EFFECTIVE COMPETENCY-BASED TRAINING LEARNING ENVIRONMENT TOWARDS CAREER COMPETENCIES AMONGST VOCATIONAL STUDENTS

The  gaps  between  vocational  students'  skill  competencies  and  the  skills  demanded by the industries bring major impacts towards the unemployment rate  of vocational graduates. However, the mismatch of the competencies between the  students  and  the  industrial  needs  could  not  be  solved  through  conventional  learning methods. Ironically, the career competencies of these students seem to  be  best  developed  through  the  Competency-Based  Training  (CBT)  learning  environment. Content analysis was carried out to deliberate the factors that lead  to  an  effective  CBT  learning  environment  for  students  in  the  technical  field.  Among the factors are; the source of learning, evaluation, clear objectives, the  burden  of  tasks,  good  teaching  and  learning  community.  Then,  the  career  competencies  of  vocational  students,  which  consist  of  personal,  technical,  networking, self-profile, career exploration, and career control are reviewed, in  relations to the factors of the effective CBT learning environment. Finally,  a  suggestion for future research is discussed.