Service-learning (SL) is a pedagogy that can consolidate students' learning of academic knowledge and nurture their care about the needy in the community. In the West, SL is a popular pedagogy to promote civic engagement in high school students. In contrast, although high schools in Hong Kong emphasize the importance of community service provided by high school students, such service is seldom conducted within the context of academic service learning. In response to the lack of systematic academic SL programs for high school students in Hong Kong, we have launched a project supported by Chow Tai Fook Charity Foundation and Keswick Foundation to promote SL amongst high school students in Hong Kong. Besides developing an online training program on Service-Learning for high school students, we argue that there is a need to strengthen the leadership foundation of students who intend to carry out SL. As such, we have developed an online Service Leadership education program based on the Service Leadership Theory, which highlights the importance of 3Cs (competence, character and care) of an effective leader. In this paper, we outline the design and content of an online Service Leadership education program for high school students which is unique in the literature on youth leadership particularly in different Chinese contexts. © 2023 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

This paper reports on a study conducted in Hong Kong which addresses the question of whether teaching approaches can influence the development of learning outcomes within the context of environmental education, how such outcomes are affected by different academic ability levels, and whether they vary over time. The overall hypothesis is that enquiry teaching is more effective than didactic approaches for the development of environmental understanding, irrespective of students' original academic ability and the time frame of measurement. A quasi-experimental design based on a pre-test and two post-tests and follow-up interviews administered to geography classes at matriculation level was used to collect numerical data about changes in understanding after the teaching of a people-environment topic. Students showed a moderate level of environmental understanding to begin with. Results showed that, irrespective of academic ability, those taught with an enquiry approach did better than those who were taught didactically in the short term but not in the long term. The reasons for this trend are discussed in terms of student ability and teaching conditions in schools. To increase the effectiveness of enquiry teaching, improvements in teacher education and training, curriculum revision, funding and research support and changes in examination questions are called for.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10382040108667445 ]