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Refugees’ inclusion at work is critical for the individual, for employers and for the receiving societies. Yet, refugees are often disadvantaged in working life or are being excluded from the labor market altogether. The purpose of this paper is to examine barriers and facilitators to refugees’ inclusion at work at the individual, organizational and country level, and pay particular attention to how the three levels relate to each other in shaping inclusion and exclusion of refugees at work.

The authors conducted 18 interviews with employed refugees, employers and experts from governmental and non-governmental institutions in the Netherlands.

Based on the theoretical structure, 13 themes emerged from the interview material – 5 themes at the individual level, 4 at the organizational level and 4 at the country level. The authors also found indicators for an interplay of barriers and facilitators across levels.

This is a small study conducted in the Netherlands, providing several starting points for future research.

The authors provide recommendations for refugees, employers and policy makers aimed at addressing barriers and leveraging facilitators of refugees’ inclusion at work.

The organizational level, which diversity research has shown to affect minority group members’ inclusion at work, is rarely taken into account in refugee research. Based on the cross-level analysis, the authors identify patterns of interplay between the three levels and provide a relational framework of refugees’ inclusion at work.

The aim of this paper is to explore the importance of individual learner differences and the effect differentiated instruction (DI) has on learners' levels of engagement.

The author carried out this research using a small-scale action research (AR) study.

The findings suggest that in acknowledging and responding to individual learner differences, especially interests, levels of learner engagement are positively affected.

This study’s key limitations were sample size, short-term study and potential teacher as researcher bias.

Recommendations were made for a further longitudinal study into the relationship between DI and language learner levels of engagement at University. An additional study into DI that looksbeyond language learning at HE, could add value to pedagogic approaches, which could make courses of greater intrinsic value to its students.

This research study aims to help fill a gap in the literature on the application of DI, as well as a unique perspective into its effect on learner engagement within a university context.

The paper aims to close a literature gap by proposing a comprehensive conceptual soft skills competency framework for enhancing graduate intern employability through the cultivation of employability capital.

The study employed a theoretical inquiry and delved into the existing literature on employability, soft skills competencies and employability capital to establish a comprehensive foundation to formulate the conceptual framework. A content analysis of existing empirical studies was conducted to derive a generic list of employers’ required soft skills. A Delphi technique was employed to harness expert consensus and insights into the derived framework.

Employability capital can be cultivated in the setting of work-integrated learning programmes and synergised through emotional and social intelligence interventions to enhance soft skills competency and graduate employability.

The soft skills identified may overlook other important skills required by employers. Increasing participation in the Delphi study could yield additional valuable insights. Validation of the framework is needed in practical settings to understand its effectiveness and applicability to real-world organisational needs.

This study significantly enhances understanding of the role of employability capital in soft skills competency development and graduate employability through work-integrated learning programs and self-development. In addition, the framework has the potential to positively impact the employer-employee relationship.

The key theoretical contribution is a soft skill development framework that offers employers and graduates a means to identify and address deficiencies through WIL and self-development.

Stories of employability are told in employment and educational settings, notably the selection interviews. A popular training approach guiding higher education students to construct employability stories has been the past-behaviour storytelling method. However, insufficient research exists regarding the method's effectiveness and optimisation. This study examines whether the method (1) increases the quantity and quality of interview narratives in story forms and (2) can be enhanced by image stimuli.

In a double-blind randomised control trial with repeated measures, participants submitted four weekly interview narratives. After receiving past-behaviour serious storytelling training in Week 3, they were randomly allocated to an exposure group using images and a control group using keywords as a placebo to continue producing interview narratives. The interview narratives were assessed based on the number of stories and quality ratings of narrative conformity, relevance and conciseness. Results before and after the training, and with and without the image stimuli, were analysed.

Training increased the number of stories. Training and repeated practice also increased narrative quality ratings. However, the image-based intervention was the strongest predictor of improved quality ratings (effect size 2.47 points on the observed scale of 0–10, p < 0.01, 95% CI [1.46, 3.47]).

A pre-existing ability to tell employability stories cannot be assumed. Training is necessary, and intervention is required for enhancement. Multi-sensory narrative interventions may be considered.

This study is the first known double-blind randomised control trial with repeated measures evaluating if storytelling training and image stimuli improve interview narratives.

The importance of trust in student–university relations is relevant not only for the quality of the educational process and the satisfaction with studying achieved by students, but also for the importance of positive evaluation of HEIs to others. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify the stages and mechanisms that build trust in student–university relations, the causes of trust violation and trust repair practices.

Public university students from Poland (16) and Germany (12) took part in the study based on semi-structured interviews. The research procedure followed an inductive approach. In addition, the critical events technique was used to identify trust violation and trust repair practices.

The study identifies the stages of the HEIs trust building process and the mechanisms upon which it is built. It attempts to catalogue trust violations, distinguishing three groups of “perpetrators” and categories of their differentiation in terms of their impact on trust. The study indicates ad hoc, informal methods of trust repair applied at HEIs and their conditions.

This study provides useful guidance for managers on how to build and maintain trust in HEIs.

The issue of trust building in HEIs is relatively new and therefore has not been sufficiently recognised to date. This study is the first to the author's knowledge to comprehensively address the problem of trust building, pointing out the mechanisms on which the formation of trust in HEIs is based. This study provides a novel contribution to the limited literature on trust violation and trust repair in HEIs.