During the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous schools halted face-to-face teaching and instead resorted to online classes. The impact of online learning on students’ academic worries, social relationships, and psychological well-being has received growing attention. Based on a sample of 1095 students aged 14–16 in 12 secondary schools in Hong Kong, structural equation modeling was used to investigate the association between online learning problems, academic worries and performance, social interaction, and psychosocial well-being during the pandemic. The path relationships among variables were compared by gender groups and socio-economic status (SES). Online learning problems were found to be negatively associated with psychosocial well-being through academic worries and social interaction as mediators. The effect of mediation among female students was larger than that of males, whereas the impact of academic worries on both psychosocial well-being and social interaction was stronger and significant only in the low SES group. As the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the learning and well-being of students, attention should be given to gender and SES difference among students. Copyright ©2024 Springer Netherlands.

Concern over high and persistent levels of poverty and inequality have focused attention on the broader issue of social disadvantage in Hong Kong. The social exclusion framework provides a new perspective that shifts the focus away from purely economic causes to the social processes that prevent people from participating, although conceptual and definitional ambiguities present conceptual and practical challenges to empirical research on exclusion. This paper presents results from a comprehensive survey that allows the extent and nature of social exclusion in Hong Kong to be estimated for the first time. Attention focuses on examining the broad profile of exclusion, and on the association between social exclusion and a series of indicators of subjective well-being (SWB). The overlap between social exclusion and poverty is also examined, the results showing that the two are different and are associated with different levels of well-being.
Copyright of Journal of Asian Public Policy is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17516234.2013.873338

The social work profession has always been involved in dealing with uncertainty and risk in the life politics of clients. However, it is not easy for young social work students to translate this philosophical disposition into their real life practice with clients. In spring 2003, when the SARS epidemic broke out in Hong Kong, a group of social work students from the Chinese University of Hong Kong were doing their fieldwork practicum. Suddenly confronted by a collective sense of risk in their role as social workers, the students went through a period of unrest, as performing their helping duties brought with it a simultaneous exposure to personal risk. This paper is based on four focus group interviews with these social work students, to understand how they processed their experience of risk during their exposure to the SARS crisis, and how they connected the experience to their social work practice with clients. It is found that the predicament arising from the exposure to personal risk brought about by the SARS crisis during the students' field placement engendered the reflective process that enabled a renewed and personalized meaning of professionalism. The results provide a basis for reflection among social work educators on the role of risk in the training of prospective social workers, and on how social work education can better prepare students for practice in a high-risk environment.
[Copyright of Social Work Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02615470601081704]