Not long after the political transition in 1997, Hong Kong witnessed a spate of top-down education reforms that had been conceived within the neoliberal ideology of economic globalisation. Neoliberalism is particularly pervasive here, because of the underdevelopment of representative politics and of critical, social democratic discourse in society. This article examines how education has been shortchanged by these reforms that dovetail with various processes arising from neoliberalism. These processes include privatisation, managerialism and performativity within the schools, as well as standardisation and surveillance in the curriculum. While teachers experience subjection to a new form of governmental discipline, society as a whole suffers from increasing polarisation in education provision. The reinvention of a humanist education agenda is urgently called for but, unfortunately, this is fraught with great difficulties.
[Copyright of International Studies in Sociology of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09620210500200142]

The social work profession has always been involved in dealing with uncertainty and risk in the life politics of clients. However, it is not easy for young social work students to translate this philosophical disposition into their real life practice with clients. In spring 2003, when the SARS epidemic broke out in Hong Kong, a group of social work students from the Chinese University of Hong Kong were doing their fieldwork practicum. Suddenly confronted by a collective sense of risk in their role as social workers, the students went through a period of unrest, as performing their helping duties brought with it a simultaneous exposure to personal risk. This paper is based on four focus group interviews with these social work students, to understand how they processed their experience of risk during their exposure to the SARS crisis, and how they connected the experience to their social work practice with clients. It is found that the predicament arising from the exposure to personal risk brought about by the SARS crisis during the students' field placement engendered the reflective process that enabled a renewed and personalized meaning of professionalism. The results provide a basis for reflection among social work educators on the role of risk in the training of prospective social workers, and on how social work education can better prepare students for practice in a high-risk environment.
[Copyright of Social Work Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02615470601081704]

This paper discusses the views of three Hong Kong social work practitioners on how they make sense of what they learned at university and how they reconstruct that social work knowledge through reflection on their practice. It suggests that unreflective and uncritical discretion results in social workers making assumptions or imposing their own beliefs, which inhibits their practice. Three issues that are commonly faced by fresh graduates are highlighted in the critical reflections of the three social work practitioners: (1) value conflict; (2) unawareness of the self; and (3) abuse of power in practice. In 2007, the competency-based approach is still the mainstream approach to social work education in Hong Kong, but as social work educators we should aim to help students to engage in a process of continuous professional reflection whereby they explore multiple ways of framing and understanding a practice situation and hence find alternative ways of knowing and acting in practice.
[Copyright of Social Work Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02615470701456558]

This article reports research undertaken as part of the curriculum development of a Master of Social Work programme at the University of Hong Kong. It was decided to switch four out of five core subjects to a problem based method of teaching and learning. Two student self-assessment measures were used to track learning skills acquisition and professional knowledge acquisition. The Problem Based Skills Learning Inventory covered problem solving, interpersonal and group skills, self-directed learning skills, self-assessment and knowledge building. The Competence and Aptitude in Social Work Scale included knowledge, social awareness, communication skills, leadership and self-concept. Results indicated that for most students there were significant gains over the course of the academic year in most areas. Serendipitous findings throw light on the issue of students' response to pure and hybrid PBL methods and the acceptability of this more active approach to learning to Chinese students.
[Copyright of Social Work Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02615470701456533]