Hong Kong (HK) has been frequently studied in higher education (HE) policy research, but almost none shed light on policies related to the university student hostels. This study is unique as it focuses on university residential education in HK, which has a history of adopting the Oxbridge residential model, but in an Asian context. By tracing the policy development of university student hostels from 1980 to 2020 (a 40-year period), several themes were observed according to the year, ranging from financing hostel construction, defining the purpose of student housing, balancing the ratio of local and non-local students, to promoting internationalization in a localized context in recent years. Compared with the student housing development trend in the UK, the author deduces that the government’s decision to either offer public student hostels or outsource to the private sector will have a considerable impact on the educational role of student hostels. This study emphasizes that residential education must be intentional and suggests that universities should emphasize it as an essential part of higher education. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s) .

This chapter examines how a transnational network of European sanitary, medical and educational experts helped define the contour of architectural reform and hygiene curriculum in Hong Kong from 1901 to 1941. Travelling back and forth between Hong Kong and the wider British imperial world, these colonial experts brought new approaches to public health that subsequently shaped practices in Hong Kong schools. As architectural reform, hygiene education and medical inspection were most rigorously carried out in the state-sponsored English schools (English-medium) that educated a multiracial but predominantly Chinese middle-class cohort, this strand of schools became the prime site where sanitary innovations and hygiene curriculum materialised. Just as imperial preoccupation with youth health drew the spaces of the classroom, dormitory, and school playground into the discourse of hygiene to create a new typology of school architecture, it simultaneously stratified a class structure in Chinese society. School health, in turn, functioned as an important means to enact new class and gender dynamics in Hong Kong in the early 20th century, entwining with the rise of Chinese bourgeoisies and female professionals, as well as eugenic thought that reframed the health of Hong Kong youth as directly connected with the future of the British empire. Copyright © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Kellie Burns and Helen Proctor; individual chapters, the contributors.

This paper investigates problems of space in Hong Kong kindergartens. It reports survey findings of a policy study relating to the Kindergarten Education Scheme (KES). KES emphasizes holistic development and child-centred pedagogy, which require larger and more flexible spaces than traditional desk-based learning. The study aimed to explore kindergartens’ responses to the resulting challenges around providing adequate space within Hong Kong’s high density urban environment. Questionnaires were sent to principals of 751 KES kindergartens. 325 valid questionnaires were collected (response rate: 43.5%). Analysis comprised descriptive statistics, inferential tests of relationships between operation mode and other variables, and coding of open-ended question responses. The paper highlights three key findings: (i) kindergartens reported a wide range of challenges relating to space; (ii) most augment their provision by using public spaces outside the premises, but these spaces come with their own challenges; and (iii) there were significant differences in the extent of reported problems between kindergartens operating in different modes, with long-whole-day kindergartens experiencing greater difficulty and disparity. Situating these findings in the historical context of Hong Kong’s uneven urban development, we argue that policy improvement of spatial provision will require reducing pressures on kindergarten spaces, rather than merely setting out spatial standards. Copyright © 2023  Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Informal learning space (ILS) has increasingly become important for higher education. Yet, most studies were conducted on a piecemeal basis, without considering the planning of the campus. This study adopts a systematic and data-driven approach in understanding the types of ILS, preferences and behaviors using a case study in Hong Kong, by first classifying ILS into user-defined types followed by usage behavior for each ILS types. A mixed-method approach was used by conducting qualitative interviews, focus groups, on-site fieldwork observations and large-scale quantitative survey ( N = 999) with students. Five types of ILS with unique characteristics were identified. This applied research seeks to suggest development directions and design input for ILS types, with implications for master planning in ILS development, extending to any universities using the same procedure. © 2023 The Author(s).

Students’ sense of school belonging (SSB) is linked with many meaningful educational outcomes. Though several studies have been conducted on SSB, most of these have used variable-centered approaches, with few studies examining profiles of students’ SSB using person-centered approaches. To further understand this important concept, this study sought to identify different profiles of students’ SSB by applying latent profile analysis to data from a sample of 1,173 students among 34 local primary schools in Hong Kong. The results revealed six profiles of school belonging (i.e., Low SSB and Moderate Rejection, Moderate SSB and Moderate Rejection, High SSB and High Rejection, High-Moderate SSB and High Rejection, High-Moderate SSB and Low-Moderate Rejection, and High SSB and Low Rejection). This study also investigated the relationship between the identified profile membership and character strength of kindness (i.e., motivation to be kind, recognition of kindness, and kind behaviours) among these students. The results indicated differences in character strength of kindness across the identified SSB profiles. The findings are in line with the view that school environment plays an important role in students’ optimal development and highlight the necessity for a greater emphasis on school intervention programs on building students’ SSB and enhancing their character strength of kindness. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

This chapter draws on the Global Childhoods ethnographic data from Year 4 classrooms in Hong Kong, Melbourne and Singapore to elucidate what everyday learning looks like in the three global cities. Acknowledging that learning assumes varied shapes and forms, our primary focus aims to explicate some key features of everyday classroom life in each city, with a focus on time and space. In doing so, we examine the class timetables and explore how time was organised in the schools, and consider the design of classrooms and playgrounds, including the ways in which these spaces were typically used by students and teachers to create learning opportunities. Our analyses are situated within the position of critical onto-epistemological perspective though which we offered critical insights to provoke new understandings about how educational practices are deeply situated within local sociocultural contexts with greater implications for broader learning outcomes and students’ educational success. We seek to provide discussions that are both critical and comparative for rethinking the ways in which opportunities, challenges and diversity in the three education systems became evident from the classroom ethnographies. We also consider the implications of structured learning for shaping children’s multiple ways of being, belonging and becoming learners. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Operating as a hegemonic, market-driven governmentality, neoliberalism has been colonizing academic institutions and academic professionals’ everyday lives globally. This article demonstrates how several sets of academic event posters displayed at a public Hong Kong university work as spatialized multimodal branding devices that discursively entangle certain types of individuals, activities, institutions, and political economy under a specific mode of neoliberal governmentality. It shows that the posters position the university and its academic units as internationally competitive, Global-North-oriented knowledge enterprises in a mutually shaping relationship with a globalized neoliberal political economy par excellence in Asia. The study signals the need for research on neoliberal academic discourses to pay closer attention to the spatialized, multi-semiotic nature of discursive practices and the multi-layered institutional, politico-economic and cultural contexts in which the neoliberal discourses are situated. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

Capacity building is a term widely used in relation to different organisations and public institutions for improvement. This chapter aims to discuss how RE can be better sustained through capacity building at the individual, institutional and societal levels by comparing the RE practices amongst a local university, the Education University of Hong Kong and some universities in United Kingdom, including the University of Manchester, University of Sheffield and the University of Cambridge. It is expected that a better understanding of the relationship between capacity building and RE advancement, including both its credits and limitations, can be achieved through this chapter. Suggestions for further strengthening RE in universities by capacity building in the three different levels will be recommended. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Residential halls have been seen as an essential microsystem that can promote desirable academic, personal, and social outcomes. However, the extent to which residential education maps onto universities’ educational aims remains ambiguous. Therefore, a study was conducted in two stages, using a mixed-method approach to examine the strength of the alignment between universities’ educational aims and residential educational aims among four government-funded universities in Hong Kong. The results clarify the nature of residential educational aims and found that educators should avoid projecting an ultimate set of residential educational aims onto every institution regardless of the underlying conditions and settings. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.