A Community of Practice (CoP) was established in 2020 to promote positive life values and well-being among university students in the Education University of Hong Kong. The CoP team has adopted the Heaven, People, Environment, and Self perspectives to conduct life education and positive education and help students learn about transcendental, communal, environmental, and personal well-being. In this symposium, the CoP team members will share the results of a cross-sectional survey study about the levels and predictors of university students’ meaning in life and positive mental health. The CoP team members will also introduce a newly developed online learning platform, the E-hub for Life Education and Positive Education, which shares learning resources and teaching materials related to life education and positive education. Moreover, the CoP team members will introduce a collaborative digital storytelling project related to positive education, in which students are trained to create and reflect on a series of digital stories that highlight different contributing factors of a positive life, including personal character strengths and positive values (e.g., determination, courage, and bravery), family love and support, and friendship and collaboration. The CoP team members will discuss how these non-formal learning activities help students enhance personal, family and social well-being, and develop reflective skills and values-laden perspectives in their personal and professional lives. Copyright © 2021 ICLT.

The transition to primary school is stressful for children in Hong Kong, with students showing high rates of anxiety and depressive symptoms. To further understand this transition, the current study: 1) examined the utility of Pekrun's (2006) theory of achievement emotions for young children with limited control conceptions; 2) tested the theory in high and low competence subject areas; and 3) tested a mediational model predicting changes in children's achievement emotions over time from control/value appraisals and academic coping strategies. 242 children (age 5 to 6) from 11 schools in Hong Kong participated. At each of two time points (the third and last months of the school year), children were interviewed individually about their control/value appraisals, academic achievement emotions, and academic coping strategies. Control and value appraisals were positively associated with academic enjoyment and negatively associated with boredom and anxiety. The control by value interaction for academic anxiety was in the expected direction and marginally significant (p =.06). Results were stronger for the low competence areas, and the mediational model was significant for girls only. Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Humility as a virtue has been receiving increasing scholarly attention in the fields of philosophy and psychology (particularly positive psychology). While humility is regarded as important for knowledge production, acquisition, and transmission, philosophical and psychological inquiries indicate that the concept of humility can significantly differ across social arenas and cultural traditions. However, despite its clear educational importance, humility as a moral concept is seldom explored empirically in relation to teaching and learning. This study seeks to extend our cross-cultural understanding of humility and its association with teaching and learning practices in schools. Based on semi-structured interviews with teachers in local and international secondary schools in Hong Kong, we comparatively explore how teachers understand the concept of humility and how their understandings shape their teaching practices in classrooms. This comparative approach can provide a deeper understanding of the differences and similarities between different teachers’ understandings of humility as an important moral concept. Furthermore, this study will shed light on how educators’ moral concepts are associated with their pedagogical practices. This will provide an alternative lens to reflect on and improve teaching and learning practices, and teacher-student relations in schools. Copyright © 2021 The Education University of Hong Kong.

Around the world the prevalence of mathematics anxiety and disengagement point to a poor sense of student 'mathematical wellbeing'. Mathematical wellbeing is defined here as the fulfilment of one's ultimate or core values, accompanied by positive feelings and functioning in mathematics education. Yet student wellbeing and how to support it in specific school subjects including mathematics is vastly under-researched. Also, despite outperforming other countries in international mathematics assessments, East Asian students generally appear to experience poor affect and high academic burden in mathematics education, which are indicative of poor mathematical wellbeing. In this context, this explorative and descriptive study investigates the values that are associated with the mathematical wellbeing of a cohort of Chinese primary school students. 258 Grade three students in Chengdu, China responded to a questionnaire which explored teacher-nominated mathematics learning moments that students valued most for their mathematical wellbeing. Findings pointed to students valuing all the learning moments to some extent, with good grades, fun and interest, mathematics-themed videos, and teacher praise rated most commonly for wellbeing. The values underlying these learning moments are similar to the seven mathematical wellbeing dimensions found in Australian classrooms. The findings also highlight the cultural subjectivities involved, in which the same classroom actions can reflect different underlying values across cultures, and in which a particular value can be espoused in different ways in different places. We also look ahead to suggest how teachers might support students' mathematical wellbeing, by recognising and then fulfilling their students' values in the mathematics classroom. Copyright © 2022 Springer.

In Hong Kong, which transitioned from a colonial to post-colonial One Country-Two Systems structure, sustainability implementation rests on two institutional pillars: education, which drives the city’s knowledge-based economy, and family system. In light of the recent policy demands to strengthen higher education and family systems by capitalizing on the unique advantages of the post-colonial era, the purpose of this study was to: (1) describe and analyze sustainability values of the first-year university students; and (2) investigate roles of family and educational systems in the process of their formation. The mix-method study stressed the importance of discerning and analyzing sustainability value formation in order to create in-depth understanding of the curricular adjustments that align the sustainability mindset of Hong Kong students in the context of the One Country-Two Systems under the pressing demands of global economy. The study relied on the use of two systems theoretical frameworks employed within sustainability education (Sterling, 2003) and family (Bowen, 1957/1974) fields. Data sources included questionnaires of 4985 Hong Kong first-year university students; and 31 semi-structured interviews of Liberal Studies teachers. The quantitative findings showed that 85% of the students believed that their family influenced their environmental values; reported a significant negative coefficient (-0.044) between the two student cohorts in relation to family influence; and showed that family influence on students’ sustainability values differed by gender. The qualitative results revealed the overarching themes of Family Income, Role Modeling, and Shared Responsibility as three major descriptors of family influences on sustainability values of Hong Kong students. Copyright © 2022 Springer.

This study investigates the relationship between values and academic major in university students in Hong Kong. The study used a survey based on a convenience sample of 645 university students in Hong Kong who responded to a questionnaire comprising Schwartz's Values Survey and Super's Work Values Inventory. Comparison between several majors of study and their counterparts reveals that business, as well as humanities and art, students demonstrated general and work values in accordance with the literature. This gains partial support to the claim that there is a close connection between values and choice of academic majors. Copyright © 2022 SAGE Publications.

Mathematical modeling is considered a bridge to STEM education and has been incorporated into K–12 mathematics curriculums in various countries. However, it has a relatively short history in Hong Kong schools. The lack of high-quality, relevant exemplars of mathematical modeling activities is a challenge to teacher practice in this area. Hence, this study aims to establish a design framework for mathematical modeling activities suitable for teachers and students in Hong Kong. We explore the design and content of the official mathematical modeling exemplars published by the Hong Kong Education Bureau using a document analysis approach. The findings provide the basis for developing a framework to be used in the future design of mathematical modeling activities. Four exemplars were found and analyzed in terms of their structural components, level of learning experience in mathematical modeling, and design characteristics. Based on our findings, we discussed various strategies to enhance the design of a mathematical modeling activity, including setting diversified learning objectives, cross-subject collaboration when formulating the problem context and instructions, designing more activities suitable for average and underperforming students, emphasizing the evaluation of modeling outcomes, and providing relevant supporting materials. Our study thus lays the groundwork for advancing the teaching and learning of mathematical modeling in school contexts. Copyright © 2022 by the authors.

Creativity and epistemic beliefs are important topics in both psychological and educational research. Despite the long history of research on each of these intrinsically related topics, little work has been done to connect the theories about them. Inspired by the 4C theory of creativity, this study investigated the effects of epistemic beliefs on creativity and the mediation of intellectual risk-taking. The subjects were 659 undergraduates in a university in Hong Kong. The findings revealed that (i) intellectual risk-taking was a strong and positive predictor of creativity; (ii) the certainty dimension of epistemic beliefs was a negative and significant predictor of both intellectual risk-taking and creativity, whereas the complexity dimension was a positive and significant predictor of both; (iii) the source dimension had an indirect positive impact on creativity mediated by intellectual risk-taking; and (iv) the justification dimension had a direct positive impact on creativity. By synthesising the conclusions from this study and the theory of epistemic development, a two-way model was generated to illustrate the undergraduates’ epistemic beliefs and their relationships with creativity. The findings of this study indicated that a dialectical belief of knowledge as human creation might be the most beneficial for undergraduates to develop their creativity. Copyright © 2020 International Conference on Learning and Teaching.

This chapter provides a review of education policies, broader discourse, and recent protests to consider the ways Hong Kong identities draw simultaneously from its post-colonial legacy, position as a global city, traditions of open economy and pursuit of democracy, and reversion to Chinese sovereignty. The chapter highlights some of the tensions these legacies and experiences have created in education and for civic identities. Drawing from the empirical data of a recent survey about democratic values, identities and political participation (N = 1,004), this research found that 63% of respondents perceived global citizenship is more important than a Chinese identity. It was discovered that young people with stronger identification as global citizens agree with the universal value of democracy to a greater extent, and respondents who identify themselves as "Hongkonger" are more likely to perceive that global citizenship is more important than a Chinese identity. According to a senior United Nations human rights official (Schattle, 2009), the original global citizens are people whose fundamental human rights can no longer be protected by their state government. They have no other citizenship than their humanity. The chapter will engage in a working argument that global citizenship can serve as an open and undefined space for the "rootless" Hong Kong young people (Ho & Tang, 2020), situated on China's periphery, to search for a meaningful civic identity. Imagining their own broad-based civic self without a national identity, global citizenship creates for Hong Kong educated youth a "mental territory" that can go beyond the authoritarian Chinese nation-state and offer them alternatives of civic affiliations more aligned with their experiences of recent democratic struggles in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2021 by Information Age Publishing.

The present research was designed to examine the psychometric properties of a Chinese version of the MLQ using a construct validation approach in 1,089 Hong Kong secondary school students. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to examine the structural validity of MLQ. Correlational analyses were done to assess how meaning in life dimensions relate to life satisfaction, self-reported duration of daily sleep, and connectedness to social agents. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the modified two-factor model of meaning in life with presence of meaning and search for meaning as key dimensions, was valid and reliable in the current sample. Evidence for configural, metric, and scalar invariance was found across boys and girls. Meaning in life dimensions was differentially associated with connectedness to various social agents, life satisfaction, and average daily sleep. MLQ is a psychometrically valid tool to measure meaning in life among Hong Kong Chinese students. Copyright © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.