Caring for a child with Specific Learning Disabilities or Difficulties (SLD) can be both rewarding and difficult experience; however, little is known about the experience of mothers in caregiving children with SLD in Hong Kong as well as other countries. The present study aimed at exploring the perceived health needs and ways of coping among mothers with caregiving to their children with SLD in Hong Kong via qualitative interviews. Particular interest was laid on (1) the parental experiences of caregiving to a child with SLD; (2) the sources of stress and perceived health needs among the mothers concerning caregiving; (3) the supports and utilization of available health care services by the mothers having a child with SLD; and (4) the coping strategies employed by the mothers in caring for their SLD children in daily living. This study adopted a qualitative research approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with nine mothers having a child with SLD. All interviews were audiotape recorded and transcribed. Content analysis with a constant comparative approach was used to analyze the interview data. During the data analysis, five categories emerged from the data collected. All nine in-depth interviews were held between December 2009 and November 2010. The research findings suggested that the stress related to the care of children with SLD was multi- faceted. A lot of difficulties in caregiving, concerns with the SLD child, negative experience with school personnels, and limited support resources were reported by the mothers in the study. The researcher also found that there were significant psychosocial impacts on the mothers due to caregiving to their children with SLD. In addition, active seeking information, acceptance and positive wishful thinking were the few coping strategies employed by the mothers to cope with the stress in caregiving. This study set out to contribute to the understanding of the stress and ways of coping among Chinese mothers

From 1997 onward, integrated education has been developing rapidly in Hong Kong. Since then, many students with physical disability (PD) were integrated into mainstream schools. In catering for the special needs of students with PD, many mainstream schools had taken steps to improve physical accessibility. However, it was generally agreed that students' needs on other aspects, such as on peer interaction and learning, were less attended to. The present study investigated the quality of school life (QSL) in students with PD in mainstream schools. The QSL model proposed by Williams and Batten (1981) was adopted. Qualitative research method was chosen. Four students who were / had been studying in mainstream schools were interviewed. The interview was in a semi-structured format. Pre-designed questions concerning the following domains of school life, including general satisfaction, teacher-student relations, social integration, opportunity, achievement and status were asked. The questions were designed based on the QSL model of Williams and Batten (1981). Data obtained was transcribed, coded, and summarized. Summaries of the four interviews were provided. Further analysis was then carried out to identify key themes and concepts from the transcriptions. Through the analysis, it was found that the participants were satisfied with their school life in general. Among the important domains mentioned in Williams and Batten's QSL model, the participants were positive towards the domains of achievement (i.e. academic results) and opportunity (i.e. relevancy of the curriculum). In the domain of social integration which focused on interaction with peers, the participants had varying experiences. Two of the participants were satisfied with their relationship with peers while the other two experienced bUllying by their non-disabled peers. Even among students who regarded their interaction with peers as satisfactory, factors that negatively affected friendship development were identified

Rapid changes in the external environment of education in Hong Kong, such as recent cuts in government funding and the increasing complexity of human and social problems in general, demand new ways of learning and teaching in social work, and particularly in the field practicum. The dominant method in teaching instrumental problem-solving involves the application of rigorous and scientifically tested and derived methods that is, technical rationality. This epistemological approach is, however, a misplaced model when dealing with human interactions in the context of social work practice. Practice wisdom is practical moral knowledge. In the living of one's life, practice, experience, moral deliberation, and reasoning also come along, and these become important aptitudes of the practitioner. Currently, the discussion of practice wisdom in social work education is limited, confined solely to conceptual analysis. Here, a four-dimensional framework for the epistemological understanding of practice wisdom is developed, based upon a range of scholars' views of practice wisdom. These four dimensions are Moral Reasoning Cognitive Knowledge, Agential Objective, Interactive Isolated, and Fluid Static. This research explores how practice teachers exercise pedagogical practice wisdom, specifically, the four features of practice wisdom namely the interplay of Moral Reasoning and Cognitive Knowledge, Agential Nature of knowledge, Interactive Process of knowledge generation and Fluid Status of knowledge, in practice teaching for pedagogy development. Practice teaching here is equivalent to fieldwork supervision.; The theoretical framework employed here utilizes Stenberg's (2010) didactical triangle to capture the data and analyze the relations that develop among the different features of practice wisdom. The key findings, which relate to the substantive contents of the four features and its dynamic operation among individual practice teachers, are discussed. It is discovered that practice