Constraints, mechanisms, and strategies for industry-education integration in vocational education: An empirical study

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0339158 December 18, 2025 11 / 18 universities)” and “S10 (The effectiveness of school-enterprise communication)” were at Level IV; “S1 (The completeness of policies)” and “S11 (The closeness of prior university-enterprise collaboration)” were placed in Level V. 3.4. The ISM-based hierarchical framework As shown in Fig 3, the ISM-based hierarchical framework was established based on the mutual influencing relationship between the constraints and the level partition. In this framework, the constraints at Level I were called the surface fac- tors, which were “S2 (The willingness of enterprises to cooperate),” “S5 (The degree of teacher involvement),” and “S9 (The clarity of school-enterprise responsibilities and rights)”; The 5 constraints were located at Level II and Level III, which were called the intermediate factors, i.e., “S3 (The alignment of talent cultivation quality),” “S8 (The achievement of school- enterprise mutual interests),” “S12 (The fluidity of school-enterprise cooperation channels),” “S6 (The adequacy of hardware Table 5. The level partition (iterations 1 to 5 combined). Constraint factors Reachability set Antecedent set Intersection set Level S1 S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, S9, S12 S1 S1 V S2 S2 S1, S2, S3, S4, S6, S7, S8, S10, S11, S12 S2 I S3 S2, S3 S1, S3, S4, S6, S7, S10, S11 S3 II S4 S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, S12 S1, S4 S4 IV S5 S5 S1, S4, S5, S10, S11 S5 I S6 S2, S3, S6 S1, S4, S6. S6 III S7 S2, S3, S7 S7, S10, S11 S7 III S8 S2, S8 S8, S10, S11 S8 II

S9 S9 S1, S9, S10, S11 S9 I S10 S2, S3, S5, S7, S8, S9, S10, S12 S10, S11 S10 IV S11 S2, S3, S5, S7, S8, S9, S10, S11, S12 S11 S11 V S12 S2, S12 S1, S4, S10, S11, S12 S12 II https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0339158.t005 Fig 3. The ISM-based hierarchical framework. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0339158.g003