included in the professional law.

Higher Education staff in the United Kingdom (UK) work long hours to complete their duties. In a 2021 survey, staff reported a weekly average of 51 hours: a fact well understood to undermine health and educational quality. Yet, UK law sets a maximum working week of 48 hours, and failure to uphold this maximum is a criminal offence for employers. Seeking to understand this contradiction, the article reveals that staff are denied otherwise universal legal Health and Safety protection by the development and reinforcement of legal interpretation that assumes they have sufficient 'autonomy' to avoid overwork. As this is a position mutually constructed and accepted by both employers and unions, all efforts to reduce hours, including Industrial Action, have worked from this premise. However, critical analysis of university Terms and Conditions, against relevant jurisprudential developments, adds significant original value by questioning the validity of the status quo legal interpretation. Specifically, a landmark legal ruling against the UK by the European Court of Justice, and the resulting 2006 amendment to the UK Working Time Regulations, strongly suggests most University Terms and Conditions are legally noncompliant. As such, HE stakeholders should pressure powerbrokers involved in this omnipresent dispute to revisit the law: specifically with a view to re-establishing any fundamental rights of which they are currently illegitimately deprived. Where this was successful, empirically informed "weekly" workload modelling -- rather than irrelevant, abstract annual calculations -- would become a legally enforceable necessity for the benefit of staff and students alike.

Teachers in public schools regularly face labor oppression. Despite this reality, in research and practice, "social justice teacher preparation" has largely neglected the topic of "labor struggle." We offer this community auto-ethnography as a collective reflection on how we came to our own understandings around these issues and what we learned from supporting students' development around these topics as we co-taught a Foundations pre-service teacher preparation course. We unpack the experiences that shaped our individual relationships to issues of social justice and labor that were prioritized in the class with implications for expanding the purview of social justice teacher preparation.

The article presents a systematic review of studies on the construction of current policy on labor inclusion, highlighting the role of the arts in the international landscape. The aim of this article is to analyze studies that address inclusive labor policies, highlighting the arts as a labor sector in the international context. A systematic review of articles published in scientific journals on the new international social structure and the inclusion of people with disabilities has been carried out using the PRISMA system to synthesize the search carried out with Mendeley's tool for storage. Ten databases have been used in the exhaustive search and selection: 1Findr, Semantic Scholar, Scopus, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academi Search, Wos, Dialnet, Miar, Circ, Eric. Among the conclusions obtained, the importance of inclusive policies is highlighted, arts organizations are increasingly promoting intervention and research actions, but they need academic, university and political support. Moreover, some inclusion policies need to be questioned when parameters of positive discrimination or action are observed. Education will give us the keys to improve as a society and the generation of more egalitarian policies.

The aim of this study was to review and analyze studies on pre-employment transition services (pre-ETS) conducted before and after the passage of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014 (WIOA) to capture decades of changes in these studies. A content analysis of literature was conducted on 95 studies on pre-ETS implemented in the United States and published between 1974 and 2023. Results showed that job exploration counseling, and counseling on postsecondary-education opportunities were rarely represented in the analyzed studies. Additionally, in studies published before and after WIOA, quantitative research was the commonly implemented method. The analysis also indicated that the participants in these studies differed in their roles, racial/ethnic backgrounds, and disability categories. Some of these characteristics were overwhelmingly overrepresented. The results also highlight that transition-related interventions were effective in preparing students for the world of work. The positive effects and importance of pre-ETS were also revealed along with several challenges that emphasize the importance of increasing interagency collaboration and providing stakeholders with the needed information and resources for pre-ETS implementation. Finally, the limitations of the included studies are highlighted and implications for future research and practices are discussed.

Organizations advocating for federal, state, and local level support for adult education have long relied on the power of individual story to influence both public perception and public policy. They have developed training programs, provided advocacy toolkits, and organized visits with policy makers in order to promote and sustain awareness of the benefits of adult education for the lives of individuals and the fabric of the community as a whole. At the same time, decision makers across the political spectrum have increasingly come to rely on research to inform the process known as evidence-based policymaking. How can the adult education field "prioritize rigorous research findings" that inform evidence-based policymaking, while also taking advantage of the persuasive power of the "anecdotes" that those affected by the policies can provide? This paper identifies two strategies that researchers can employ to reconcile the two and proposes three areas of current interest where those strategies might be used to good effect.

Teacher evaluation is a personnel practice in education and a field of study with multiple discourse communities, including a community in supervision. Many concepts from these discourse communities have influenced practice over time. In this article, I place teacher evaluation as a practice originating in the intersection of supervision and administration, describe its tumultuous relationship with supervision, and identify the many concepts that restrict its practice with examples of scholarship. This article is important "fieldwork" that scholars must periodically conduct on their niche to better understand its audiences, scope, and influences. Examples of fieldwork include: analyses of scholarship, collections on a theme, handbooks, histories, interviews of scholars, memoirs, and genealogies of scholars. This article is a type of analysis of scholarship for the field of teacher evaluation, as Bolin (1988), Blumberg (1990), Garman (2020), Glanz (2018), Gordon (2019), Mette (2019), and Glanz and Hazi (2019) have done for the field of supervision. I am often asked, "Is there anything left to study about teacher evaluation?" This article may help scholars broaden their thinking about the many discourses of teacher evaluation as well as their own niche. Understanding the nature of the discourses helps a scholar navigate its writings and research, situate his/her contribution, and interpret the results of emerging research.

Despite considerable legislative and advocacy-based efforts to end subminimum wage practices, many Americans with disabilities are still paid below the federal minimum. Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act allows employers holding certificates to pay less than minimum wage to individuals with disabilities whose work capacity or productivity is impaired due to disability. The majority of employers paying subminimum wages are facility-based programs also known as sheltered workshops. This work is usually performed in segregated settings away from the rest of the nation's workforce. Subminimum wage practices continue despite clear evidence that even those with the most significant disabilities can be successfully employed in competitive integrated employment when supports are provided. The purpose of this study was to examine the continued use of subminimum wages in the United States and to identify whether there are any state-level characteristics or policies that predict their use. Descriptive analysis and linear regression were used in this investigation. Findings indicate that subminimum wage practices continue to be prevalent in most states, and most prominently in the Midwest region. Implications and recommendations for reducing subminimum wage pay for individuals with disabilities are provided.

Vocational English as a Second Language (VESL) is a form of adult language education that teaches communicative skills in the context of preparing learners for a particular vocation. Despite their pedagogical and logistical benefits for adult language learners, such programs are uncommon today. This literature review traces the emergence and disappearance of VESL in the United States through a corpus study. It then explains these trends by analyzing second language acquisition research and policies related to adult education. It finds that VESL remains a promising approach that fell out of favor due to welfare and workforce policy reforms in the 1990s. It concludes by arguing for the continued relevance of VESL today and the need for adult educators to be vigilant of unintended policy impacts on their programs.

In this essay, I argue that our recent pivot toward digital learning, in addition to the social discontent and economic turbulence exacerbated by the pandemic, requires a re-imagining of how we "do" adult and workforce education (AWE) policy. First, I briefly describe the 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act (WIOA) policy. Next, I present findings from recent research on AWE policy development and identify substantial policy gaps. I emphasize a pressing need to return to the proverbial policy drawing board in AWE policy and invite our field to imagine a future for AWE that promotes a socially conscientious, inclusive, and democratic society and responds to the very real demand for workforce development reform, and the urgency of reducing earnings inequality.

This study aimed to examine the impact of workplace literacy programs on the structure of social networks accessible to low-income Somali refugee workers. We conceptualized structure as network size and tie strength. Data were drawn using interviews with eighteen participants enrolled in a workplace literacy program. The classes offered included English as a Second Language, high school equivalency, and citizenship, and participants had attended classes for at least 3 months. The interview protocol was designed using a name generator instrument. The findings revealed that participation in classes had a positive impact on their network structure, through the acquisition of strong ties with co-workers.

This paper presents a review of legislation and court cases that have resulted in the present guidelines and criteria for transition services for students with special education needs. These include effective transition to post-secondary learning, career, and/or independent living. Transition planning is viewed from the lens of the Shapiro and Stefkovitch (2016) model of ethics in leadership.

Dr. Jacobson's analysis of "hard to serve" is well founded, especially from an academic and theoretical perspective, yet the author is left wanting. Is the solution to merely change the language, the terminology of the legislation, or the terminology used by policy makers as well as practitioners? Are these adults hard to serve or ill served? After re-reading Jacobson's essay the author decided to write this pragmatic response relying upon what he has seen, heard, and experienced. In other words, this response is more anecdotal than scholarly, primarily based on personal experience and conversations with a few directors he has known for years. The author argues that research on how policy shapes the practice of adult education teachers is needed, as well as how these teachers work within said policies. Most importantly there is a need to be careful when stating that students are ill-served. Within the confines of Federal and state rules, within the economic limitations every center has, the majority of adult learning students are well served. The author concludes with the central message that focusing on language and wording may be important to many, but for practitioners the goal is to successfully serve students within the limitations they have little control over. [For Jacobson's article, "There Are No Hard-to-Serve Learners, Only Ill-Served Ones," see EJ1290190.]

Since it was signed into law, the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act (WIOA) has been the subject of continuing scrutiny. One commonly shared concern is that the evaluation metrics of the Act (e.g., employment, salary, etc.) may incentivize programs to work with learners who will more readily meet expected outcomes (Pickard, 2016). Others suggest this concern is misplaced, pointing to the fact that the Act explicitly notes that the models created for State and program evaluation will be adjusted to recognize the priority given to serving students who face significant barriers (Wilson, 2015). These barriers include low levels of English and/or literacy, disabilities, limited work experience, lack of stable shelter, economic vulnerability and being an ex-offender. Learners who face these barriers are often identified as being part of "hard-to-serve" populations, both in policy documents and in commentary in the field. However, it is unclear what the term actually means. Because the term is not explained or elaborated on, "hard to serve" is open for interpretation. In this article, the author offers potential meanings for the term "hard to serve," and argues that recognizing there are no hard-to-serve students, only ill-served ones, will help clarify the political project required to remove the barriers that stand in these students' way.

This article is a summary discussion of the main issues faced by faculty at private, often church-sponsored, universities who sought to be represented by a union in collective bargaining with their employers. The discussion begins by tracing the origins of the rule that faculty at private universities are managers and not employees under the aegis of the National Relations Act in the Supreme Court case of Yeshiva University. The summary then follows developments over the years up to the most recent decision of the National Labor Relations Board that sanctioned the efforts of adjunct professors at Elon University to seek union representation. In examining these two book-end cases, the article discusses issues relating to the effect of the religion clauses of the First Amendment in the context of the National Labor Relations Board's shifting views on the topic. Last, the authors discuss unionization in the context of church-sponsored colleges and universities. Is it now time for the Supreme Court to review its seminal decision in Yeshiva University and for church-sponsored colleges and universities to rethink their positions as well?

Adult basic education (ABE) scholars, practitioners, and policymakers have long debated the purpose and outcomes of federal ABE policy. Although the current policy, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), became law in 2014, there is no comprehensive analysis of the diverging perspectives on WIOA implementation. This integrative literature review generates a synthesis of WIOA-Title II implementation and suggests implications for future research. Based on a thematic analysis of 35 publications (2014-2021), the paper elaborates on four themes: limited ABE funding and the need to use funds efficiently, WIOA-mandated coordination between ABE providers and workforce development partners, increased accountability requirements that narrowly focus on economic outcomes, and framing adult education for economic purposes. Future research on WIOA-Title II implementation should build on this foundation to inquire for whom WIOA works, where it works, and under what conditions it is or isn't successful in helping learners to flourish.

Scholarship on multimethod case selection in the social sciences has developed rapidly in recent years, but many possibilities remain unexplored. This essay introduces an attractive and advantageous new alternative, involving the selection of extreme cases on the treatment variable, net of the statistical influence of the set of known control variables. Cases that are extreme in this way are those in which the value of the main causal variable is as surprising as possible, and thus, this approach can be referred to as seeking "surprising causes." There are practical advantages to selecting on surprising causes, and there are also advantages in terms of statistical efficiency in facilitating case-study discovery. We first argue for these advantages in general terms and then demonstrate them in an application regarding the dynamics of U.S. labor legislation.

In the "Janus v. AFCSME" (2018) decision, the U.S. Supreme Court mandated that all public sector workers, including teachers, operate in a Right to Work (RTW) framework. In the years since, teachers' unions have not experienced the mass exodus that some predicted, but should we expect them to? Using an original, historical data set spanning 1942-2017, I examine the effect of prior RTW policies on teachers' union membership and school expenditures. I find that RTW policies decrease teachers' union membership by roughly 43% and reduce educational expenditures by nearly $800 per pupil. Importantly, effects take roughly 10 years to clearly materialize. Additional analyses provide support for the notion that effects on school resources are driven, in part, by effects on union membership.

This ethnography examines how teachers interpret and enact language-in-education policies in an adult ESL classroom in the United States, where students simultaneously received job training as Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). We draw on postmodern and interpretive lenses from the ethnography of communication, considering how workforce-oriented language policies impact teachers' agency during speech events when classroom participants discuss the meanings of unknown words. We assert that during talk about word meanings (semantics), models of social identity formed, sometimes in conflict with the sociocognitive complexities of second language acquisition. Findings indicate that the meanings of polysemous words were narrowed solely to the immediate healthcare context, and that instructional time often focused on teaching lexis common on multiple-choice tests, preparing students for their final CNA examination. Implications for teachers and policy makers are discussed, including the potentially equalizing applications of polysemic research within workforce language instructional models.

Intellectual property includes not only copyright but also industrial property (IP), which consists of inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs and models, and designations of origin. In order to identify the importance of these competencies of non-lawyers, e.g. engineers, managers, in companies, an online survey was conducted in some European countries as part of the Erasmus+ IPEDU project in 2021. This paper presents the results (n = 175) from four countries: Croatia, Portugal, Romania, and Slovenia. The results provide information about the perception of the importance of IP knowledge in industrial companies, the benefits of this knowledge for the companies, the implementation of training for employees, and the hiring practices of external experts. IP knowledge seems to be very important for companies, but they rarely organize IP training for their own employees. They require IP skills from job applicants and expect the education system to provide this knowledge. Important differences were found between countries, especially in the perceived usefulness of IP knowledge, skills, and training. As IP knowledge becomes increasingly important in industry and society, the study offers a new perspective on the importance of including IP in the education system and the need for non-lawyers to be knowledgeable in this area.

Background: This research outlines important factors in the development of a for-credit internship program by providing a historical context of internship work dating back to the original case of "Walling v. Portland Terminal" (1947), which outlined acceptable non-paid work of trainees, to more current applications of these labor laws in "Wang v. Hearst" (2016) and "Glatt v. Foxlight Pictures" (2016) then connects those legal precedents with current research in best practices. Purpose: The purpose of this research was to examine legal implications on for-credit internship programs and create recommendations based on United States law. Methodology/Approach: This work uses peer-reviewed research to support recommendation in internship development, implementation, and evaluation. Findings/Conclusions: Recommendations for programmatic implementation are made to avoid potential litigation against higher education institutions, faculty, staff, students, and internship placement organizations. Implications: These legal cases inform higher education and considerations in change to organizational policies and practices as it relates to fair labor, program development, and oversight of experiential education.

This article presents the dossier, "Work in higher education", composed of 10 articles and discusses the changes that have taken place in the Brazilian labor world since the parliamentary, media and judicial coup that took place in 2016. It considers the hypothesis that one of the central goals of the coup was precisely the attack on work, in distributive sense of income, and also in the organizational sense of social and workers movements. It analyzes the legislation approved in the period -- Law 13.429/2017 and Law 13.467/2017 -- which has led to a sharp setback in the rights enshrined in the 1988 Constitution, and critically lists the main consequences of this legislation for workers such as unemployment, increased turnover, decrease in wages, reduction of recourses to labor justice and, consequently, increased mockery of protective social legislation at work, weakening of trade union organization and greater suffering at work in general. In the end, it develops the impacts of these changes on the work carried out in higher education institutions.

In the 20 years since the implementation of the Work Investment Act (WIA), federal funding for adult literacy education has remained largely stagnant, and actually decreased in inflation-adjusted dollars from FY2001-FY2019, despite the fact that the field serves fewer than 5% of those in need. Yet over these two decades, the field has moved away from identifying itself as part of the broader struggle for human rights and social justice. The author contends that for those working with and in marginalized, exploited, and under-resourced communities, programs must be fully and explicitly aligned with the grassroots movements for racial, social, and economic justice that are working to dismantle systemic inequities. [For Part 1, "A Lifelong and Life-Wide Framework for Adult Literacy Education," see EJ1249006. For "Examining the Role of Federal Adult Education Funding in Adult Literacy Education. Forum: Broadening the Lens on Adult Literacy Education Outcomes. Literacy Education Outcomes [Part 2 of 3," see EJ1249056.]

Adult basic education's role, from the beginning, has been about serving people with foundational skill needs. The author, Judy Mortrude, agrees with the argument that adult literacy education needs to be repositioned within a new framework of lifelong and life-wide learning, a framework in which new policies are formulated, programs are designed and evaluated, and research is funded and carried out. She also thinks it is helpful to examine the role of federal adult education funding inside the lifelong and life-wide educational framework as both a way to value federally funded adult education programs and services and a way to imagine the "other" funds, programs, and services needed to provide for skills needs across the length and breadth of life. [For Part 1, "A Lifelong and Life-Wide Framework for Adult Literacy Education," see EJ1249006.]

As the largest funder of adult basic education (ABE) in the nation, providing over $600 million through its Basic Grants to States (U.S. Department of Education, 2019), the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) drives ABE policies and practices. In a review of the announcement on Title II, the phrase "transition to" is repeated 46 times throughout the document and is clarified with language that brings the importance of transitions to the forefront. Basic skills learners attend classes not as an end, but rather as a point that takes them forward to something else. While WIOA-funded ABE can support parenting development, civic engagement, and other ancillary outcomes, transitions for economic impact provides a significant focus. Basic skills have become primarily about "transitioning" to benefit learners' career and economic needs, and the nation has come to a point where "transitioning" forms a basis for how it offers basic skills for adult learners. The authors ask if a focus on transition out of basic skills is wrong. After all, in expending the relatively few dollars that federal and state budgets provide for adult education, should the nation not seek to look at the most impact for those dollars? Moreover, is economic impact a serious enough need to focus those resources? The compelling arguments suggested by these questions are considered in this article.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of utilizing an evidence based, "Train the Trainer" approach to increase the safety knowledge and awareness of secondary students. Participating teachers attended a 10-hour, inquiry-based summer training workshop utilizing National Safe Tractor and Machinery Operations Program (NSTMOP) materials focusing on roll-over protection structures, mini-tilt table construction, and on-farm tractor risk assessments. Teachers incorporated workshop lessons into existing curricula. Students completed pretests prior to instruction and posttests after instructional units were delivered. A total of 118 students provided completed pre and posttests, with most students identifying as male and more than half enrolled in ninth grade. Wilcoxon Sign-Rank test showed students' posttests were statistically significantly (Z =-5.22, p < 0.001) higher than pre-tests. Student performance in this study suggests the Fair Labor Standards Act exemption provided for youth between the ages of 14 and 15 years old who have completed specific safety training needs to be revisited. Additionally, increasing the age restriction for hazardous occupations in agriculture would be consistent with other industries. In order for students to learn agricultural safety in the classroom setting, teachers participating in this study may consider preparation and continuing education programs that incorporate more production-based experiences focused on safety.

This study aims to explore learning about the labor law regarding the "Force Majeure" event due to the determination of the 2019 Corona Virus Disease pandemic (COVID-19) National Disaster, which has implications for the termination of employment in Indonesia. This type of research is normative-empirical legal research. Research using non-judicial studies is based on primary legal materials, social behavior guidelines, and relevant previous research. Data are identified using an approach statute which emphasizes empirical legal learning to lead to problem-solving. Results show that the impact of social "force majeure" on Termination of Employment due to the determination of the COVID-19 disaster status imposed by the government has resulted in an increase in unemployment and increased economic difficulties for the community. The law of "force majeure" based on labor regulations and policies reveals that layoffs are carried out after going through the renegotiation process stage. Layoffs cannot just be carried out unilaterally by companies, especially on the COVID-19 outbreak. This is because there are independent auditing steps carried out by stakeholders before actually being declared to have experienced a force majeure condition and enforcing layoffs. In other words, layoffs can be done if both parties have negotiated and are looking to solve the company's financial problems. This research's main contribution is for stakeholders, especially work bound by the company's work contract. By increasing the legal literacy "force majeure," the unemployment rate due to layoffs should be controlled. In this case, the government needs to review the Manpower Act regulation related to the "force majeure" criteria so that social justice can truly be realized for Indonesian workers.

In addition to supporting the academic goals of students with learning disabilities, secondary special education teachers are tasked with providing services designed to improve post-school outcomes. To improve these offerings, special education teachers should ensure collaboration with vocational rehabilitation (VR) counselors during the transition process. Vocational rehabilitation counselors have unique knowledge for preparing individuals with learning disabilities to be successful in the workplace. Partnering with VR counselors may improve post-school goal acquisition for students. This article describes VR service mandates and provides recommendations for special education teachers to build relationships with VR personnel.

Many youth with disabilities experience persistently low rates of competitive integrated employment (CIE) and participation in higher education. In 2014, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) established a policy focus on CIE as the goal of vocational services for youth and individuals with disabilities. In addition, WIOA created provision for Pre-Employment Transition Services (Pre-ETS) to ensure that state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies focused sufficient resources toward transition-age youth. This study examined a sample of WIOA state implementation plans in depth using content analysis to identify how state VR agencies prioritized the provision of Pre-ETS services to youth with disabilities. Analysis of state plans resulted in three emergent themes: (a) instructional priorities, (b) instructional contexts, and (c) networks of stakeholders. We discuss the implications of these themes for future research, policy, and practice related to the employment of individuals with disabilities.

In July 2014, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) was signed into law, amending the Rehabilitation Act of 1998 and establishing new workforce initiatives for state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies. The passage of WIOA led to the expansion of VR services, including the requirement to provide "pre-employment transition services" (Pre-ETS) to eligible and potentially eligible students with disabilities to support their transition from school to postsecondary employment and education. Pre-ETS afford students with disabilities an early start at job exploration, maximizing their potential to enter competitive integrated employment. It is imperative for secondary special education teachers to inform students and their families of the availability of Pre-ETS. To do this, school personnel must first be knowledgeable about Pre-ETS themselves. This column provides secondary special education teachers with a general understanding of Pre-ETS and furnishes them with strategies for securing these services on behalf of students with disabilities.

This study is a pioneer study examining the effects of personal and occupational background variables on the attitude of faculty members to an obligatory retirement age in academia. Previous studies on performance measures of academic faculty in research, teaching, academic administration, and contribution to the community, testified to associations between faculty member achievements and their personal characteristics (gender, age) as well as features related to their academic field of occupation (faculty, academic rank, tenure). Hence, these quality measures of academic faculty have meaning for and influence on research, even after the customary retirement age. Obligatory retirement age is a well-known issue and it is arousing much interest in general, and in academia in particular. Academic work includes activity focused on research, teaching, advisory work, participation in academic committees and conferences--namely, activities that require human thinking. This leads to the question of whether and to what degree personal and occupational characteristics are associated with the attitude of faculty members to retirement age. One hundred and eight questionnaires administered to senior faculty were collected in a case study of a single university. Qualitative and statistical research tools were employed, with the aim of creating a model that expresses the association between faculty members' personal and occupational characteristics and their attitude to retirement age in academia. The research findings show that the background variables affecting the attitude of faculty members to retirement are age and tenure--faculty members' age and status as tenured faculty determine their objection to the obligatory retirement age.

The context of this study was to examine factors contributing to significant workforce shortages in building trades in the United States. As it is, recruitment of qualified skilled trades workers is becoming increasingly difficult due to lack of a pipeline of prospective workers, and training programs. The study assumed a theoretical inquiry approach in order to address the following three main questions: (1) What is the scope of the workforce shortage in skilled and building trades in the US? (2) What factors are recognized as contributors to the building trades workforce shortage in the US? And, (3) What strategies can be implemented to reverse building trades workforce shortages in the US? Findings affirmed that the scope of workforce shortages in skilled and building (construction) trades in the US is very broad and the impact is rather deep. Factors contributing to the shortage include: declines in high school technical education programs, which have been replaced by career academies; misconception that higher education always equal higher income, but the untold story is higher debt associated with pursuing higher education; and stricter immigration laws, which are forcing potential workers out of the US. The study concluded that in order to reverse currently declining workforce trends the following six strategies should be implemented: (1) Make it a national priority, thereby appropriating adequate resources to the effort. (2) Increase the number or women and African Americans in building trades. (3) Expand apprenticeship programs. An expansion of both government and corporate incentives are needed to stimulate an increase in apprenticeships. (4) Reintroduce building and skilled trades programs in secondary and postsecondary schools. Growth in the number of Career Academies, and participation in them has been encouraging, yet there are not enough of them to meet the need. (5) Re-examine guest-worker programs, which are currently cumbersome for employers to participate in, and do not allow for anywhere close to the number of workers needed to meet workforce needs. (6) Change marketing of building trades from menial to meaningful. Many young people simply do not know that they can make a comfortable living from a career in skilled trades. They have been taught that at least a bachelor's degree is needed in order to have a successful career. This narrative has to be revised in order to create a pipeline of prospective skilled trades employees for the future.

Adult basic education students manage adult responsibilities and obligations and personal goals related to school. They commit their time and limited resources and thus are investors in their own learning. As investors, their voices matter. When one countywide adult basic education program implemented a systemic plan to ask students upon entry what they hoped to gain from participation in adult basic education, a number of findings were discovered that gave insights regarding the nature of adult basic education students, COVID influences, and programmatic implications and applications. This study was conducted over two separate school years, 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, with a total of 439 participants.

Despite decades of Equal Opportunity legislation, gender inequality persists in Australian universities. This is largely due to the shaping of universities by new market principles, discourses of individualisation that render the asymmetry of gender relations invisible, and privileging masculine epistemologies. Concurrently, industrial relations have been decentralised, and individual universities negotiate staff pay and working conditions through local Enterprise Bargaining (EB). Whilst EB mitigates the development of a national gender-equity framework for universities, trade unions operating through inequality regimes rarely prioritised gender equity even when they did lead national negotiations. Therefore, within a context of complex inequalities in higher education and trade unions, this paper explores how feminist pedagogies can facilitate equality bargaining and gender equality in academia. It also suggests that equality bargaining is especially important during (current) times of austerity when the removal of gender-equality support structures within trade unions generally occur.

This article explores the effects of charter schools on teachers' working conditions in Bogota (Colombia). By employing a semi-experimental approach involving Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Difference-in-Differences (DID), we find that in the close vicinity (postcode area) of where they are established, charter schools more than double teachers' workload for a comparatively small increase in salaries. In light of a neo-institutional approach, we argue that those advocating for the diversification of school types in Colombia have decoupled the presumed benefits of charter schools' competition from their actual negative effects for teachers. Moreover, we also point out that despite charter schools in Colombia (Bogota) having a not-for-profit status, existing labour flexibilisation policies have exerted isomorphic pressures on them, forcing them to adopt short-term contracts and thus leading to ravaging competition practices among teachers. Overall, we contend that the introduction of charter schools in Colombia (Bogota) has led to a general precarisation of teachers' working conditions.

Secondary educators implement an array of work-based learning activities that expose transition-age students to the demands of post-secondary employment. One such strategy, internships, provides students with a formal opportunity to acquire transferable employment skills that lead to meaningful post-secondary employment outcomes. Facilitating internships for transition-aged students with disabilities, however, presents challenges for educators because internships often involve complicated and sometimes ambiguous labor laws, regulations, and provisions. This article provides secondary educators with information about how to facilitate unpaid and paid internships for students with disabilities that align with requirements established by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The article provides a case study to illustrate how schools can develop both unpaid and paid internships and concludes with recommendations for best practices.

Vocational outcomes among transition-age youth receiving special education services are critically poor and have only incrementally improved since the implementation of the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act. Few studies highlight whether interviewing may be critical to obtaining vocational outcomes such as competitive employment or internships. This study evaluated vocational interviewing and outcomes among 656 transition-age youth receiving special education pre-employment transition services from 47 schools. Results suggest 20.8% of these youth were currently employed, and 88.8% of these employed youth interviewed prior to obtaining their job, which is higher than anecdotal evidence suggests and speaks to the importance of job interview skills as an intervention target for special education pre-employment transition services. We discuss the implications and directions for further study.

The importance of skills within the transformation of higher education is a crucial factor that has been insufficiently considered. Transformation in terms of higher education forms a fundamental part of the post-apartheid South African society. This transformation movement seems to exclude the possible role and contributions of the older generation of academics. Using a social constructionist viewpoint, this qualitative study sought to bring to the debate of transformation of higher education the important question of skills transferability between older generation academics and the new generation. From interviewing five retired white academics, the study found that institutional culture and implementation of labour legislation through the Human Resources department by the university in question affect the transferability of skills and that proper programmes of voluntary mentorship should be put in place as to allow the growth of both the older generation and new generation academics. The use of new generation academics' perspectives could yield more results and findings that can further this area of study, as well as allow a more diverse and richer understanding of the perception of skills transferability within the transformation of higher education institutions. This further understanding for research is needed to emphasise the importance of knowledge production through the integration of both young academics' as well as older academics' perspectives. This is to be achieved by engaging with other universities and academics, so that a broader analysis of skills transferability within higher education can be understood.

There is a growing urgency to equip transition-age students with intellectual and developmental disabilities for competitive, integrated employment. Prior research demonstrates the positive effects of job coaching, yet no known training exists for educators to learn how to provide appropriate employment-related supports to promote student independence and social integration. We conducted a stratified quasi-experimental design to evaluate the efficacy and social validity of a professional development pilot program for 46 transition educators across three school districts. Our findings indicate the Job Coaching Academy contributed to increased feelings of self-efficacy related to job coaching and modest growth in educators' coaching behaviors. We share implications for practice and research in expanding targeted training opportunities for transition educators.

Effective collaboration among schools and agencies is critical to the success of pre-employment transition services (pre-ETS). We examined the views of 596 middle and high school educators regarding pre-ETS and the employment prospects of their students with disabilities. Educators overwhelmingly affirmed that youth with disabilities needed better preparation for employment, but they were more mixed in their familiarity with pre-ETS and its associated practices. Prevailing partnerships among schools and vocational rehabilitation agencies were described as uneven and fairly limited. Educators sometimes differed in their views based on school level (i.e., middle versus high school) and community type (i.e., rural versus non-rural). We offer suggestions for research and practice aimed at enhancing the employment preparation and outcomes of youth with disabilities.

When the pandemic began, Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) providers worried about equity gaps in digital access for low-level and English language learners. Working with AEFLA programs, Tyson Foods implemented low-cost solutions to facilitate digital and remote access in its workplace literacy classes hosted in plants across the country. In spring 2020, the Tyson adult education support team and a teacher for three Northwest Arkansas Tyson plants collaborated to develop a prototype. This prototype provided a model with several low-cost practices that are highly transferable to programs after the pandemic. A simple system combining a cell phone camera, YouTube and Google voice accounts, and company interpreters staff allowed Tyson to onboard its largely immigrant and refugee team members in English as a second language (ESL) classes across the country to remote learning. The success of this work has led Tyson to scale an enterprise-wide response consisting of short company videos developed in 10 languages on the intricacies of developing and using usernames and passwords at Tyson Foods. For employers seeking partnerships to upskill frontline workers to new technologies and ensure increased digital equity, regardless of level of English ability, Tyson has provided a demonstrated, successful model of a long-standing public/private partnership that has allowed the company to upskill its workforce with local experts adept at working with adult learner populations. The article concludes with performance accountability recommendations to policymakers based on the critical advances AEFLA providers and companies like Tyson Foods made in digital literacy during the pandemic.

This study provides new evidence on the long-term impact of education on welfare participation in the US. I exploit historical changes in child labor laws as an instrumental variable for education to estimate the causal effects of education on the probability of receiving social welfare benefits. I find large and statistically significant negative effects of education on welfare participation among persons who obtained additional education due to increased schooling requirements induced by child labor laws. The findings are robust across different sample selection and model specifications.

Background: Research indicates that transition-age youth with disabilities face several obstacles with regard to finding employment. However, research on the extent to which barriers and facilitators differ across disability types and contexts is lacking. Objective: The primary purpose of this qualitative study was to understand employment-related challenges encountered by a cross-section of transition-age youth with disabilities across multiple settings. In addition, the study also examined transition-aged youth's knowledge and use of rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Methods: We adopted a focus group strategy to understand the barriers faced by transition-aged youth with disabilities; five focus groups were conducted at five community-based locations in three states (Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia) in Federal Region 3 (i.e., Mid-Atlantic). Participants ranged in age from 16 to 24 (53.5% male; 44.2% White). Findings: Findings indicated that youth with disabilities faced several barriers in the form of stigma, lack of workplace supports and accommodations, their disability condition, and anxiety. In addition, a very small proportion of the sample were aware about the ADA and their rights under Title I. Conclusions: Findings highlight the need to develop programs that equip transition-aged youth with disabilities with the necessary skills as they prepare to enter the work force. In addition, efforts should be targeted at addressing the barriers identified in the study, such as stigma, as well as at increase students' knowledge of the ADA by embedding information within secondary and postsecondary academic curricula.

In the United States, adult and workforce education (AE) seems to be located, simultaneously, both everywhere and nowhere in particular. Ongoing shifts in national economic demands and changes in requirements for training and education have brought learning in the adult years into the federal public policy arena. Sometimes referred to as lifelong learning, AE has proven to be a somewhat vague concept as a basis for federal policy formulation, but its existence signals an important federal locus of responsibility for learning in adulthood. This historical examination of the AE policy domain offers a review of the formulation, and more specifically how AE policy has been framed, where AE policy originated, and its progression over time. Primary U.S. legislative documents, federal agency reports, and federal white papers spanning the years 1862 to 2014 were reviewed to present a survey of the AE policy area.

In the context of the ongoing financial and economic crisis which had begun in 2014 the main prerequisite for employment in Kazakhstan acts unemployment which is accompanied by various social, economic and psychological problems. Analysis of the current state of labor market in Kazakhstan needs urgent actions in prevention and reducing unemployment, including creation and consolidation of the relevant legal provisions specific employment system which guarantees realization of citizens' rights in the field of labor and employment and meets modern economic realities. The main purpose of the work is a comprehensive study of theoretical and practical issues of employment, as well as formation of a science-based concepts of its legal regulation that can help in creation of the most effective and appropriate for the current situation in the employment system of Kazakhstan. The main conclusions and practical suggestions: the mechanism of legal regulation of employment is revealed; the features of this mechanism are highlighted; the content of state guarantees in this area and measures for their implementation is analyzed; the proposals in improving of legislation on employment are formulated; some options for improving the treatment of the self-employed citizens are offered. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that it was proposed to solve the matter of division of powers of central government authorities and local authorities in order to develop and implement the measures ensuring employment of the population, including measures ensuring employment of citizens at risk of dismissal, as well as the citizens who are in need for social protection; different classifications of legal forms in employment security are investigated. The main theoretical and practical conclusions and recommendations can be used in a rule-making process and enforcement. The materials can be used in further research in this area, in teaching of labor law.

The purpose of this research is to examine the legal problems of ensuring the right to work of citizens in the Republic of Kazakhstan and to find the conformity of labor laws in the Republic of Kazakhstan to international standards. Using the method of comparison analysis of the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan and norms of international treaties and agreements, the authors determine that in order to improve the labor legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan and to prevent labor and social conflicts, it is necessary to 1) amend and supplement the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated August 30, 1995, with a view to ensuring the right to work of citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan; 2) similarly amend the Labor Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Law "On Employment" of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Thus, the submissions may be practically important for the improvement of the labor legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan, prevention of labor and other social conflicts.

Background/Objectives: The research topicality is conditioned by the fact that the labour secure of the social and labour human rights is realized not only by the national law but also by the international law that is usually more progressive and establishes the generally accepted standards and norms of human rights in the social-labour sphere. But the specificity of the mentioned sphere of social relations does not permit in most cases to realize direct, immediate action of the international regulations at realization of social or labour rights because the implementation of setting and realizing the generally accepted norms into the national law system is demanded. The mentioned above condition makes it difficult for the Kazakhstan republic (hereinafter RK) to observe the taken international duties to provide social and labour human rights. Methods/Statistical Analysis: The methodological basis of the research were scientific methods of theoretical research (analysis, synthesis, interpretation, comparison, classification, synthesis, simulation, etc.), empirical methods (observation, documentation), as well as statistical methods (quantitative and qualitative data analysis). The theoretical basis of the research were the works of scientists in the field of international and social rights. Findings: As the analysis result the conclusions are made that the obligatory financial provision of realizing the universal social-labour rights condition a complex of measures to establish in the national law system the sources of laws finance and also measures to secure their functioning. In spite of the national law regulation of the general order of the interstate use of the international norms to solve the issue of using the definite norm in the analyzed sphere depends on the normative guarantees set that are needed and the social and financial-economic conditions of its realization. Application/Improvements: The report contains provisions that can be used in the practice of law. The analysis results can be used to improve the sources of Kazakh social and labor law, the definition of the provisions of international legal acts in the system of national law, to identify the specifics of the transformation of international standards into domestic law.

In 2014, the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) thrust adult educators into a dramatically new landscape of service expectations and partnership requirements to increase the ability of providers to meet the employment needs of students and employers. The coronavirus pandemic created an accelerating demand for adult education services that lead to reemployment for individuals who have been laid off. Employer engagement can have a tremendous impact on adult education's ability to lead to employment solutions. This article describes solutions Texas found as it successfully developed a market-driven adult education system to deliver employers, learners, and other system customers a new model for defining student success. After a brief discussion regarding the Texas business and economic climate; and factors that drove, in part, the Texas legislature to transfer the program into the state's labor department a year before WIOA; the article describes demonstrated methods and examples across five dimensions that tell Texas' story. These examples provide state and local leaders ways to meet the demands of WIOA and the expectations of students, employers, and system partners.

This article provides empirical evidence on the relation between institutional characteristics of labour markets that frame allocation processes, and optimal skill matching at the individual level. We investigate the extent to which skill-based job-worker matches are associated with employment protection legislation (EPL), unemployment benefits, and enforcing and enabling activating labour market policies. Drawing on data of the OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), and performing cross-country analyses of 28 industrial countries, we find that EPL can explain variance in the share of optimal skill matching across countries, displaying a positive relation. We also find a negative relation between strict enforcing activating labour market policies and optimal skill matching.

Because many students may be unaware of the role played by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) in adjudicating cases involving employee use of social media and employer technology-related workplace rules, this article introduces a pedagogical perspective and approach that should help to engage today's digital native business students, enhance their learning experience, and improve their retention of the course content. It offers an exercise that allows students to apply these legal standards to actual cases and to evaluate the difficulty of balancing employer and employee interests in workplace communications. This current legal framework presents a rich and timely opportunity for students to analyze and apply the Board's standards in "Boeing" to a scenario depicting workplace rules related to employee use of social media and to determine whether the rules violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). This article offers a seventy-five-minute exercise using social media policies that can be introduced within an instructor's established business curriculum to teach the relevancy of labor law in the twenty-first-century workplace. The exercise is designed to prepare students for legal risk-management issues they will confront as future business professionals.