Declining employment prospects of graduates have been reported in the international literature and in Hong Kong. This casts doubts on the ‘employability’ of graduates of an expanding higher education sector. Yet, published patterns and trends of graduate employment outcomes do not tell us much about the contextualised processes that ‘match’ or ‘mismatch’ graduates’ qualifications with ‘appropriate’ graduate jobs. This paper addresses this research gap through examining lived experience and subjectivities of college/university-to-work transition of 10 graduates of self-financing degree-awarding institutions in Hong Kong, which were derived from a study of 40 local young workers in 2018. Drawing upon ‘positioning’ and ‘processual’ perspectives on ‘employability’, this paper sheds light on the nebulous, mutually constituted nature of the skills demanded by employers in workplace. Also, highlighting the tensions discerned in interview narratives, it elucidates the difficulties for graduates to present their skills as ‘directly’ transferable to the workplace. Graduates’ interpretations of (their) ‘employability’ reveal the differential values attached to (‘technical’ vs. ‘non-technical’) skills, (degree vs. sub-degree) qualifications and (self-financing vs. publicly funded) institutions constructed in the specific context of local higher education development. Implications for further research, assessment of higher education functioning and career services are discussed. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Policies of career education facilitate the sustainable development of young people in aspirations, identities and pathways of their career development in senior secondary education. In Hong Kong, the policy has been implemented in public schools since 2014. Principals are responsible for leading a whole-school participation in career education for all students. However, student population of individual schools is more diverse than where they were due to a large number of immigrants from different parts of mainland China and other Asian societies. Many principals have experienced the challenges of increasing diversity in schools, if not any opportunity. This paper aims to explore principal leadership for whole-school participation in student career development. Two research questions are asked: What are the challenges of whole-school participation facing the principals in diverse contexts of individual schools? To what extent do students with different cultural, religious and social backgrounds experience the importance of career development in senior secondary education? We adopted a case study of three secondary schools located in different school districts in Hong Kong. The principals were invited to individual semi-structured interview, while 4 to 7 students from each grade of senior secondary education were invited to a focus-group interview in each school. The findings unveil discrepancy of the expected outcomes of the education between the principals’ experiences of the challenges from a leadership perspective and the students’ experiences of any opportunity for their career development from a user perspective. Potential for positive change through the participation in CLP education varies depending on individual students’ awareness, aspiration and exploration of personal career goal. Implications of principal leadership for whole-school participation in career education in relation to equal opportunity for all students are also discussed. Copyright © 2019 UCEA

In Hong Kong, career and life planning education facilitates the sustainable development of people, particularly the youth, in exploring career aspiration, identities and pathways at the stage of secondary education. This paper aims to explore career teachers’ experience in support of career development of students in the school. The teachers need to overcome a challenging dilemma between the school structure and limited resources. Improvement of the policy of career and life development education are also discussed. Copyright © 2019 APCDA.

Career and life planning is extremely important for all adolescents in order to enhance transition outcomes, but to date, little attention has been paid to its role in education for students with special educational needs (SENs). There is no specific model in Hong Kong for supporting career and life planning for SEN students, nor has there been any research on the topic. As a result, their needs are easily overlooked and they have had fewer opportunities to explore and develop their vocational interests. To address this problem, a charitable organization in Hong Kong initiated in 2016 a two-year program for junior secondary students with SEN. The program aimed to develop a service model for supporting career and life planning for these students in Grades 7–9. Evaluation of the program included obtaining views from different stakeholders, including parents of the SEN students. In this chapter, we discuss findings from the evaluation study using a qualitative approach with data from parent interviews. Copyright © 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

The psychological construct of self-efficacy plays a salient role in students’ pursuit of a career path. Career-related self-efficacy is strongly associated with life satisfaction and emotional well-being. Most of what is known about this construct has come from research with mainstream students in the West, and considerably less attention has focused on students with special educational needs. The limited knowledge we have of SEN students’ career-related self-efficacy may be due to lack of appropriate assessment instruments with sound psychometric properties that can be used across cultures. This chapter reports steps taken to validate such an instrument, the Career Development Self-Efficacy Inventory (CD-SEI), for assessing career life skills self-efficacy in SEN students. The authors describe the use of a short form of CD-SEI in Hong Kong with a sample of SEN students and a comparison group without special needs. Theoretical and practical implications of using this instrument to assess career life skills self-efficacy of SEN students are discussed in light of current career development theories. Copyright © 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

隨著粵港澳大灣區建設的大力推進,來內地就讀和畢業後留在內地創業就業的港澳學生將不斷增加。本研究通過對港澳學生佔比較大的J大學的調查,發現當前內地高校在港澳學生創業就業教育方面還有進一步改進的空間。政府、高校、產業界等應該聯合推動頂層設計、明確教育目標和思路、兼顧港澳學生的主體性特征、加強師資建設、增設實踐平台、優化考核方案與支持體系,以提升港澳學生創業就業教育實效。

This paper draws on Marcia and Porfeli's identity status models to examine the relationship between adolescent career identity formation and its contextual aspects. Focus group interviews were conducted with 26 students at two Hong Kong senior secondary schools. It was found that most participants exhibited the career identity statuses of achievement, searching moratorium, or moratorium towards the end of school. Influences that were identified from family, school, and social culture varied across individuals with different career identity statuses. By reporting the findings from an East Asian school setting, the paper provides theoretical and practical implications for career development for senior secondary school students.
[Copyright of Journal of Career Development is the property of SAGE Publications.]

Globally, the rise of entrepreneurial economies poses challenges to, but at the same time provides opportunities for, higher education. Universities around the world are becoming increasingly entrepreneurial, a development that can be stimulated through their graduates as the most robust source of innovative talents. In post-industrial economies with high graduate unemployment, entrepreneurship education has been touted as a potential solution to facilitate transitions from higher education to work. In the literature of higher education studies, a research gap exists concerning graduate entrepreneurship, despite an emerging body of research on graduate employment/ employability. Besides, notwithstanding the concept of entrepreneurship spirit has been attempted to incorporate in specific subjects under New Senior Secondary (NSS) academic structure, the outcome of entrepreneurship education under local education system, including higher education, still requires room for improvements. By examining the constructions of aspiration for graduate entrepreneurship, and exploring the decisive factors on entrepreneurship decision, this paper will contribute to critical studies in education on socioeconomic disparities and framings of youth aspiration through higher education, against the backdrop of deepening global inequalities. By purposive sampling, empirical case study will draw on in-depth interviews with a sample of 30 graduates embodying varying degrees of entrepreneurial aspiration and success from research-intensive universities in Hong Kong.Positive correlations between social class and entrepreneurial intentions are revealed in the business literature as entrepreneurship founded by working class students are restricted by limited resources and collaborative networks. Paradoxically, studies have also found that lower middle-class students often have the strongest desire for social mobility and perceive entrepreneurship as a desirable pathway. Employing the analytical