A strong professional identity is associated with the provision of more effective counselling services. In Hong Kong, however, the role of school counsellors is poorly defined, not well differentiated from those of other educational and mental health professions, and not supported by licensing and minimum qualification requirements. Consequently, school counsellors perform marginalised roles in schools which do not draw effectively on their competencies. Professional bodies that support the development of school counselling do exist but are not well established. If counsellors are to be effective, they need to establish an identity that recognises their unique contribution and locates them clearly in relation to other professions in a culturally appropriate way. They should also occupy positions in schools, which are characterised by collaboration with stakeholders and the ability to influence policy. Professional bodies are well placed to advocate for these changes in the context of the local sociocultural environment and should take a lead in advocating for a more robust professional identity. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Students in East Asian locations often obtain high academic results in international high-stakes testing, but lower results on affective aspects of their schooling, such as sense of belonging. These findings indicate the need for more holistic research into children’s lifeworlds, including their experiences of school. In this article, we draw on a survey with 627 Year 4 students in three global cities in the Asia Pacific (Hong Kong, Singapore, and Melbourne), exploring dimensions of their perceptions of school. Responses from students were generally positive in terms of sense of school belonging and student identity. Students who responded positively in terms of belonging and student identity were more likely to want academic activities to occur more often. The article adds to the existing literature by offering an exploratory consideration of the relationships between sense of belonging, student identity, and school activity preferences of Year 4 students in Hong Kong, Singapore and Melbourne. It is argued that all of these are essential factors that need to be considered and incorporated in policy planning and curriculum development. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

Despite the increasing number of studies on educational leadership during COVID-19, little attention has been paid to the intersections of different educational experiences and perspectives of school leaders, students, and their families that occur both inside and outside of schools. Drawing on eight case studies of public primary schools in Hong Kong, this article explores the challenges and strategies of online learning with a focus on effective leadership practices for supporting economically disadvantaged students during COVID-19. To incorporate the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, a series of questionnaires were distributed to principals (n = 8), teachers (n = 150), parents (n = 775), lower primary students (n = 855), and upper primary students (n = 850) and interviews were conducted with principals (n = 8), teachers (n = 37), parents (n = 32), and students (n = 62). Findings indicated that school leaders and teacher teams demonstrated strategic leadership practices prioritising and responding to the needs and constraints of economically disadvantaged students and their families. The present study draws attention to leadership encouraging collaboration among schools, families, and the wider community, which has become necessary during the shift to online learning during COVID-19. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

Informed by symbolic interactionism, this study examines how positive emotional experiences in teaching, teacher identity, and student behaviors are associated. According to the symbolic interactionism perspective, positive student behaviors signify that teachers have successfully embodied the teacher identity, which results in positive emotional experiences from their teaching. This study’s analysis of interviews with 21 secondary schoolteachers in Hong Kong suggests an alternative explanation: positive emotional experiences in teaching are a result of attaining the goal of teaching, that is, making a difference in students’ lives, rather than verifying a teacher identity. This explanation does not necessarily contradict that of symbolic interactionism, but may help elaborate upon the process of emotional experiences in teaching. The findings provide recommendations for improving teachers’ emotional experiences in teaching. Copyright © 2018 by Francis W. Parker School, Chicago. All rights reserved.

Favoring individual entrepreneurial freedom and free-market competition, neoliberalism has reshaped the social and discursive practices of higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world. In this paper, I draw on methods from critical multimodal discourse studies and an analytic concept from linguistic anthropology to examine several sets of student service materials circulating on the campus of a Hong Kong university between 2016 and 2017. While these materials are purportedly designed with student welfare in mind, I demonstrate how they effectively position students as (1) consumers of tailored services or experiences provided by the university; and (2) entrepreneurial selves, that is, socio-economically competitive and self-managed young individuals. I conclude by arguing that these service materials are shaped by and espouse a neoliberal governmentality that (re)orients HEIs and their students towards an all-pervasive marketization, competitiveness, and assertion of class privilege in a globalizing, particularly Westernized late capitalist society in Asia. Copyright © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The aim of this study is to investigate the reasons for academic stress in Hong Kong and provide recommendations to the government on ways to alleviate this problem. Using photovoice, 15 undergraduate students from a private community college in Hong Kong were invited to take and discuss photographs regarding their lived experiences of learning. Thematic analysis is applied to generate themes from the photovoice data. The results suggest several possible reasons for academic stress, including examination demands, school administration and parents. However, the underlying social reason for academic stress may be the internal contradictions of the education system. That is, the education system purports to value all-round and whole-person education but subordinates this worthy goal to examination results. Thus, the results of the study suggest that the government should address this internal contradiction by considering educational, economic and cultural factors when planning educational policies and/or changes. Copyright © 2020 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

In this chapter, the authors use a policy and program perspective to explore the specific career development needs of gifted learners in Hong Kong. They first examine recent developments in gifted education and career education policies in Hong Kong, then draw on relevant literature to highlight salient career development needs of gifted learners. Next, consideration is given to possible priority content for career guidance programs for these students, and some existing programs are reviewed. The chapter ends with a summary of the implications for educators, counselors, researchers and policy-makers. Copyright © 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Hong Kong has been regarded as one of the strong examination-driven systems worldwide. Under the current education system, local secondary school students have to sit for the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination (HKDSE) at the end of Grade 12. Although the continuing assessment reform since 2000 tried to reduce the number of high-stakes examinations for secondary school students (from two to one at the end of the six-year secondary education), it remained a high-stakes public examination because the examination results usually have a significant influence on learners’ future pathways, including further education and employment. In respect of the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020, many international public examinations have been tried to be called off, but the Hong Kong government did persist in moving ahead with HKDSE. This aroused criticisms about whether the government has taken students’ well-being as a top priority because the annual survey on DSE students’ stress recorded the highest levels in 2020, 2021 and 2022. In this paper, the positioning and myth of HKDSE and its tie to Confucian philosophy will be examined. Students’ well-being is also discussed regarding rescheduling the examination and the impacts on the mental health of all DSE students, notwithstanding the challenges that can bring to any successful outcomes. It is hoped to urge mental health education and promotion could be carried out systematically to improve its effectiveness. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The number of mainland Chinese students was 791 (64% of total international students in Hong Kong) in 1996/97 whereas such number went up to 12,037 (73%) in 2016/17—more than fifteenfold increase within 20 years. In particular, mainland China undergraduates (MCU) exhibited a phenomenal growth from 5 in 1996/97 to 6,852 in 2016/17. Nonetheless, few studies have focused on this group of students concerning their acculturative stress and/or mental health in Hong Kong, even though there were several cases of suicide committed by MCU in Hong Kong in the past decade. Completing tertiary education in one’s home country is generally not an easy task, and pursuing a university degree in a culturally different and unfamiliar place will surely add to one’s difficulties. A literature search of scales assessing acculturative stress showed that none of the existent scales were applicable to MCU in Hong Kong, either because of language issues, different target population, or cross-cultural problems. Hence, the purpose of this study was to develop and validate a suitable scale to measure the acculturative stress of MCU in Hong Kong.A 172-item pool was created from literature, in-depth and focus group interviews, and then validated in a sample of 274 MCU in Hong Kong using one-parameter Rasch model analysis to produce a 117-item Acculturative Stress Scale for Mainland Chinese Undergraduate Students (ASSMCUS) in 21 dimensions, which are English Barrier: Limited English Proficiency; English Barrier: Limited Colloquial English; Cantonese Barrier: Limited Cantonese Proficiency; Cantonese Barrier: Limited Colloquial Cantonese; Study Stress: Heavy Course Load; Study Stress: Student-Centred Learning Approach; Cultural Difference: Mutual Cultural Misunderstanding; Cultural Difference: Identifying with Hong Kong’s Culture and Values; Social Interaction: Loneliness; Social Interaction: Hard to Make Friends with Hong Kong People; Social Interaction: Limited Social Connectedness; Discrimination: