New Perspectives in Science Education

Digital transformation is reshaping business landscapes; it has transformed the job profiles and changed the way qualifications are gained for Industry. Yet, traditional institutional education has remained largely unchanged, creating a gap in preparing the future workforce for Industry 5.0 and living lab stakeholders are deprived of getting prepared workforce. This conceptual paper will explore the lack of immersive and scenario-based learning methods in the educational process, which limits the ability of the future workforce to develop the practical skills (soft and hard skills) necessary for future leadership roles.

To address this, the paper proposes a Holistic Workforce Development Ecosystem (HWDE) for Adaptive Learning, a theoretical framework that combines experiential business simulations with an adaptive digital feedback loop. The HWDE framework will be developed using Abductive Reasoning to bridge the gap between existing theoretical frameworks and current insights on workforce development. By integrating the Penta Helix model and Smart Specialization Strategy (S3), this study will show theoretical gaps and real-world challenges for developing a future-ready workforce.