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The effect of vicarious learning during clinical or medical internships on graduates' adaptive career behaviours has attracted scant attention from healthcare researchers, particularly, in the developing world context. Drawing upon the social cognitive career theory model of career self-management (SCCT-CSM), the current study examines how vicarious learning influences the clinical graduates' adaptive career behaviours (i.e. career exploration and decision-making) via career exploration and decision-making self-efficacy (CEDSE) and career intention.

Data were collected from 293 nursing graduates undertaking clinical internships in 25 hospitals across Nigeria who willingly participated in this study as they were also assured of confidentiality at two-waves. The proposed hypotheses were tested using a path analysis.

The findings showed that vicarious learning during clinical internship had a direct effect on career exploration, decision-making and career decision self-efficacy among graduate trainees. Also, the findings revealed that the effects of vicarious learning on the graduates' career exploration and career decision-making were significantly mediated by career decision self-efficacy and career intentions.

The findings of this study have important practical implications for higher education institutions and industries that send and receive clinical graduates for clinical internships to gain more skills. More emphasis should be on encouraging learners to learn vicariously in addition to other forms of learning experiences available during clinical internships.

The study explains that the graduates' higher engagement in clinical career exploration and decision-making was based on a higher level of vicarious learning during internships. The results suggest that higher education institutions and healthcare service providers can derive greater benefits from more emphasis on promoting vicarious learning during clinical internships.

This study examines how and whether expectancy for success and task values influence students’ persistence in work placement learning tasks (persistence). Also, it examines the mediating role of task values in the expectancy for success and students’ persistence nexus.

This is a two-study finding. In Study 1, we conducted qualitative research using a sample of 21 undergraduate students undertaking work placement learning in seven firms in Nigeria to gain an in-depth understanding of how the two expectancy-value theory’s (ETV) core motivational factors (i.e. expectancy for success and task values) enhance students’ performance or achievement-related behaviour such as persistence. In Study 2, we conducted quantitative research employing structural equation modelling to test our proposed hypotheses. We used a sample of 395 undergraduates undertaking work placement learning in 189 Nigerian firms (public and private) to empirically test the hypothesized model.

The findings show that students who had higher self-confidence that they would succeed in the placement learning tasks and values for the tasks exhibited higher persistence. We found that students with more expectancy for success showed higher task values for their learning tasks. Although not hypothesized, the positive result is necessary and aligns with ETV assumptions. Lastly, the analysis showed that students’ higher persistence was not wholly due to their higher expectancies for success in the placement learning tasks, but rather because they showed higher values for the learning tasks. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Our study progressed the ETV research in the work placement learning context and offers a model of students' persistence in the context of our study. Understanding the important motivational roles of expectancy for success and task values in enhancing students’ persistence is relevant in that it can facilitate quality learning outcomes. From the qualitative and quantitative (our two-study) findings, we made suggestions on how higher education administrators and industries can use our hypothesized model to further improve the work placement learning programme.