With the general recognition that holistic competencies are beneficial for individuals, employers, and the economy, higher education institutions around the world have emphasized the inclusion of holistic competencies as one of the key learning outcomes. Although educators and researchers have stressed the importance of holistic competencies, less is known from the learners' perspective. The data were obtained from a questionnaire completed by 339 undergraduate students in a local university of Hong Kong, and 6 focus group interviews. Their perceived importance and perceived capacity of holistic competencies were analyzed. The results revealed that most of the perceived importance of holistic competencies are significantly higher than the perceived capacity. Through the follow-up focus group interviews, students discussed their preference regarding how the course content and assessment methods of a separate course for holistic competence development could be designed for the higher education curriculum. Copyright © 2021 Project Innovation, Inc.

Despite the identified high effect size (d=.73) of feedback in affecting student achievement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007), recent feedback research has also found a wide range of factors pertaining to individuals’ feedback perceptions affect their feedback uptake and the effectiveness of feedback in learning (Van derKleij & Lipnevich, 2020). Among these factors, researchers have pointed out negative emotions induced by feedback may hinder feedback use if students do not have adaptive/optimal emotion regulation strategy (Gross, 2008). Based on the ecological feedback model that explicitly includes emotions in examining the complex process of feedback giving, receiving and using (Yang et al., 2014), this qualitative study aimed to explore: 1) what negative emotions university students may have upon receiving feedback, and 2) how students’ feedback orientation (i.e., perceived usefulness of feedback, self-efficacy, social awareness, and responsibility for using feedback to promote academic performance and achievement) relates to emotion regulation in the feedback context. In the COVID-19 pandemic period, individual-based interview (40 to 50 minutes) was conducted respectively through Zoom to seven university students at four different academic years in a Hong Kong university. Content and theme analyses revealed feedback orientation per se plays an influential and positive role in helping students regulate their negative emotions evoked by feedback. Specific roles of the four dimensions of FO also varied in these students’ emotion regulation. Implications of this qualitative study to both feedback and emotion regulation fields are discussed. Copyright © 2020 CHER-Hong Kong.

This paper examines the difference between adolescents’ perception of parents’ educational expectations and their own, and the role of parental involvement in developing adolescents’ educational expectations. The sample was drawn from the fifth cycle of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2012. About 3,000 Hong Kong 15 year-old students participated in the longitudinal study by completing the questionnaire. Using a logistic regression model, we investigated to what extent and how parental expectations and involvement were related to Hong Kong adolescents’ expectations for pursuing a university degree. The effects of individual characteristics (i.e., gender and cognitive ability) and family background (i.e., family structure and SES) were controlled in the model. Results indicated that perceived and actual parental expectations were important predictors shaping adolescents’ educational expectations even after the academic and socio-economic backgrounds of adolescents were taken into account. The model also suggested that less privileged adolescents might be able to overcome their socio-economic disadvantages in achieving high educational attainment if a parent was involved in helping them to make educational plans. The importance of family interventions – in particular, home-based communication between parents and adolescents – is discussed in this paper. Copyright © 2014 INET.

This chapter reports on two datasets. The first is a short questionnaire administered to International College Hong Kong Secondary Media Studies students in Year 10 and 11, regarding their public General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examinations, where students’ attitudes to Free Learning were probed. The second dataset comprised grade achievement comparisons between the 2019 Free Learning GCSE cohort and a previous cohort who had been prepared for the public examination via a standard teaching mode. While the sample was small, students responded positively to Free Learning as a teaching methodology and as preparation for a high-stakes examination. Regarding grade comparisons, grades achieved by the Free Learning cohort were very comparable with grades obtained by previous non- Free Learning cohorts. It would appear that even when it leads to public examinations, with the requirement to complete a set syllabus, Free Learning is a viable methodology. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Ross Parker, David Coniam and Peter Falvey; individual chapters, the contributors.

Acculturation is an emerging field of inquiry in the multicultural context of Hong Kong. Behavioural acculturation focuses mainly on cultural practices such as language use, dietary preferences, customs and traditions, socialization and media consumption. Despite a phenomenal growth of research on the educational predicament of immigrant youth based on a deficit-based “stress and coping” approach, there is a dearth of literature on how non-Chinese young people experience the phenomenon of intercultural learning in Hong Kong. This article reports a qualitative study on the behavioural acculturation of a group of Pakistani secondary school students in Hong Kong from a culture leaning perspective. The study findings challenge the deficit-based perspective and advocate a culture-learning approach to the study of acculturation. Copyright © 2021 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

Existing research on the psychosocial and academic experiences of China-born students studying outside of China has primarily been conducted in English-speaking countries using acculturation models. Such research has generally indicated the importance of various personal and interpersonal resources in understanding China-born and other international students' cross-cultural adaptation. Using a similar coping resources framework, we investigated factors in both the psychological and academic adaptation of a survey sample of 2,201 mainland Chinese students (74% female) studying in universities in Hong Kong, China's Special Administrative Region. We found that academic self-efficacy, social support, and a low level of perceived discrimination predicted both psychological and academic adaptation, while proficiency in English and Cantonese further contributed to mainland Chinese students' academic adaptation. Implications for future research and higher education policies and practices are discussed. Copyright © 2019 The 11th IAIR Biennial Conference and the 15th CAFIC Annual Conference.

This thesis explores multiple relationships among school missions, developmental programs, and the spiritual well-being of students and teachers at 5 Hong Kong secondary schools in which only 3 schools namely an Anglican school (School A), a nonreligious school (School B), and a Catholic school (School E) were selected for further case study according to their quantitative results and school management approval.A mixed methods approach was applied to examine these relationships. A quantitative instrument, the Spiritual Health and Life Orientation Measure, was adopted to assess the spiritual well-being of 2,125 students and 96 teachers. Statistical results revealed that students from School E showed the most highest level of spiritual well-being, followed by School A and then School B, with significant differences observed among the three schools. Teachers’ spiritual well-being were also ranked in the same order of School E, School A and School B but the differences were not significant.A qualitative investigation involved a textual analysis of school documents including the guidelines of school sponsoring bodies and the schools’ mission statements (first-order documents), as well as their school development plans and annual plans (second-order documents). Individual interviews with principals and teachers (n = 21), focus group interviews with senior students (n = 31), and school visits for ethos observations were conducted to identify daily practices and real interactions indicating the influence of developmental programs, teachers’ values, and the schools’ mission statements on the nurturing of the students’ spiritual well-being.The content of developmental programs was found to be closely related to the content of the schools’ mission statements and the values of the schools’ sponsoring bodies. Positive relationships were observed between the number of developmental programs at the schools and the students’ level of spiritual well-being. For all 3 schools, both the

Scholars have extensively studied acculturation from different theoretical perspectives among immigrants across the societies of settlement. However, there is a dearth of knowledge about acculturation from a culture learning approach in Hong Kong. This article reports the acculturative challenges among sixteen (16) Pakistani students from six different secondary schools in Hong Kong. The phenomenographic data analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed four categories of everyday experiences in schools that hinder their acculturation. These are mainly related to inter-ethnic interactions, sensitivity towards diverse learning and sociocultural needs, and the Chinese language teaching curriculum for non-Chinese speaking students. Although the study reports Pakistani students' experiences, the findings may also translate the acculturative challenges among students with an immigrant or ethnic minority background in settlement societies. The article also discusses both the theoretical and practical implications for studying and helping immigrant young people in multicultural contexts. Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This study explored the associations between secondary school students' sense of school belonging, their perceptions of school kindness, and character strength of kindness, and examined possible differences in these constructs across gender groups. The study, which included 1973 Hong Kong secondary school students, revealed that students' sense of school belonging was positively correlated with their perceptions of school kindness at the school and student levels (0.021 and 0.185, respectively). Furthermore, students' sense of school belonging was positively linked to character strength of kindness at the student level, although this relationship was found to be non-significant at the school level. At both levels of analysis, the positive relationships between students' perceptions of school kindness and character strength of kindness were significant. In addition, girls reported higher levels of character strength of kindness than boys. The findings of this study provide a better understanding of the relationships between sense of school belonging, school kindness, and character strength of kindness. Implications for research are also discussed. Copyright © 2020 Society for the Study of School Psychology.

Viewed through the lens of narrative inquiry, this study explored the doctoral experiences of a language teacher educator and examined how he constructed and reconstructed his identities through learning and research experiences in the higher education environment of Hong Kong. Grounded in the notions of "communities of practice" while using "identity" as an analytic lens, the present study examined how a doctoral student negotiated his participation and membership in his situated academic community. The case study provides in-depth understanding of major challenges for a doctoral student to negotiate competence, identities, and power relations in the academic community. These dimensions were vital to gain recognition as a legitimate old-timer in an academic community. A sense of agency was necessary to cross boundaries and shape his own learning and participation in the academic community. However, identity construction is complex in nature, influenced not only by situated experiences within an institutional setting, but also a broader societal academic community. Pedagogical implications for doctoral education were discussed. Copyright ©Routledge.