GILE Journal of Skills Development

Editorial

Judit Beke — 2026-10-15

From Skills Lists to Career Resources

Noemi Nagy — 2026-10-15

Career preparation is frequently framed around skills young people should acquire. Although useful, such lists can overlook how motivation, environmental support, and opportunities for career-management action shape skills development and use. This article provides a scholarly overview of the Career Resources Model, informed by a narrative review and integrative synthesis. It shows how a career-resources perspective can broaden skills-development research and practice by connecting individual capability with direction, access, and action. Four principles translate this perspective into recommendations for designing programs and assessing their coverage of career resources. This guidance helps researchers, academic programs, career centers, employers, and community partners identify gaps, coordinate support, and distribute responsibility for career preparation more realistically. Although centered on education-to-work and early-career transitions, the approach can be adapted for career change and renewal across the lifespan. Together, these contributions frame career preparation as a shared responsibility and offer a foundation for meaningful, sustainable careers.

Frugal Innovation as a Catalyst for Youth Skills Development in South Africa's Resource-Constrained Environments

Siyabonga Sirayi — 2026-10-15

South Africa continues to experience a severe youth employment crisis. In 2026, the unemployment rate among young people aged 15 and 24 years remained above 60%, while 37.6% of this cohort was not in employment, education, or training. Conventional skills development approaches, which rely mainly on formal Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges and universities, have struggled to address the needs of young people living in resource-constrained communities such as townships, informal settlements, and rural areas. This article argues that frugal innovation, which is defined in the study as the creation of practical, affordable, and sustainable solutions using limited resources, offers an alternative pathway for developing employable skills in these contexts. Resource-constrained environments encourage creativity and innovation, problem-solving, collaboration, and entrepreneurship, enabling young people to acquire technical, digital, business, and socio-emotional skills through practical experience. The study employs an integrative literature review that synthesises international scholarship on frugal innovation alongside South African studies on informal innovation, youth entrepreneurship, and recent labour market and policy developments. Based on this review, the study develops the frugal innovation youth skills-development pathway, a conceptual framework that explains how frugal innovation can strengthen youth skills development. The framework is illustrated using evidence from South African fabrication laboratories, township maker spaces, community-based digital innovation initiatives, and youth employment programmes. The study concludes that frugal innovation complements rather than replaces formal education and training systems by creating accessible opportunities for experiential learning and skills acquisition. It recommends integrating frugal innovation into South Africa’s National Skills Development Strategy and related government policies to improve youth employability, promote inclusive entrepreneurship, and strengthen innovation ecosystems in underserved communities.

What counts as a skill?

Lucy Sattler — 2026-10-15

Over the past decade, multiple major skills taxonomies have been developed or revamped, each presented by its developers as a ‘common language’ for skills. Despite this shared purpose, the taxonomies differ at two levels: in what each defines a skill to be, and in which skills each contains and how they are described. The result adds to the confusion rather than alleviating it. This impacts young people, who are asked to name their skills to employers yet struggle to do so. This study profiles eight major skills frameworks to identify how skill is defined within the documents, and which core skills are identified. Document analysis of the released files and method documents for eight skill taxonomies against a template covering purpose, method, structure, coverage, and definition, combined with reflexive thematic analysis of the core skills named within the taxonomies. The frameworks use common sources and share a dual-layer structure separating core from technical skills; construction methods combine expert, industry, and AI/ML approaches, and method shapes the hierarchy. At the level of the concept, the frameworks differ in whether and how each defines skill, and in where each places attributes and attitudes. At the level of the named skills, they largely agree: the same 12 core skills recur, described in similar terms under different titles. Skills taxonomies hold potential to improve access to, and clarity over, the labour market. Using familiar language for skills, sharing descriptions with other taxonomies, and allowing individuals to see and choose from alternative titles could improve usability.

Shaping the Future of Accounting Education

Vanissla Hutzli — 2026-10-15

The rapid development of digital technologies is transforming the accounting profession and the competencies required to practise it. Consequently, higher education institutions face increasing pressure to prepare students and graduates for evolving professional roles and to align accounting curricula with changing labour market expectations. Identifying the competencies required in a technology-enabled accounting profession is therefore particularly relevant to the preparation and professional development of future and early-career accounting professionals. This study identifies the competencies associated with the Accountant 4.0 and examines how frequently they are identified in academic and professional literature. A structured literature review was conducted, including 47 academic publications and documentary sources associated with 14 professional accounting organisations. The findings reveal differences in the frequency with which competencies are identified across the two bodies of literature. Academic publications most frequently identify general technological skills and understanding, problem-solving, communication, and teamwork. The professional corpus covers a broader range of competencies, with technical accounting competencies, general technological skills and understanding, data analytics, ethics, integrity and professionalism, and analytical reasoning among the most frequently identified. Communication and teamwork are among the competencies frequently identified across both academic and professional sources. By integrating and systematically comparing academic and professional perspectives, this study provides a consolidated overview of Accountant 4.0 competencies and identifies areas of convergence and divergence between the two bodies of literature. The findings provide a basis for reflecting on how accounting education can support the competency development of students, graduates, and early-career professionals as they prepare for a profession increasingly shaped by digital transformation.

Creating avenues for women to benefit from digitalization

Gaelle Fitong Ketchiwou — 2026-10-15

There is a rapid transformation in digital technologies worldwide, and digitalisation is now part of all major economic sectors, thereby impacting labour markets. However, women still lag behind men and are not fully benefiting from the opportunities that come with digitalisation. This paper aims to unpack what is needed for women to benefit from digitalisation. The PRISMA protocol was used to perform a comprehensive search across EBSCO, ProQuest, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Scopus, JSTOR, Emerald, and Google Scholar, from which 60 papers were retained after screening. Articles were analysed in-depth using a thematic approach. Findings reveal the need for governments to design initiatives to raise awareness, increase access, and promote the usage of digital technologies, tools, and devices at affordable prices. Supporting digital infrastructure, partnerships, household conditions and a legal framework are vital. Together with educational institutions, governments should also develop strategies to boost education and digital skills development, mentorship, and networks to empower women to leverage digital opportunities. There is also a need to ensure social and work-life balance support to help women leverage digitalisation. Hence, governments, educational institutions, private entities, civil society groups, and women need to collaborate to implement tangible actions that ensure meaningful access to technology and the benefits of digitalisation. By synthesising dispersed evidence from 60 studies, this study integrates conditions, capabilities, and support systems needed for women to benefit from digitalisation and provides actionable initiatives at multiple levels. This paper highlights the relevance of access to technology, and the need for pathways, capability enhancement, and enabling conditions that make digital skills available for the entry of young women into the labour market and for their career progression in a digital era. These findings can reduce the digital gender divide, improve women’s labour market participation, or inform policy and practice.

Framing the Future

Emma Lennox — 2026-10-15

The creative industries continue to expand globally; however, students pursuing creative degrees often encounter fragmented and non-linear pathways into employment. Limited research explores how creative students interpret and navigate this transition at the beginning of their final year. The study addresses this gap by exploring how this cohort conceptualises employability at a pivotal stage using a participatory, visual methodology. This study examines the perceived employability capital of nine final-year creative arts students and how this evolves through structured reflection. A photovoice methodology was employed, underpinned by the Employability Capital Growth Model. Participants captured and discussed images in response to guided prompts, collaboratively generating themes and presenting their work through a public exhibition. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, alongside pre- and post-intervention Likert-scale measures. Four interconnected themes were identified, capturing how students make sense of transition and uncertainty: juxtaposition, reflecting tensions between expectations and lived realities; movement, representing transitional identities and trajectories; fluidity, emphasising openness to emergent opportunities; and people, highlighting the role of social networks in building resilience. Qualitative and quantitative findings indicated an increase in perceived employability capital following the intervention. The study recommends embedding tailored employability support across the student lifecycle, strengthening cross-departmental collaboration, and recognising diverse graduate outcomes. Peer learning and interdisciplinary engagement are identified as key mechanisms for enhancing social capital and career confidence. This research contributes to skills development by demonstrating how participatory, reflective approaches can enhance students’ capacity to articulate and mobilise employability capital within complex career ecosystems. It highlights the importance of timely, inclusive interventions to support non-linear transitions and improve graduate outcomes across disciplines.

Assessing the Value of Mentoring for Female Business Students

Nikita-Marie Bridgeman — 2026-10-15

Industry-led mentoring is a strategic tool that can bridge the gap between academic knowledge and practical expertise, providing mentees with skills development opportunities that stretch beyond what can be learned via classroom-based educational approaches alone. Mentoring is now commonplace within organisational life, but is less common within UK university business schools. This suggests a knowledge gap in terms of understanding how mentoring can be embedded as a complementary tool to improve student skills development within business schools. The aim of this study was to explore the perceived value of industry mentorship from the perspective of the mentees, to develop a greater understanding of the potential benefits mentoring relationships at a university level can provide. Following the journey of mentees on a Women in Business mentoring programme, this study specifically explored the context of female university students. Mentees on the programme were female undergraduate and postgraduate students studying on courses within Sheffield Business School. Using a longitudinal study design, semi-structured interviews were conducted at three stages of a yearlong mentoring programme: 1. pre-mentoring, 2. during mentoring, and 3. post-mentoring. Interview transcripts were analysed thematically using Braun and Clarke’s six-phase framework. The findings show the value of mentoring from a mentee perspective, most notably the notion of having someone in their corner, an ability to gain personalised guidance, and the opportunity to develop a professional network. The challenges of being mentored at this level were also expressed, drawing attention to the need for pre-mentoring education to support meaningful engagement with the process, and a requirement for a clear scheme structure to guide mentees. Guided by these findings, we offer key practical recommendations to programme designers so they can successfully utilise mentoring as part of their offer to students, thus supporting university business schools to further enhance their career and skills development offerings.

Principal Preparation as Career Development

Noemi Nagy — 2026-10-15

Principal preparation in the United States is often organized around leadership standards, administrative competencies, instructional leadership, legal responsibilities, and school improvement. While these areas remain essential, they do not fully capture the developmental process through which educators move into the role of principal. This matters because aspiring principals must navigate changes in identity, authority, relationships, and responsibility, while preparation programs and districts must support that transition without reducing readiness to visible performance alone. This study examines principal preparation as a human-centered career-development process and asks how humanized elements are represented within the curriculum and developmental structures of U.S. principal-preparation systems. Because formal preparation documents communicate what programs are expected to value, teach, and assess, the study draws on a scoping-informed literature review and qualitative document analysis of publicly available national standards, federal and state policy documents, program materials, residency and fellowship models, and practitioner-development resources. The analysis shows that humanized principal preparation is represented less as a distinct curriculum area than as an unevenly embedded developmental orientation. Humanized elements appeared through ethical and relational formation, reflection and mentoring for leadership identity development, authentic clinical learning, and continuity of support beyond certification. At the same time, these elements were often embedded within accountability structures that required visible evidence of candidate competence. The findings suggest that humanized preparation cannot be inferred from the presence of mentoring, reflection, or internships alone. Instead, it depends on whether these structures provide equitable access to meaningful leadership work, psychologically safe opportunities to interpret experience, and sustained support during the transition into principalship. The study contributes to principal-preparation scholarship by showing how formal documents represent aspiring principals as developing professionals and by offering recommendations for aligning competency expectations with mentoring, reflective practice, authentic clinical learning, and early-career support.

Aligning Entrepreneurship Curriculum and Pedagogy for Graduate Entrepreneur Development

Juliet Nwakaego Nwachukwu — 2026-10-15

Despite growing attention to entrepreneurship education, the alignment between entrepreneurship curricula and pedagogy approaches remains inconsistent, limiting higher education institutions' ability to develop graduates with the skills and competencies required for entrepreneurship. While earlier studies have explored individual curriculum components or pedagogical approaches, limited research has integrated these elements into an analytical framework. To systematically identify, evaluate, and synthesise empirical studies on entrepreneurship curriculum and pedagogy, a comprehensive Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was adopted. In line with the predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, 12 eligible studies were analysed to identify the theoretical perspectives, pedagogical practices, and curriculum determinants underpinning entrepreneurship education. The findings revealed that constructivist learning theory, cognitive learning theory, Outcome-Based Education (OBE) and Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) constitute the principal theoretical foundation supporting curriculum-pedagogy alignment. Building on these findings, the study proposes an OBE-ELT analytical framework that integrates curriculum design, experiential pedagogy, entrepreneurial motivation, real-world learning activities, and graduate entrepreneur development. The framework explains how curriculum design and pedagogy practices can be systematically aligned to strengthen entrepreneurial competencies and graduate development. Furthermore, the study contributes to the entrepreneurship education literature by offering a synthesised analytical framework that advances understanding of curriculum-pedagogy alignment while providing practical guidance for curriculum designers, educators and higher education institutions.

Coaching for Wellbeing in Entrepreneurial Education

Elona Ndlovu — 2026-10-15

Entrepreneurship education in emerging economies often emphasises venture creation and technical competencies, with comparatively less attention to the psychological, relational, physical, environmental, and economic conditions that may shape students' entrepreneurial learning and well-being. This paper develops the Coaching for Well-being (C4W) conceptual framework to integrate coaching-informed pedagogy and student well-being within entrepreneurship education. The framework was developed through a conceptual synthesis of relevant literature, informed in part by findings from an earlier systematic review of entrepreneurial coaching, complementary scholarship on coaching, positive psychology, well-being and entrepreneurship education, and the authors' practice-informed experience in African higher education. C4W uses the nine dimensions of PERMA+4, Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment, Physical Health, Mindset, Environment, and Economic Security as its well-being architecture, and conceptually maps these dimensions to entrepreneurship teaching and coaching-informed activities. These include reflection, peer coaching, goal setting, networking, business simulations, values clarification, ecosystem mapping, and financial-resource activities. The framework articulates the pedagogical rationale that links these activities to the PERMA+4 dimensions and identifies the intended entrepreneurial learning outcomes. C4W contributes a context-sensitive framework that positions well-being as integral to entrepreneurial learning rather than as a separate student-support concern, with relevance to resource-constrained higher education environments. As a theoretically informed conceptual framework rather than an empirically validated intervention, its proposed relationships require testing and refinement across different institutional, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts.

Exploring Empowerment Challenges Facing SMMEs in the Nelson Mandela Bay Automotive Industry

Luthando Rafani — 2026-10-15

Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) play a critical role in South Africa's automotive industry by promoting economic growth, supplier development, and employment creation. However, persistent empowerment challenges continue to constrain their participation in automotive value chains and limit their contribution to youth skills development and workforce development pathways. This study aimed to explore the empowerment challenges facing SMMEs within the Nelson Mandela Bay automotive industry and to examine how these challenges influence opportunities for youth skills formation and sustainable workforce development. A qualitative case study design was adopted, employing purposive and snowball sampling to recruit 15 participants comprising SMME owners, Sector Development representatives, and Automotive Industry Development Centre (AIDC) officials. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed using six-phase thematic analysis. The findings identified six interrelated themes that constrain SMME empowerment: access and resources, skills and training, communication and information, policy and leadership, infrastructure and operations, and motivation and organisational culture. Collectively, these barriers restrict SMMEs' competitiveness, reduce their ability to participate in supplier development initiatives, and weaken their capacity to provide workplace learning opportunities, apprenticeships, and technical skills development for young people entering the automotive industry. The study concludes that strengthening institutional support, improving communication between stakeholders, expanding access to finance and infrastructure, and aligning empowerment initiatives with industry needs are essential to enhancing SMME sustainability and supporting inclusive workforce development. The study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on SMME empowerment by demonstrating the close relationship between enterprise development, youth employability, and regional workforce development within South Africa's automotive industry.

What Lies Beyond ‘Basic’ Literacy?

Norbert Griszbacher — 2026-10-15

Technological advances, changing labour markets, and the growing accessibility of online learning have renewed debate over the value of education beyond the compulsory (elementary) school years. This opinion paper examines the contribution of education once basic literacy and foundational knowledge have been established, particularly during adolescence and emerging adulthood. We argue that its value extends beyond academic and vocational preparation: educational institutions across elementary, secondary, vocational, and higher education can support character development, social and ethical development, civic responsibility, and the acquisition of transferable competencies. In addition, it provides social, mentoring, and developmental experiences that are difficult to replicate through independent learning or early employment. While acknowledging concerns about costs, curriculum relevance, and employability, we conclude that these challenges call for reform rather than reduced participation. Education should therefore strengthen character and transferable competencies alongside academic learning, preparing not only knowledgeable individuals but also adaptable, responsible, and socially engaged people capable of becoming the best versions of themselves and navigating the challenges of ‘real’ life.

Beyond the Badge

Robert Szabo — 2026-10-15

Microcredentials are increasingly positioned as flexible alternatives to traditional degrees in a rapidly evolving labour market. However, their proliferation has raised fundamental questions about their meaning, comparability, and value as signals of capability. This article shifts the focus from growth narratives to the problem of trust: under what conditions do microcredentials function as credible indicators of skill? Drawing on current literature and industry perspectives, the paper argues that the effectiveness of microcredentials depends on three interrelated factors: robust educational design grounded in clearly defined learning outcomes, rigorous and verifiable assessment that demonstrates applied competence, and the reputational authority of the issuing body. Without these elements, microcredentials risk contributing to credential inflation, where an abundance of low-stakes certifications undermines their signalling power. The analysis highlights a critical distinction between participation-based certificates and evidence-based credentials aligned with established models such as ISO/IEC 17024 (International Organization for Standardization, 2026). The article concludes that the future value of microcredentials lies not in their volume, but in their ability to function as trusted evidence systems that support meaningful skill development and labour market transparency.

The Decline of the Degree

Levente Horváth — 2026-10-15

Micro-credentials have become one of the most exciting products in higher education, adult education and the labour market in recent years. This paper argues that micro-credentials are not just a complement to university courses but can be one of the most important tools for competence development in a rapidly changing world. We seek an answer to the question of why the university degree may lose its relative importance as the primary measure of knowledge and why skills, competencies, adaptability and job-specific skills are coming to the fore. We also present two short examples: the Irish practice and the example of University at Buffalo, how micro-credentials can become one of the strongest elements of the connection between the labour market and higher education. Our main assumption is that the degree will not disappear, but its value may slowly fade into the background, and in the future, micro-credentials that demonstrate verifiable, performance-based competence, immediately applicable skills and the ability to continuously learn will become a competitive advantage. Micro-credentials offer flexible, labour-market-relevant skills but lack the trust, recognition, and quality assurance of degrees, with employers citing consistency concerns more often than skill-fit benefits. Uneven recognition, oversupply, and barriers like cost, language, and digital access further weaken trust and risk excluding vulnerable learners, potentially deepening inequality in adult education.