Enhancing vocational students' identities through program-occupation-skill alignment and learning experiences: A mediation analysis based on learning experiences

Modern vocational education, as a primary institutional vehicle for building a skill-oriented society, faces widespread identity crises. Against this background, how to enhance vocational education students' professional identities and help them successfully transition between school and professional systems has become a focal point of concern. This study conducted a questionnaire survey across 15 vocational institutions in China. Based on 886 valid questionnaires, the influence and mechanism of vocational program-occupation-skill alignment on vocational education students' professional identities under the dual system curriculum framework were examined. The findings revealed the following. First, under the dual-system curriculum framework, the degree of vocational program-occupation-skill alignment significantly influenced vocational education students' professional identities, with higher alignment correlating to higher levels of professional identity. Second, vocational program-occupation-skill alignment affected professional identity through the mediating role of learning experience, whereby high alignment enhanced professional identity by promoting students' learning experiences. To enhance the endogenous momentum of vocational education development, efforts should focus on skill formation as the core lever and on supply-demand matching as the main objective, thereby achieving the effective integration of various components in the dual-system training model and improving vocational education students' learning experiences through capacity building and teaching enhancement.