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This study investigates the relationship between perceived supervisor support (PSS) and learner career curiosity and tests the mediating role of sense of belonging, engagement and learning self-efficacy.

The authors used a three-wave repeated cross-sectional data collected from 509 final-year undergraduate students of 11 Nigerian public universities, who had completed the compulsory work placement to analyze the influence of PSS on learner’s career curiosity via a parallel mediation involving sense of belonging, engagement (behavioural, emotional and cognitive) and self-efficacy.

The results show that engagement mediates the path through which PSS influences career curiosity. However, the authors found no evidence that sense of belonging and self-efficacy mediated the relationship between PSS and learner’s career curiosity in this population.

The findings of this study highlight the importance of PSS as a resource that influences learner’s career curiosity, particularly during a work placement.

During the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic lockdowns, stay at home or work from home, many have argued that the westernised non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) do not provide remedial in low-income countries like Nigeria, where informal job seekers, street traders, informal labourers and artisans depend mainly on the informal economy. By applying social solidarity (SS) and community-based approach (CBA), the authors evaluate individual acts (trust, altruism and reciprocity) during the lockdown and how these practices evolve from individual approaches to collective actions.

This study reflects on pragmatism research paradigm that enables researchers to maintain both subjectivity in their reflections and objectivity in data collection and analysis. The authors adopt a qualitative method through purposeful and convenience sampling procedure. Data were analysed thematically to identify elements of SS, individual acts, collective or community actions and perceptions.

The findings reveal that COVID-19 had a disproportionate impact (lack of food and a fall in daily income) on workers, informal job seekers, informal businesses operators and the poor households. As such, the study developed a reflective model of solidarity exhibited by individual acts and collective acts (practices of resource pooling, information sharing, women empowerment, distribution of palliatives and donations) within trusted circles that helped people cope with the lockdown experiences.

Solidarity represents beliefs, practices of values and norms. The SS exhibited by people through NPI would have implications on planning and monitoring the effectiveness of public health programmes during a pandemic in the future.

The findings of citizens and community actions have implications related to the process of building communities – coming together – and solidarity that enhances social development with implications on community health policy agenda during disasters, emergencies and health pandemic.

This is one of the first studies to analyse the relationship between trust, altruism, reciprocity, SS and CBA during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, it seems reasonable to clarify the concept of SS given the lack of clarity about the definitions from previous studies.