Abstract Book of the 8th International Conference on Innovative Research in Education
Year: 2025
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Improving College Students’ Career Readiness through Leadership Training
Hongmei Han, Jie Liu
ABSTRACT:
This study examines the effectiveness of a four-week leadership training programme in enhancing the career readiness of college students by fostering key leadership skills, including communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence. As the job market increasingly values a combination of technical and interpersonal skills, traditional education methods need to evolve to better prepare students for professional success. This research employs a pre-post control group design with two groups of college students, one receiving leadership training (experimental group) and the other not (control group). A self-administered survey was distributed to both groups before and after the intervention to measure changes in the targeted competencies. To ensure baseline equivalence between the groups, an independent samples t-test was conducted on pre-intervention data. Data analysis utilised a mixed-design analysis of variance (ANOVA) to examine both within-group comparisons (pre vs. post-intervention) and between-group comparisons (experimental vs. control). Given that the data for the Teamwork variable did not satisfy the assumption of normality, and log transformation (LN) did not rectify this issue, non-parametric methods were employed. Specifically, the Friedman test was used for within-group comparisons, and the Mann-Whitney U test was applied for between-group comparisons. The results reveal significant improvements in all targeted competencies within both the control and experimental groups. However, no significant differences were found between the groups, suggesting that while the leadership programme effectively enhanced career readiness within groups, further refinement of the intervention and longer duration may be necessary to observe more pronounced between-group effects.
Keywords: college students, career readiness, leadership training, communication, teamwork, critical thinking, emotional intelligence