Current educational development discourse is characterized by the Sustainable Development Goal Four (SDG4) that aims to “ensure inclusive, equitable and quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all”. This paper explores the challenges of achieving SDG4 for Hong Kong in regard to ensuring equitable and quality educational opportunities for its ethnic minority young people, with a particular focus on equality in educational outcomes. The paper argues that school failure of ethnic minority students in Hong Kong is an educational outcome issue which poses significant challenges for Hong Kong to achieve SDG4. In addition to the Chinese language factor, there are many other interrelated factors at students’ individual, family, school and community level contributing to ethnic minority students’ school failure in Hong Kong. Unless all of them are addressed, it will be hard to achieve any marked success against school failure. Above all, an education policy is needed that recognizes and responds to cultural diversity to support Hong Kong’s ethnic minority students.
[Copyright © 2017 Australian Curriculum Studies Association.]

The literature on acculturation illustrates that a bulk of non-dominant ethnocultural minorities consider themselves bicultural, involving both dominant and ethnic cultures. Yet, little is known about how bicultural individuals perceive and construct dual cultures, and how their two cultural identities are played out in daily interactions. While these issues are under-researched, they are vital to policy and practice initiation towards ethnocultural minorities’ integration and upward mobility as well as for the receiving society’s social cohesion and economic competitiveness. To this end, this study used the concept of bicultural identity integration and tapped into the processes of biculturalism among 16 secondary school students coming from South and Southeast-Asian groups in Hong Kong. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to unearth the internal construct of bicultural identity and the trajectories of adapting to dual cultural influences across space. The participants’ accounts displayed a high level of cultural harmony yet low blendedness in choosing to separate affiliations into cultural domains. This internal complexity reflects the contradictory juxtaposing of ‘cultural diversity’ in the host society and its segregated schooling for minority student population.
[Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

Educational issues in relation to ethnicity and language education policies have been underexplored in Asian contexts. In particular, issues related to ethnic and linguistic minority students have not received much attention in the post-colonial context of Hong Kong. This paper highlights challenges and tensions faced by Nepali ethnic minority students in two Hong Kong schools arising from language policies adopted by the post-colonial government. Based on data arising from interviews with 28 secondary school Nepali students in 2013 and 2014, and an observation of two schools with a sizeable population of Nepali ethnic minority students over a period of more than two years, this paper investigates how students face the pressures of learning through the medium of either English or spoken Cantonese and written Chinese. Analysis of the data reveals that these students face inequities in schools due to neglect of attention to their overall educational development, discrimination in the institutional settings, and lack of opportunities to maintain their own heritage language and identity. Based on the findings, this paper proposes a multilingual education model for ethnic minority students, drawing on the models set out in Adamson and Feng (2014. "Models for Trilingual Education in the People's Republic of China." In Minority Languages and Multilingual Education, edited by D. Gorter, V. Zenotz, and J. Cenoz, 29–44. Dordrecht: Springer), which has potential to redress the balance.
[Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

It has recently been asserted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that “education is a basic right, one that is vital in restoring hope and dignity to people driven from their homes. It helps them to get back on their feet and build a better future” (A Basic Right for a Better Future, UNHCR, 2016, p.1). Asylum seekers, both here in Hong Kong and elsewhere, struggle to be self-sufficient, and it is education that can equip them with the necessary skills and knowledge. Education empowers refugees and is the key to better future that helps bring stability and hope. The study to be reported here asses explores refugee family responsibilities and the Hong Kong SAR Government’s responsibility for educational provision in relation to refugee children in Hong Kong. The preliminary findings indicate that refugee children in Hong Kong encounter many difficulties and problems (such as financial, psychological). Many of them, however, embrace their education opportunities and excel academically with support from teachers and schools. This study highlights issues which refugee children encounter and also provides a narrative in understanding the complicated and extraordinary childhoods of refugee children and youth in Hong Kong. While the study is set in the Hong Kong context, the findings are likely to be of interest of other countries which to improve educational provision for refugees.

Internationalisation has been actively pursued by Hong Kong's universities. Recent years have witnessed quantitative growth in non-local students. To ensure a qualitative success of internationalisation, it is crucial that universities cater for students with diverse academic backgrounds. This research explored challenges to academic adaptation. Focus group interviews were conducted with 124 local, mainland Chinese and international students at four Hong Kong universities. Findings revealed variation in academic adaptation challenges. First, adaptation to an English-medium-of-instruction was a concern for local and mainland Chinese students, while international students noted that limited English proficiency among other students undermined classroom discussions and led to tensions in group projects. Second, local students faced challenges in adapting to a wider range of assessment modes and academic writing, while mainland Chinese and international students reported how teacher-student relations and teaching approaches differed from prior educational experiences. Implications for the delivery of higher education amid internationalisation are discussed.
[Copyright © 2017 European Higher Education Society.]

Drawing on in-depth interview data from 31 mainland Chinese (MLC) students in a Hong Kong university, this article conceptualises MLC and Hong Kong higher education as two dissonant but interrelated subfields of the Chinese higher education field. The article argues that these MLC students' habitus, one that possesses rich economic, social and cultural capital, prompts a strong sense of entitlement to anticipated privileges. However, this sense of entitlement is disrupted by the differential capital valuations across these fields. There is thus notable habitus-field disjuncture, which, exacerbated by the hysteresis effect, gives rise to a sense of disappointment and ambivalence. This article demonstrates how the Hong Kong education credential, which these students initially set out to pursue as a form of capital, can become a disadvantage at multiple levels; the article illustrates that capital valuation and conversion in a transborder context is not a straightforward, but rather a complicated and sometimes contradictory, process.
[© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group]

School to work transition is an important aspect of lifelong learning that has increased in significance as the knowledge-based economy takes off in developed countries. Rapid structural economic changes, the importance of innovation, and a shorter lifecycle of products require education systems to adjust to the needs of economies and individuals. Educational reforms in many countries aim to improve school students' readiness for their important move to post-school life. Countries organize different pathways for students following secondary school level that are designed to meet both students' demands and the needs of economies. This article explores Hong Kong students' aspirations and realities. Although the majority of students plan to complete the final year of high school and 91.5% planned to undertake the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) to be eligible for higher education, in reality a significant number of school leavers do not perform well and should undertake training for employment. In addition, many students who are eligible for tertiary education cannot be admitted to government sponsored universities due to the limited number of places. This article begins with a consideration of students' aspirations, and then outlines the realities of transition and current issues. It concludes with some suggested policy measures that could improve equity during this school to work transition period.
[Educational Research for Policy and Practice is a copyright of Springer, 2017]

This paper reports the findings of a public policy research supported by the University Grant Council on the relationships between the characteristics, school engagement and civic engagement of adolescents in Hong Kong. Data was collected from a sample of 3,024 students, aged 12 to 19, by employing the self-rated modified school engagement scale and the ICCS 2009 student questionnaires. Using local Hong Kong students as a reference, the other students included in the study were non-Chinese South Asians, cross-boundary students who live in Mainland China but who go to schools in Hong Kong, and newly arrived students from Mainland China. Family income and student groups were two predictor variables examined. About 38% of the sample were of low socioeconomic status, in that they reported their family monthly income as being less than 1500 USD. Hierarchical regression was employed to determine the relative influence of student characteristics and school and civic engagement variables. Findings revealed that there was a close connection between the self-assessment of school and civic engagement and there were differences in this regard among the immigrant and minority student groups. Recommendations for both schools and government agencies towards future policy development in facilitating pro-school and civic-oriented attitudes and behaviours of all students were suggested.

In the face of heavy demand for private supplementary tutoring in basic education, the state seems to have adopted a consumerism model in the decentralised governance of mass tutoring, allowing students and parents to select for themselves course information, payment amounts and methods, tutoring dates and times, and physical conditions when buying services from registered cram schools in Hong Kong. In the study reported here, a 3-level cultural analysis of cram schools was conducted from 1998 to 2008 to examine the patterns of mass tuition trends in Hong Kong. The analysis investigated the impacts of such trends, or culture, upon youth values, and implications are drawn for policy making, educational reform, societal movements, and academic recommendations for further research.
[Copyright © 2009 HKFYG.]

The present investigation validated a short form of Career Development Self-Efficacy Inventory (CD-SEI) in students with a wide range of special educational needs (SEN). Participants were a sample of S3 to S6 SEN students who have been integrated in regular schools in Hong Kong (N =103). The SF-CD-SEI consists of five key domains to assess students' self-efficacy in career planning, career goal setting, training selection, job hunt preparation, and job hunting. The results showed good reliability estimates for the whole scale and for all five sub-scales. Based on previous research on validating the complete CD-SEI, a series of confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were performed to test three competing models of the internal structure of the SF-CD-SEI. The results showed the high order model (model 3) had the best model fit compared to one general factor model (model 1) and five-factor model (model 2). These findings were consistent with those identified in previous studies with non-SEN students. The SF-CD-SEI provides researchers, educators and practitioners a useful instrument to assess SEN students' competences in career planning in order to develop self-efficacy enhancement interventions to cater for these students' career development needs.
[Copyright © 2015 The Special Education Society of Hong Kong Ltd.]