The social communication needs of young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are complex and yet this area has not been well researched. The present study investigated the social inclusion of young adults with ASD in colleges. A total of 80 young adults studying full- time in colleges completed the self-developed on-line questionnaires on the social perceptions of their peers on the spectrum. The findings indicated that about half of the respondents would engage peers on the spectrum in their social groups. However, the respondents showed the least willingness of having someone with ASD to join their collaborative project groups. About half of the respondents mentioned the communication challenges in socialising with peers on the spectrum. Our findings re-affirmed that the importance of peer support to include young adults with ASD to different social and academic contexts in post-secondary education settings. The strength-based approach to support young adults on the spectrum to increase social connectedness and self-confidence is discussed. 自閉症譜系障礙(自閉症)年青人的社交環境是複雜、多層次的,但現時,這方面的科研卻十分缺少。本研究的目標是探討自閉症年青人的社交融合情況。80位全日制專上學院或大學生填寫了關於他們與自閉症同輩交往的網上問卷。數據顯示,大約一半的填卷者願意與自閉症同輩交往,但是他們卻最不願意與自閉症同輩做小組研習活動。大約一半的填卷者表示社交溝通困難是主要的挑戰。研究結果肯定了同輩互動對自閉症年青人融入社群及學習環境的重要性。總括而言,本文建議利用「優勢模式」來擴闊自閉症年青人的社交圈子及提升自信。
[Copyright of Hong Kong Journal of Special Education is the property of Special Education Society of Hong Kong Ltd.. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
https://sites.google.com/a/seshk.org.hk/seshk-org-hk/c_publication]

This study focuses on doctoral students' professionalisation as future academics across academic disciplines, using a Hong Kong research-oriented university as a case study. Doctoral students acquire the norms, knowledge/skills, and values required for the academic profession through their learning experiences. The study aims to explore how doctoral students perceive their professional competences and what are the major factors of learning experiences influencing perceived competencies among them. Data collection of the study is based on a questionnaire designed by international team members in a previous project entitled A Comparative Study of Doctoral Education in Asian Flagship Universities. Drawing on data from 490 respondents in Hong Kong, the current study uses descriptive and regression analyses to examine and compare the factors influencing doctoral students' perceived competencies in terms of tasks, ideas and attitudes. The results show that the competencies of doctoral students are influenced by various factors, such as curricula, supervision style and learning culture. Overall, the study suggests that the formal and informal learning experiences of doctoral students must be carefully designed and implemented to foster the development of their professional knowledge, skills and values.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Education Review is the property of Springer. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12564-018-9530-0]

Although there are studies showing that higher education would benefit university students, empirical research that comprehensively assesses student general education learning outcomes and related demographic correlates based on longitudinal data is minimal, especially in the Chinese context. To address the research gaps, the present study was conducted to investigate learning outcomes amongst university students in one university in Hong Kong based on a four-year longitudinal design (N = 460). Four dimensions of student general education learning outcomes were measured, including effective reasoning and problem solving, leadership, moral character, and integration of learning. Results suggested a U-shaped pattern of student learning outcomes for most dimensions, with no improvement or even a decrement in the second year and a steady growth thereafter. While family background did not affect student development, gender showed a significant moderating effect on students’ development in two dimensions (i.e., effective reasoning and problem solving, and integration of learning). These findings suggest that students benefit from general education-embedded university study in multiple dimensions, especially after the first year of transition period. Practical implications of the findings and future research directions were also discussed.
[Copyright of Applied Research in Quality of Life is the property of Springer Netherlands. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9645-9]

The nature of liberal arts education merits renewed attention and consideration, especially in the context of the modern university in both Hong Kong and mainland China, where there is growing recognition that quality education standards should be improved, and an interdisciplinary approach to education and research is the way forward. The liberal arts spirit is an illustration of the power of inspiration and transformation, and through engaging with different perspectives, students are enabled and encouraged to pursue independent study, which boosts their creativity and critical thinking. As a catalyst and facilitator, liberal arts education that encompasses fresh global perspectives and connections has proved its worth over the years. However, since it is sometimes easy to lose sight of some of the fundamental principles essential to university education, we need to realize that too little interaction between science and the humanities has widened the two-culture divide, and the question is how to reconcile, or better still combine, the two. The two-culture debate, although suffering neglect for a long time in China, is of profound relevance and implications for the modern university. It can be observed that participatory interaction inherent in the dynamism of pedagogical engagement is increasingly promoted as the preferred mode of teaching students, who have benefited from broad-based learning as the embodiment of liberal education. Overcoming rigid disciplinary exclusiveness is positively correlated with empowering students with broad knowledge and skills to succeed in the future.
[Copyright of European Review is the property of Cambridge University Press. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1062798717000667]

This paper critically examines the dominant Asian Higher Education managerialism from the perspectives of the so-called Southern and/or Post-colonial Epistemology. Despite the fact that the archaic form of colonization—with its territorial occupation, exploitation, loss of subjectivity and knowledge manipulations —seems to be over, Asian Higher Education today shows clear signs of being engulfed, once more, by new forms of colonization and imperialism under the guise of rational administration and management that affect its core missions of knowledge production and subjectivity formation. This paper compares Higher Education in Korea, Japan and Hong Kong to argue that there is a significant resemblance between Asian modernization process hijacked by colonialism and the ongoing neo-liberal waves against Asian higher education. Copyright © 2018 CESHK.

This paper was inspired by three important concerns in higher education, namely, changes in higher education curricula (Bourner, 2004), concept of a fully functioning university (Bourner, 2008), and nature of education, such a university offers (Bourner, Heath, & Rospigliosi, 2013). To prepare university graduates for the unpredictable changes and diversified needs of a fast-growing world, the authors explore the use of narrative knowing in designing a student-centered curriculum. This paper reports the learning achieved by students when a Hong Kong university applies the under-developed narrative pedagogy in teaching and learning. Copyright © 2018 James Nicholas Publishers.

香港高等教育從上世紀八十年代的精英型，走到九十年代的大眾化，踏入廿一世紀成為普及型的高等教育社會。與此同時，為了支持香港這個亞洲國際都會的發展，香港高等教育培育具國際視野的人才，教資會和各院校一向重視推動國際化。為了剖析香港高等教育的發展歷程及國際化現況，這篇文章將回顧香港高等教育從精英化、大眾化到普及化的各發展階段，並就香港高等教育國際化、境外生來港升讀、高等教育學生交流等方面作出分析，並就香港高等教育挑戰作出討論。Hong Kong's higher education in 1980s of last century is elite-type. Then it has changed to mass-type higher education in 1990s. Into the twenty-first century Hong Kong become universal-type of higher education society. At the same time, in order to support the development of international metropolis, Hong Kong's higher education has cultivated an international vision, and the University Grants Committee (UGC) and institutions have always emphasis to promote internationalization. In order to analyze the development and the internationalization of Hong Kong's higher education. This article aims to review Hong Kong's higher education from elite, mass to the universal-type, and the internationalization of Hong Kong's higher education, oversea students studying in Hong Kong, student exchange in tertiary institutions, and to discuss the challenges of higher education in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2017 香港教師中心.

In recent years, universities in Hong Kong have attracted a large number of applicants from the Chinese mainland; however, despite sharing a common ethnicity with the locally born Chinese population of Hong Kong, these migrant students still encounter both linguistic and cross-cultural obstacles to their socialization (Gu 2011). Hong Kong students affected a particular Hong Kong style of code-switching between Cantonese and English (using Cantonese as a sentence base) to present a Hong Kong identity, through which to establish a group boundary (Gu, 2014). Putonghua is seen as an irrelevant language; to these students, not using Putonghua terms in daily intra-group communication is a means of establishing a Hong Kong identity, as opposed to a more generic Chinese one. Mainland Chinese students were found to have set up a Putonghua-speaking community at university, to resist the marginalized status of Putonghua. Furthermore, maintaining that American- or British-accented English is superior to other versions of the language, they practiced speaking ‘standard‘ English in order to establish an international identity, differentiating themselves from Hong Kong peers, who tended to speak Cantonese-accented English (Gu 2014). In addition to these two populations, there is a growing body of international students studying in Hong Kong, which makes the linguistic situation even more complex.With multilingual speakers sharing Chinese ethnicity but having different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, tertiary campuses in Hong Kong are unique multilingual settings, sites full of struggle in relation and response to governmental ideology surrounding multilingualism, public discourse emphasizing the use of English, and diverse language ideologies held by different language-based and cultural groups. As part of a larger project investigating the linguistic ecology of multilingual universities, this study, drawing on notion of symbolic competence (Kramsch and Whiteside 2008) and insights

This chapter presents a qualitative study of the language-related educational experiences of a group of immigrant mainland Chinese students in a multilingual university in Hong Kong. Drawing on interview data, this study explored the construction process of the language ideologies of these students and the social, contextual and interpersonal factors that may influence the construction. This study identified the problems and issues that Hong Kong university academics need to address in order to build a more inclusive learning environment to accommodate the language needs of these Chinese students. Furthermore, this study explored effective ways of maintaining cultural and linguistic diversity in the multilingual universities in an era of globalisation. This study provided implications as to how the immigrant students can employ the multilingual practices as a symbolic resource instead of as a disadvantage constructed by the institutional ideologies. Copyright © 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.