Teachers play a critical role in facilitating the career and life planning of secondary school students. This paper describes the development of the Career-Related Teacher Support Scale (Hong Kong Secondary Students Form). Based on data obtained from 493 students in Hong Kong, five types of career-related teacher support were identified with the most important form of support being teachers' knowledge about the world of work and study path requirements. A correlation model yielded the best fit to the data. No variance in response pattern appeared across genders, and the new scale was found to have good validity and reliability. Copyright © 2023 Springer.

While the relationship between self-determination and the academic achievement of students has been widely tested across cultures and groups, limited research has examined the antecedents of self-determination and their impacts on school engagement, which is the pre-requisite of academic achievement. The present study, based on the self-system processes model of motivation, tested the relationships between peer support, school support, self-determination, and school engagement in 118 secondary school students with special needs integrated into mainstream schools in Hong Kong. The results showed that school support has a significant indirect effect on school engagement via self-determination as a mediator. The correlations between school support, self-determination, and school engagement are all positive and significant, whereas peer support did not correlate with school engagement. Controlling for the factors of peer and school support, self-determination was the strongest predictor of school engagement for students with special needs. The current findings may highlight the importance of school support and self-determination interventions to enhance the school engagement of students with special needs in inclusive educational settings. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The current article examines the issue of teachers' high job stress and low motivation to develop their careers, in Hong Kong, whose situation echoes the ones in many other parts of the globe. Based on some previous research, we propose that the giving of social support from teachers to students is helpful to protect teachers from this negative effect. We carried out a pilot study with a sample of 41 local teachers who have a range of ages and teaching experience, whose position in school is at the middle management level, across 41 different schools. Questionnaires were used to examine the teachers giving of social support to their students, work-related self-efficacy, job satisfaction and aspiration. Regression analysis revealed that offering social support to students is associated positively with the teachers' work-related self-efficacy, which in turn is positively associated with the job satisfaction and aspiration of the teachers. Based on this, it is suggested that prompting teachers to give social support to their students is an effective way to tackle the current problem of teachers' high job stress and low motivation for teacher development. Implications are discussed.
[Copyright © 2015 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.]

Objective: To examine the effect of depressive symptoms and satisfaction with family support (FS) on physical and mental Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL). Methods: Data were obtained from the Hong Kong FAMILY Project baseline survey in 2009-2011, which included 16,039 community residents (age >= 20). The FS was measured using the Family Adaptation, Partnership, Growth, Affection, Resolve (APGAR, range 0-10) Questionnaire. HRQoL were assessed using the SF-12 version 2. Depressive symptoms were recorded using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Demographic and lifestyle variables, stressful life events, perceived neighborhood cohesion were also assessed. Results: In a multilevel regression model, socio-demographic and behavioral variables explained 21% and 19% of the variance in physical and mental HRQoL. The presence of depressive symptoms (PHQ-9 score >= 10, standardized coefficients, beta of -1.73) and high FS (APGAR score 7-10, 1.15) were associated with mental HRQoL, after adjustment for age, education, household monthly income, drinking status, physical activity, chronic conditions, life stress and neighborhood cohesion. Not FS but the presence of depressive symptoms (beta of -0.88) was associated with physical HRQoL. The presence of depressive symptoms in women than men were more associated with a poorer physical HRQoL (p<0.01) while depressive symptoms in men were associated with a decrease in mental HRQoL (p<0.001). The interaction between FS and depressive symptoms was nonsignificant in relation to HRQoL. Among those with depressive symptoms, high FS was associated with a better mental HRQoL (41.1 vs. 37.9, p<0.001) in women but not contribute to variance in men. Conclusions: Higher FS and presence of depressive symptoms were significantly associated with HRQoL in general population in Hong Kong. Among those with depressive symptoms, high FS was associated with a favorable mental HRQoL in women but not men.
[Copyright of PL o S One is the property

Based on a qualitative analysis of a group of parents' perceived outcomes and experiences in a parent education program in Hong Kong, this paper discusses how a transformative approach provides a new frame of reference from which to explore the new directions of parent education. The research findings suggest that parent transformation can be achieved in numerous ways comprising consciousness raising, growth facilitation, life integration, relationship enhancement, support generation and community building. The findings provide a knowledge base for an investigation of its applicability. They also offer reference materials to guide other parent education practitioners in applying the transformative approach in actual practice.
[Copyright of Journal of Social Work Practice: psychotherapeutic approaches in health, welfare and the community is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2012.732046]