It is commonly believed that ethnic minority (EM) parents tend to have low expectation towards their children’s education due to adverse social and economic status, but other studies suggest EM parents would have high expectation because they want their children to gain upward social mobility. In this study, we compared Pakistani parents’ expectation towards early childhood education (ECE) with Hong Kong parents and examined the role of acculturation in Pakistani parents’ expectation towards ECE. Participants were 73 first-generation Pakistani parents living in Hong Kong and 214 Hong Kong parents. They filled in questionnaires that measured expectation towards ECE. Pakistani parents also answered a questionnaire that captured the degree of acculturation. Results of moderation analysis revealed significant interactions between culture and child gender in all the dimensions of parental expectation towards ECE. Specifically, Pakistani parents reported higher expectation towards ECE than Hong Kong parents. Moreover, Pakistani parents generally reported significantly higher expectation for boys than for girls, while Hong Kong parents’ expectation towards girls was significantly higher than boys with a few exceptions. Moreover, regression analyses showed that integration and marginalization were positively related to several dimensions of parental expectation. These findings provide pioneer understanding about expectation towards ECE among Pakistani parents in Hong Kong and shed light on the promotion of gender-equality ECE. Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Career and life planning is extremely important for all adolescents in order to enhance transition outcomes, but to date, little attention has been paid to its role in education for students with special educational needs (SENs). There is no specific model in Hong Kong for supporting career and life planning for SEN students, nor has there been any research on the topic. As a result, their needs are easily overlooked and they have had fewer opportunities to explore and develop their vocational interests. To address this problem, a charitable organization in Hong Kong initiated in 2016 a two-year program for junior secondary students with SEN. The program aimed to develop a service model for supporting career and life planning for these students in Grades 7–9. Evaluation of the program included obtaining views from different stakeholders, including parents of the SEN students. In this chapter, we discuss findings from the evaluation study using a qualitative approach with data from parent interviews. Copyright © 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Previous research studies have demonstrated the link between parents’ education and parental stress level. However, these studies have not taken parents’ goal orientation into consideration. Based on the framework of goal orientation theory, we examined how parents’ goals would interact with parents’ education to affect perceived parental stress in face of children’s upsetting school experience. Participants were 189 parents of Hong Kong Chinese children studying in kindergartens. Using an experimental design, parents with various education backgrounds were randomly assigned to mastery or performance goals manipulation. The interaction between parents’ goals and parents’ education on perceived parental stress was investigated. Results from the two-way ANOVA indicated the significant main effect of parents’ goals, while the main effect of parents’ education and the interaction effect between parents’ goals and parents’ education were both nonsignificant. Regardless of parents’ education, parents in the performance goals condition reported significantly higher parental stress than those in the mastery goals condition. The findings highlight the utility of fostering parents’ mastery goal orientation to improve their well-being and capacity to cope with children’s academic setback. Copyright © 2020 Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, Lisboa and Springer Nature B.V.

Research Findings: This study employed data from the TIMSS 2015 survey to investigate whether parental educational involvement behaviour in early childhood and parental attitudes towards education can enhance children's mathematics achievement in the 4th grade via influencing children's learning interests. Samples from Singapore (N=6237) and Hong Kong (N=3316), which share similar cultural backgrounds, and students demonstrating outstanding mathematical performance were selected to examine whether a hypothesized model fit the data. The overall model fit was found good. As hypothesized, after controlling for gender, immigration status, and family learning resources variables, both parental involvement in learning activities and parental attitudes towards education had positive significant effects on children's mathematics achievement in the 4th grade. However, a variation was also discovered in terms of the influences of parental attitudes in the two samples. Practice or Policy: The current findings shed light on the importance of parents' attitudes on education and their involvement in their children's mathematics activities during early childhood. The importance of family education should be communicated thoroughly to the public, and the government should provide more support for parents to involve more in early learning activities at home.
[Copyright of Early Education and Development is the property of Routledge.]

Ethnic minority parents often appear to be less involved in school functions and activities than their culturally dominant counterparts. Their invisibility is usually assumed due to a lack of either interest or parental capacity to oversee their children's education. However, the simplistic equation between parental involvement in children's education and their participation in school is largely informed by middle-class cultural norms that ignore diversity. Data drawn from home visits and in-depth, semi-structured interviews amongst Pakistani parents and children in Hong Kong reveals that the involvement of these parents only seems less visible because it is largely based at home rather than in schools. The parental involvement of this ethnic minority is influenced by socio-economic and cultural factors that separate school from home, divide parental responsibilities by gender, and set expectations for children with primary reference to the parents' own experiences. These research findings on how such characteristics shape the outcomes of parental involvement can inform school practices to build more effective home-school collaboration and enhance children's academic achievement.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge.]

Children from families of low socioeconomic status (SES) tend to experience lower academic achievement than children from middle-SES families. This discrepancy can be attributed to a range of parental factors. The present study tested: (1) the extent to which academic achievement in three core subjects differs between children from low- and middle-SES backgrounds; (2) the differences in parental expectation, parental involvement, and child engagement across the two groups; and (3) the mediating role of parental expectation, parental involvement, and child engagement in explaining how SES influences children's academic achievement. The sample consisted of 184 primary students with low SES and 165 primary students with middle SES from mainstream primary schools in Hong Kong. Results revealed significant differences in parental expectation, parental involvement, child engagement, as well as academic achievement in Chinese and English subjects between the low-SES and middle-SES groups. Our findings also suggest that parental expectation, parental involvement, and child engagement may be important mediators in the relationship between SES and academic achievement. Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Background: The study aimed to examine the impact of household composition and satisfaction with family life on sexual behaviours among high school male and female students (aged 11-22 years) in Hong Kong.; Method: High schools were randomly selected, and the final sample comprised 25 schools. Students were divided into two groups ('living with both biological parents' vs 'not living with both biological parents'). Students were asked to rate their satisfaction with family life on a five-point Likert scale in a self-administered questionnaire. Dependent variables were sexual experience, sexual harassment, sexting and nude chats. Multiple logistic regression was used to analyse the results.; Results: 3907 students were included in the analysis. 202 students (5.2%) were sexually active. 505 students had ever (13.0%) sexually harassed others and 303 students (7.8%) had ever been sexually harassed by others. 58 students (1.5%) had ever had nude chats. 1005 students (25.8%) had sexted in the last 12 months. Students who lived with both biological parents were less like to be sexually active, to sext and to have nude chats than those who did not. Students who had higher family life satisfaction were less likely to be sexually active, to sexually harass others, to be sexually harassed by others, to sext and to have nude chats than students who had lower satisfaction with their family life.; Conclusions: Sexual health programmes and interventions should consider family functioning. Students who have low family satisfaction and those who do not live with both their biological parents should be targeted for sexual health interventions.
[Copyright of BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health is the property of BMJ Group.]

講者將介紹香港資優教育學苑的「1+1」小組為介入策略以幫助資優生的情意發展。「1+1」小組是個親子平台，課程設計以創意解難 (Creative Problem Solving) (Isaken, Treffinger, Dorval, & Nollar, 2000) 模式為基礎，在有利學習的互動環境中滲入親子關係、自我認識、價值探索、同儕及體驗式學習等情意元素。是項研究以積極主動、預防性及發展性為導向形式，在三個重要範疇培養正向親子關係，這三個範疇分別是：調整家長期望、正向親子溝通，以及運用創意解難 (CPS) 模式促進資優生的情意發展。研究結果對資優教育（即三層架構中的第一及第二層次）的教育同工有重要的教育意義，並為學校提供了促進資優生情意發展的做法範例和相關資訊。An intervention programme called “1+1” Group is provided by the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education for affective development of gifted students. It is a parent-child group which is designed based on the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) model and infused with affective elements such as parent-child relationship, self-understanding, exploration of one’s value system.The research takes a proactive, preventive and developmental approach to foster positive parent-child relationship through working on three important areas, namely parental expectation adjustment, positive parent-child communication, and incorporation of CPS to promote the affective development of gifted students. Copyright © 2018 Learning & Teaching Expo.

Teachers’ attitudes towards parental involvement play an important role in the ways they approach children’s families. This study examined Hong Kong pre-service early childhood teachers’ attitudes towards different types of parental involvement strategies and investigated whether these attitudes were related to the quality of relationships within their own family. Data were collected from 163 Hong Kong pre-service early childhood teachers via questionnaire. Results showed that engaging families in school decisions was perceived as the least important and feasible. The pre-service teachers also felt least confident in implementing it. There were, however, discrepancies in the perceived levels of importance, feasibility and confidence towards other types of parental involvement strategies. The levels of cohesion and expressiveness in pre-service teachers’ own families were positively related to their attitudes towards some types of parental involvement strategies. These findings suggest that teacher educators should take pre-service teachers’ family experiences into consideration when preparing them to work with children’s families. Copyright © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

在傳統尚學文化及近年高等教育擴張的影響下，香港家長對子女教育普遍抱有很高的期望。然而，本地大學學額供給不足、親子對教育持有不同期望似乎都是阻礙家長實現「望」子成龍夢的不利因素。為了幫助香港家長實現「望」子成龍的熱望，本研究從家長視角出發，試圖回答以下問題：（1）面對緊張的學額供給，香港家長本就很高的學歷期望是否仍對子女的學業有積極影響？（2）若家長可以使子女與自己懷有相同水平的教育期望，家長的期望是否更易實現？為回答上述問題，我們借鑑了地位取得、社會認知和社會資本理論，針對研究問題提出三種假設。接着，我們運用描述性統計方法和多元線性迴歸模型來分析本次研究所用「香港高中學生升學及就業志向研究」數據。數據分析結果最符合我們據社會資本理論提出的假設：家長教育期望與子女的學業成就呈正相關關係；而當我們控制了家長教育期望的影響時，一致的親子教育期望對子女的學業成績有額外的積極影響。Deeply influenced by the traditional Chinese culture that respects scholars and the rapid expansion of higher education in recent years, parents in Hong Kong generally hold high expectations for their children’s education. In fact, however, both the shortage of local university places and the parent-child difference in educational expectations are likely to prevent parents from achieving their expectations. To help Hong Kong parents reach their goals, this study aims to answer the following two questions from the perspective of parents. First, facing the fierce competition for university places in Hong Kong, do parents’ way-too-high educational expectations still have positive effects on children’s academic performance? Second, if parents can align their children’s educational expectations with their own, are their expectations more likely to be fulfilled? To answer these questions, we will propose three different hypotheses according to status attainment theory, social cognitive theory, and social capital theory. Then, we will use descriptive statistical methods and multiple linear regression models to analyze the data used in this study (i.e., Panel Study on the Career and Educational Orientations of the Senior High School Students in Hong Kong). The results of data analyses are largely in line with the hypothesis drawn from the social capital theory. Parents’ educational expectations are positively related to their children’s academic performance. When parents’ educational expectations are conditioned, the alignment of parents’ and children’s expectations is likely to have an additional