Empirical Study on the Improvement of Vocational Education Students' Professional Literacy Through Enterprise...

Bridging the gap between vocational education and workforce readiness remains a global challenge. While enterprise internships are widely adopted, empirical evidence regarding their specific impact on multidimensional professional literacy is often limited by methodological constraints.

This study employed a quasi-experimental pretest/posttest design involving 428 final-year students from four vocational institutions across Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shandong provinces. Participants underwent a 14-week structured internship program across 92 enterprises in manufacturing, logistics, and IT sectors. Professional literacy was assessed using a validated five-dimension scale (Communication, Technical Execution, Teamwork, Problem-Solving, and Ethical Awareness). Data were analyzed using a novel vectorized competency index model (VCIM) and multiple regression analysis, with rigorous diagnostic checks for multicollinearity, homoscedasticity, and normality.

Post-internship assessments revealed a statistically significant improvement in overall professional literacy, with the comprehensive index (CI) increasing by 17.6% (from 31.65 to 37.21, p < 0.001). The most substantial gains were observed in problem-solving (25.91%) and communication (23.98%). Regression analysis identified supervisor quality (β = 0.42) and internship duration (β = 0.35) as the strongest predictors of competency growth. Disciplinary variations were noted, with IT students demonstrating superior gains compared to accounting students, attributed to differences in task complexity and feedback frequency.

Structured enterprise internships significantly enhance vocational students' professional literacy, particularly when supported by high-quality mentorship. However, causal inferences are limited by the quasi-experimental design and potential confounding variables such as student motivation. Future research should employ randomized control trials or propensity score matching to address endogeneity. These findings underscore the need for standardized internship frameworks and targeted mentor training in vocational curricula.

Potential Hawthorne effects, practice effects from repeated testing, and unmeasured confounding variables limit the generalizability of causal claims.