The effect of airline service major students’ employment stress on learned helplessness and employment preparation behavior: a moderated mediation model of resilience

Introduction. Employment stress among airline service major students is very high, because airlines have not been recruiting during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to high learned helplessness and less employment preparation behavior among students. Thus, the purpose of this study was to verify the effect of resilience, one of the positive psychological variables that decrease the negative mutual influence between learned helplessness and employment preparation behavior. Samples and methods. The participants in this study were 312 airline service major students from four universities in South Korea. Data were collected from junior students who were in their third year of university (64.7%) and senior students who were in their fourth year of university (35.3%) in South Korea. For analysis, this study used SPSS Win.25.0 and PROCESS macro for SPSS 3.5 programs to conduct the frequency test for the demographic information, reliability test, correlation test, and moderated mediation effect analysis. Results. First, employment preparation behavior had a negative correlation with employment stress (r = -.497, p<.01) and learned helplessness (r = -.361, p<.01), as well as a positive association with resilience (r = .484, p < .01). Second, the conditional indirect effects of resilience on the relationship between employment stress and employment preparation behavior through learned helplessness were significant (p < .001) when the resilience value was low (M-1 SD), average (M), or high (M+1 SD). Therefore, the moderated mediation effect of resilience was verified. Practical significance. This study found that airline service major students with high resilience have increased employment preparation behavior. Given the results of this study, students’ resilience should be developed and strengthened to reduce or overcome students’ stress and learned helplessness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Supporting Students with an Autism Spectrum Disorder in Engineering: K-12 and Beyond

Individuals with disabilities, including individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. With the importance of STEM skills in future employment and other disciplines, effective instructional strategies must be identified to enhance early and sustained access to STEM for students with ASD. However, the literature identifying effective STEM-specific supports and practices for this population of students is sparse and regarding engineering, there are no empirical studies that focus on teaching engineering skills to students with ASD. Therefore, the article aims to provide an overview of the available literature on the perspectives of engineering educators and suggested strategies aimed at supporting students with ASD in K-12 instruction and higher education. Additionally, recommendations regarding employment preparation and shifting the workplace environment to support individuals with ASD are presented. The available literature reveals limitations and implications for future research including the presentation of the voices of individuals with ASD across the spectrum. Furthermore, there continues to be work that must be done to prepare educators, employers, peers, and colleagues to better understand the disability and support individuals with ASD in all contexts.

Work aspirations, intellectual disability and ‘cruelling out’ the mark in the job club

This article uses ethnographic data to explore the relationship between a job club facilitator and a job seeker with an intellectual disability, to illuminate the gulf between employment activation and the multifaceted everyday reality experienced through employment preparation activities, at a job club established for people with intellectual disabilities who are in receipt of social care. The focus of this article is the micro-interactions apparent within the job club that aligns with Goffman’s ‘cooling the mark’ framework, which is unpacked and extended. The strategies at play here refute the broader, individualised ‘welfare-to-work’ neoliberal rhetoric of employment being available to anyone who works hard enough to attain it. Instead, job seekers are reoriented to accept volunteering roles or dubious unpaid work which are presented as employment-like alternatives. Yet, Goffman’s concept is not static as he envisaged: it fluctuates. For, within this reorientation process, strategies are deployed onto individuals to ensure they are kept interested enough to both accept a lowered employment status, while simultaneously still encouraged to strive for paid work one day. As such, this article teases out the tension and paradox between the clusters of promises attached to work as ‘the good life’ together with everyday disabling experiences of cruel optimism by encouraging job seekers to accept non-normative forms of employment.