Reviewing the roles of extracurricular activities in developing employability skills: a bibliometric review

The process of employability skills improvement is reflected in the pedagogical approaches employed by institutions of higher learning (HEIs). While several studies have discussed these approaches, very few have microscoped them and examined their learning outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to review the concept of extracurricular activities (ECA) research published on the Elsevier Scopus database from 1990 to 2020 using a sequence of bibliometric analysis to identify the status, research trends and focus areas in recent ECA studies within the built environment context. Keywords such as ‘extracurricular activity’ OR ‘extracurricular activities’ OR ‘co-curricular activity’ OR ‘co-curricular activities’ OR ‘out of school activity’ OR ‘out of school activities’ AND ‘employability’ AND ‘built environment’ were used to extract papers from the database. Through the sequencing of cluster analysis, the results of this study revealed that the focus on ECA studies is placed on employability skills, academic performance, overall human development, parental involvement and improving cultural diversity. More so, the current research focus is tending towards the knowledge and adoption of problem-based learning (PBL) which is a key component of built environment education. This study provides a basis for encouraging ECA as a key pedagogical approach in developing the future workforce of the construction industry. Despite the novelty of this article, generalizations of the results must be done cautiously due to the use of a single database, which in this case is Elsevier’s Scopus.