This article reports the results of a study that assesses the effectiveness of a Philosophy in Schools (PIS) programme in developing students' thinking skills and English competence in Hong Kong. In the study, training and support were provided for three Integrated Humanities (IH) teachers to enable them to teach PIS to their Secondary 3 English as a Second Language (ESL) students. The students were found to be capable of reasoning and arguing in a competent way about philosophical problems arising from various stimuli prepared by their teachers according to the IH curriculum. PIS was also found to play a major role in promoting the students' critical and creative thinking and to enhance the development of their English language proficiency to a significant extent. The findings of this study suggest that integrating philosophy into the IH curriculum can promote critical thinking, creative thinking and English language proficiency in ESL students. Copyright © 2020 University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education.

The aim of this paper is to examine blended learning as an integral component of a learning culture. By drawing on two concepts- habitus and field - we consider the cultural learning experiences of postgraduate students within the context of a Hong Kong University. It is an examination that allows for an appreciation of both an individual as well as a collective experience of blended learning and in so doing it demonstrates how power is (always) an issue within learning cultures. The paper goes on to argue that if blended learning is to achieve its goal in terms of enhancing learning there is a need to have a better understanding of learning itself where questions are asked concerning the learner, the locations where learning occurs and processes of learning. Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). All Rights Reserved.

This article describes a learning unit for seniors within a university in Hong Kong, as an example of offering lifelong learning opportunities for senior adults. This article reports and discusses findings from a small-scale research study conducted at the unit, which aimed to explore the effectiveness of the current mode of integrating elder learning into higher education, specifically how this related to the promotion of intergenerational learning between elders and university students. This article reports on the findings of a quantitative survey conducted with elders, university students and instructors, in order to compare their views on the impact of a mixed intergenerational classroom and to identify the benefits of elder learning. The most positive impact of the mixed-class arrangement was upon the elder learners, who reported very positive learning experiences and a number of positive benefits to learning. All three groups positively reported that the class arrangement did improve intergenerational learning. Whilst all three groups responded very positively to the mixed-class arrangement and presence of elders, there were less positive responses reported from both undergraduates and their instructors as to the impact of elders in the same class upon helping undergraduates learn better. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Purpose: This article aims to (1) systematically examine the development of career guidance practices in Hong Kong over the past 40 years, (2) discuss developmental attention to the career-related self-concept of diverse learners, and (3) propose a multidimensional model of self-concept by integrating the career-related domains with recent advances in self-concept research pertaining to students' in-school and post-school outcomes.Design/Approach/Methods: This article charts the developmental trend of career guidance and counseling (CGC) over more than 40 years in Hong Kong. The article also examines key findings relating to self-concept research made in the fields of education and career counseling in the past 50 years.Findings: For 50 years, Hong Kong has progressively recognized the importance of CGC. The government's continued determination to refine its policies and practices in this domain was succinctly highlighted in the Chief Executive's 2018 policy address. However, many challenges pertaining the professional competence of career guidance teachers and the ability of school administrators to manage the paradigm shift from informal to formal career guidance and counseling practices (CGCPs) remain. Meanwhile, the effects of these CGCPs on students' gains of career-related abilities and interests directly and indirectly remain under-researched.Originality/Value: This article integrates research into the developmental trend of career guidance practices in secondary schools and the study of academic self-concept. The article builds upon previous self-concept research by proposing an extended self-concept model that includes the career-related domain, setting a theoretical model for further research to explore. Finally, the article demonstrates the importance of tailoring career guidance activities in secondary education to reflect the diverse career-related self-concepts held by today's students with diverse abilities. Copyright © 2020 The Author(s).

This paper gives some preliminary analysis on the relationships between perceptions of national identity and national education by using quantitative data. A pilot-tested questionnaire has been sent to all civic education team teachers in Hong Kong secondary schools in 2018. Through quantitative analysis, it is found that some possible types of national education are adopted by teachers. The qualitative interviews with some teachers also reveal a diversified range of teaching methods on national education. All these findings can, hopefully, contribute to the existing literature. This study shall be useful for anyone interested in understanding how teachers perceive their national identity and national education in this post-materialistic and globalized world. Copyright © 2019 CiCea.

To increase the competitive position in the higher education sector, management teams of self-financing institutions have to investigate critical factors influencing satisfaction of students studying at sub-degree and undergraduate degree levels so as to implement appropriate strategies in recruiting students. We adopted a model of Strategic Enrolment Management (SEM) to investigate student satisfaction on tertiary studies. 626 questionnaires were collected to investigate the critical factors affecting student satisfaction in studying self-financed programs. The findings revealed that marketing, admission, academic advising, career services, institutional research and peer influence are the critical factors affecting students' perceived satisfaction. The results provide insightful information and suggestions on how self-financing higher education institutions could improve student satisfaction and further strengthen their institutional strategies and management in increasing the competiveness. Copyright © 2018 International Economic Society.

本文從一名內部人士的視角來說明在香港參與補習的生活經歷，分別以學生、補習導師和研究人員的角色，對影子教育普遍存在的幾個問題給予分析並獲得啟示。本文採用自傳式敘事研究方法，數據來源於作者的事件回憶錄，受啟發於自身作為學員和導師時使用的教材、自己的視頻錄課，以及研究項目的反思日記。基於作者在補習行業扮演不同角色的敘述，本文討論了幾個主要問題，包括(1)影子教育對主流教育積極和消極影響的反思，(2)缺乏對補習教師和廣告質量的嚴格規範，(3)影子教育如何加劇教育不平等以及一些補習機構和非營利組織如何解決這一問題。就作者所知，本文是唯一一篇從作者自身作為學生、導師和研究人員的個人經歷來討論影子教育問題的文章，它從內部人士視角闡述了香港補習行業的實踐和政策發展。 This article aims to illustrate the lived experiences of engaging in private tutoring in Hong Kong as a tutee, a tutor, and a researcher and draw implications on several issues arising from the prevalence of shadow education. This article adopted an autobiographical narrative approach. Data were collected through the author’s memoir of events, stimulated by the tutorial materials he used when he was a tutee and a tutor, his video-recorded lessons of tutoring, and reflective journals from his research projects. Various issues are discussed based on the narrative of the author playing different roles in the tutoring industry, including the positive and negative washback on mainstream education; the lack of strict regulation of the quality of tutors and advertisements; how shadow education may exacerbate education inequality; and how some tutorial companies and nonprofit organizations are addressing the issue. This article, to the best of the author’s knowledge, is the only one that discusses the problems of shadow education from an author’s own personal experiences as a tutee, a tutor, and a researcher. It illustrates how practices and policies of the private tutoring industry are evolving in Hong Kong from an insider perspective. Copyright © 2020 華東師範大學.

Purpose: Catering for learner diversity is a key issue in the recent educational reforms in Hong Kong. The present study addresses this issue through an investigation of the relationships between students' learning styles and approaches to learning in Hong Kong secondary schools.Design/Approach/Methods: A total of 6,054 junior secondary students in Hong Kong responded to a questionnaire consisting of two instruments. A series of confirmatory factor analysis, two-way analysis of variance, and structural equation modeling analysis were conducted.Findings: The results identified three types of learning style among the students which are characterized by a cognitive orientation, a social orientation, and a methodological orientation. Some significant gender- and achievement-level differences were revealed. Compared with the socially oriented learning style, the cognitively and methodologically oriented learning styles were more extensively and strongly related to students' approaches to learning, even though these students showed a greater preference for the socially oriented learning style.Originality/Value: It is unwise to blindly cater for students' learning styles in classroom teaching and curriculum design. Teachers should adopt a comprehensive and balanced approach toward the design of curriculum and teaching which not only highlights the congruence between students' learning styles and teacher's pedagogy but also integrates the constructive frictions between them into classroom teaching. Copyright © 2020 The Author(s).

Globalisation has facilitated massive flows of immigrant students of diverse backgrounds into schools. These developments intensify concerns about immigrant youth's mobility and belongingness, and about the capacity of schools to integrate them into receiving societies. However, the diverse forms, experiences and effects of young schoolchildren's educational mobilities on belongingness are under-researched. This study addresses this gap by examining the links between mobility, belongingness and schooling experiences of 417 Chinese cross-border students (CBS). These students are permanent residents of Hong Kong but live on the mainland and travel across the border to school every day. A structural equation model shows that some dimensions of schooling experiences, notably better relations with local peers and more extracurricular school-based activities in Hong Kong, have stronger links to CBS's belongingness than students' personal and family characteristics and their hours on cross-border commuting. The implications of the findings, both at theoretical level and for enhancing young mobile child migrants' belongingness, are discussed. Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the writing development of Hong Kong kindergarten students over 12 months. They attended 18 kindergartens territory-wide and were followed from June 2002 to June 2003 for the collection of three waves of teacher-rated data at six-month intervals.Design/methodology/approach: First, the construct validity of the translated and culturally adapted version of Morrow's (2012) checklist which assesses writing development was confirmed, considering that the students attended Hong Kong kindergartens who wrote in the Chinese language. The multilevel analysis, which employed corrected measures captured through Wolfe and Chiu's (1999a, 1999b) five-step Rasch scaling method for a common frame of reference, estimated the effects of the factors, namely, student age, gender, class level and schools.Findings: The children's progress over the second six months was also apparently much smaller than the first SIX months for this cohort. The dramatic slow-down in the second six-month period for both cohorts might be partly attributed to the peculiar arrangement of schooling at that time.Research limitations/implications: The recommendation from this study is that random sampling and student test scores on writing need to be taken for the identification of the general trend of young children's writing development in Hong Kong, as well as other Chinese communities alike.Originality/value: The profile of the student's emergent writing development at each six-month follow-up and over the 12 months was explored. Differences between the groups based on age, gender, class level and school in terms of student writing development on average were statistically significant. Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited.