Objectives: Research shows that compassion from others and from the self may enable university students to face, overcome, and bounce back from adversity and generate a greater sense of thriving and meaning in life. However, the underlying processes are largely unknown. The present study aimed to examine the associations of compassion with psychological distress, flourishing, and meaning in life among university students and explore the mechanisms underlying these associations. Methods: A total of 536 Hong Kong university students completed questionnaires measuring their experiences of compassion from others, self-compassion, resilience, psychological distress, flourishing, and meaning in life. Results: Serial mediation analyses showed that compassion from others was associated positively with self-compassion, which was, in turn, linked to greater resilience and consequently lower levels of psychological distress and higher levels of flourishing and meaning in life. Conclusions: Our findings reveal the associations of compassion from others and self-compassion with the well-being and life meaning of university students. The findings highlight the importance of being open and receptive to love and kindness from others. The findings also point to the importance of developing a caring attitude toward oneself. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer direct tests of the effectiveness of renaming vocational education and training (VET) in enhancing the image and popularity of the subject. Although many proponents of renaming argue that the word “vocational” is associated with lower levels of skills and knowledge and should therefore be supplemented by better recognised words, empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of this strategy is scant. Design/methodology/approach: This study exploits a rare policy change in Hong Kong, where VET was renamed as vocational and professional education and training (VPET) and conducted an original survey experiment of 1,004 parents in the city to test if the new name would improve respondents' perceptions of the subject. Findings: The findings reveal a complex picture regarding the effects of renaming. Although renaming does not seem to improve the overall popularity of vocational education, it may widen the support base for vocational education by diluting its class character. Specifically, while attitudes toward VET are significantly and negatively correlated with family income, no such association is found in regard to VPET. Originality/value: This paper offers the first direct and comprehensive test of the effectiveness of renaming vocational education – a popular policy suggestion in many countries. Its findings complicate conventional expectations and contribute to the study of educational preferences in advanced economies. Copyright © 2022 Emerald Publishing Limited.

This qualitative study investigated the impact of online education on the learning and peer interaction experiences of students from eight universities in Hong Kong over the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It employed an expansive and spatial notion of translanguaging to explore the process by which students drew on the affordance of virtual communication environments to communicate, study and develop new identities. The findings suggested (1) the students strategically mobilised manifold multimodal resources to constitute their communicative repertoires that facilitated smooth intercultural communication and academic success; (2) such communicative competence centralized the mediating effect of digital semiotic systems and thus might empower the students with disadvantaged language skills; and (3) through translanguaging acts the students developed a virtually translocal identity with an expanded experience of internationalisation of higher education whereby the increasingly interwoven physical and virtual spaces bring extended social networks, learning resources, and career opportunities. The implications of the findings were discussed. Copyright © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The quality of teachers is an essential element of a strong vocational education and training (VET) system. VET performs many important functions in society, including responding to a constantly changing labour market as a result of rapid changes to the economy and society. Recent changes in VET have focused specifically on meeting the needs of the world of work in order to support countries’ development agendas. These improvements, which target the efficiency and effectiveness of VET systems, also need to be reflected in VET teacher training. This has become a priority for governments and other stakeholders, however, there are numerous challenges related to different aspects of VET teacher training, including curriculum design. This chapter provides an overview of VET teacher training in Mainland China (with some reference to Hong Kong SAR), and highlights the approaches/models used for teacher training, as well as the challenges encountered in improving the effectiveness of teacher training in response to the various development trends in VET. The overview is based on a review of literature, curriculum and policy documents. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee and Timo Ehmke; individual chapters, the contributors.

Building on the previous works on Western and Chinese perspectives on quality and change in teacher education (Lee & Day, 2016), this anthology of an international group of scholars from China, Hong Kong (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China) and Germany aims to provide an analysis of issues related to teacher education in both educational systems. Our target group is an international readership that is interested to learn more about the specific challenges and current developments in the field of teacher education in both educational systems. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee and Timo Ehmke; individual chapters, the contributors.

In the recent decades, there has been a trend of adopting community of practice (CoP) approach to a university-school partnership (USP) to promote teaching and learning and teacher professionalism since the Hong Kong education reform in 2000. Particularly, a CoP project entitled ‘Support Programme on Fostering Communities of Practice to Enhance Small Class Teaching’ has been lunched in 2015, which aims to enhance teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and effective teaching practice in applying self-directed learning (SRL) to students. Given that it is a pioneering initiative in promoting SRL in Hong Kong, this chapter intends to offer a conceptualization of CoP-USP within the local education context. In this chapter, the successful criteria and challenges of USP will be discussed, with brief introduction on the development of USP and SRL development in Hong Kong. A single-cluster case study method was adopted to review a case from a CoP project, a comprehensive scope of professional development programme for in-service teachers (ISTs) in Hong Kong, aiming at examining how the CoP project can work out as a USP to help develop teachers’ SRL-based instruction skills and strategies. The findings were revealed in themes through qualitative data analysis, with discussion on whether the CoP Project is a successful USP. Finally, this chapter attempts to offer further insights for future development of USP in other contexts. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee and Timo Ehmke; individual chapters, the contributors.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education has continued to attract attention and sizeable funding worldwide. Given the important role that teachers play in the provision of quality STEM education, this chapter provides an overall landscape of STEM teacher education in China and Hong Kong. The chapter presents an overview of policies, practices and research in teacher education and professional development in STEM education that have been and continue to be implemented in Mainland China and Hong Kong for the purpose of supporting teachers to effectively implement STEM education. Literature from a range of sources, including discussion and research papers, government reports and policy papers with respect to STEM teacher education in Mainland China and Hong Kong have been selected. The analysis of policies and practices is useful to provide a review of what has been done and to inform new directions for teacher education for STEM education. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee and Timo Ehmke; individual chapters, the contributors.

This chapter presents two case studies on e-Learning policy and implementation in universities dedicated to teacher education in Hong Kong and Beijing. The case studies provide an overview of e-Learning in teacher education in the two cities in China; introduce strategies of the university-specific policy on e-Learning in teacher education; share examples of the policy-informed practice for e-Learning in teacher education and then discuss issues for the successful implementation of e-Learning in teacher education. In the case study from Hong Kong, the university-specific policy concerns the development of both e-Learning competency and digital competency to empower student-teachers to be lifelong learners who are active, constructive, interactive and reflective in their learning and professional life. The strategies for e-Learning are implemented to engage student-teachers in blended learning in course delivery, mobile technology-supported learning hub, online assessment-submission platform with plagiarism check and digital portfolio. The strategies for digital competency are implemented to nurture student-teachers with coding, app development, 3D printing, STEM/STEAM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics/science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) literacy and artificial intelligence literacy to groom creativity and innovation for their competitiveness in the digitalised society. In the case study from Beijing, the university-specific policy aims to develop student-teachers’ digital literacy and the capability of design, development and utilisation of digital learning resources and to develop the ability of ICT-based instructional design. The e-Learning strategies are implemented through engaging student-teachers in learning in technology-rich environments (such as smart classrooms, MOOCs [massive open online courses] or SPOCs [small private online courses]), and through the compulsory course of ‘Introduction to Modern Educational Technology’

This book addresses the past and changing contexts of Chinese and German teacher education under the impact of globalization and echoes “quality” issues of teacher education. This edited book provides a comprehensive discussion on other issues in the management and implementation of change in teacher education related to teacher education curricula for professional development of teachers. A combination of chapters provides an overview, a review of literature and research as well as offering examples of teacher education practice and updated empirical research on these topics co-edited by two senior scholars and written by experts from Mainland China (including Hong Kong) and Germany. The volume addresses key issues on teacher standards, ICT in education and e-learning in teacher education, STEM education, vocational teacher education, university-school partnership in teacher education and teaching Chinese or German as a second language. This is an up-to-date academic book to look at profound issues related to quality in teacher education and teachers’ professional development in mainland China and Germany. It will be a useful reference for graduate students and researchers in the field of international and comparative education, teacher education and curriculum studies, teacher educators and practitioners to learn from trends, best practice and challenges that have been encountered in Mainland China and Germany. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee and Timo Ehmke; individual chapters, the contributors.

Creativity and epistemic beliefs are important topics in both psychological and educational research. Despite the long history of research on each of these intrinsically related topics, little work has been done to connect the theories about them. Inspired by the 4C theory of creativity, this study investigated the effects of epistemic beliefs on creativity and the mediation of intellectual risk-taking. The subjects were 659 undergraduates in a university in Hong Kong. The findings revealed that (i) intellectual risk-taking was a strong and positive predictor of creativity; (ii) the certainty dimension of epistemic beliefs was a negative and significant predictor of both intellectual risk-taking and creativity, whereas the complexity dimension was a positive and significant predictor of both; (iii) the source dimension had an indirect positive impact on creativity mediated by intellectual risk-taking; and (iv) the justification dimension had a direct positive impact on creativity. By synthesising the conclusions from this study and the theory of epistemic development, a two-way model was generated to illustrate the undergraduates’ epistemic beliefs and their relationships with creativity. The findings of this study indicated that a dialectical belief of knowledge as human creation might be the most beneficial for undergraduates to develop their creativity. Copyright © 2020 International Conference on Learning and Teaching.