Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Higher Education Research and Development, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)
This study examines the impact of a subject designed to facilitate professional identity transformation on both job-ready skill development and employability. It examines the direct and indirect impact of components of professional identity and skills taught in the subject on three key employability outcomes: clarity about career, the ability to secure a preferred job and performance in job. One-hundred alumni (71% male, 90% engineering) of an Australian university responded to a survey 0.5–6.0 years after graduation. Identity change predicted all three employability outcomes, while skills usage predicted only performance in job. Identity change alone explained over half the variance in performance in job, and over 67% of the variance together with skills. Skills usage mediated the relationship between identity change and performance in job. The results indicate that identity change is key to student skill acquisition and employability. They also highlight the critical importance of motivation in professional skills development and explain why students often resist learning skills. The need for identity change, or another equivalent motivator, directly confronts both the assumption of many programmes that it is sufficient to teach requisite behaviours to students and the assumption of prior research that educators should focus on identity formation.