This paper addresses Hong Kong Chinese undergraduate students' conceptions of teacher care informed by their experiences of teacher-student relationships within university context. Utilising the concept of teacher care from Nodding's (1984) ethics of care from a Confucian-Vygotskian perspective, this research considers emergent themes of teacher care from the narrative accounts of final-year students majoring in management and bilingual studies. Results indicate that teacher care is perceived as a deepening of trust, mutuality, responsiveness, and reciprocity between students and teachers, and an enrichment of caring scope, embodied in the conceptualisation of 'Pedagogical Care' to 'Holistic Care' and then onto 'Sustainable Care'. A dialectical framework of teacher care within Hong Kong higher education context is proposed, based on the psycho-social make-up of students and socio-cultural context of learning. This study exposes the importance of teacher care in students' learning as influenced by relational dynamics, and proposes the adoption of caring pedagogy in universities. Copyright © 2021 Routledge.

The academic year 2012/13 marked a major milestone in the history of Hong Kong higher education as it witnessed the admission of two markedly different cohorts of Cantonese-speaking freshmen to the city's English-medium universities: those embarking for the last time upon the traditional 3-year programme modelled on the British system of initial disciplinary specialisation and those commencing the new 4-year programme featuring an American-influenced first year of general education. This article presents the findings of a study which sought to compare the perceptions and experiences of the two cohorts on the challenging process of adjusting to the demands of university study. It was hypothesised that students in the 3-year cohort (3YC) would experience fewer difficulties adjusting to university learning and teaching than the 4-year cohort (4YC) as it was assumed that their A-level programme (years 12–13) placed greater emphasis on university-related skills, practices and habits of mind than the new senior-secondary curriculum (years 10–12). This hypothesis was tested by means of a survey completed by 1480 students at Hong Kong Polytechnic University towards the end of the academic year. The results largely support this hypothesis, although the evidence suggests that both cohorts had adjusted moderately well to university study by the end of the year. The results indicate that the principal difference between the two cohorts and the key to the 3YC's smoother transition was their greater confidence and competence in English, which presumably stemmed from their extra year at school and the greater depth of the traditional sixth-form curriculum.
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One way that universities assess teaching effectiveness is by eliciting student feedback. However, what standards do students themselves use to judge whether a lecturer is a 'good' teacher? As part of a study carried out at a Hong Kong university, students were interviewed about their first-year learning experience and asked what they felt constituted 'good' and 'bad' teaching. Unlike when asked to complete teacher effectiveness surveys, no criteria or characteristics were given. Responses focused primarily on teaching skills that supported student learning and encouraged critical thinking, particularly the teacher's ability to give clear explanations supported by relevant, practical examples.
[Copyright of Journal of Further & Higher Education is the property of Routledge.]