Despite national policies, de facto school segregation for racial/ethnic minority students in the West and East has continued to deepen. In Hong Kong, the segregated school system was abolished in 2013, while from 2004 reformed School Places Allocation Systems encouraged minority students to choose mainstream primary and secondary schools. However, de facto ethnicity-based school segregation continues to prevail. Most minority students in the mainstream system are stuck in low-status schools where they face discrimination and institutional exclusion. This has led many of them to retreat to a limited number of schools that have traditionally catered for minority communities. Such segregation calls forth scholarly attention to the paradoxical correlation between the physical mixing of diverse students and equality of educational opportunity, especially equal access to post-secondary education (PSE)—a key for minority youth to function in the competitive labour market. This study employed the theory of school-based social capital (SBSC) and compared the ways in which PSE-relevant institutional resources and support were rationalised and enacted by staff in de facto segregated and desegregated school contexts. Case studies of two secondary schools lead us to argue that desegregation is only effective when institutional structure, culture and agents empower minority students through access to instrumental resources and support for the pursuit of PSE. The findings confound the desegregation policy and call for structural/institutional interventions to ensure instrumental SBSC is accessible to PSE-bound minority students in all schools, and thus increase the effectiveness of school desegregation. Copyright © 2023 British Educational Research Association.

The evolution of globalisation and ensuing internationalisation of higher education need radical reform of institutional policies and practices to promote education for diversity, equity and inclusion. Extant literature on university/college student persistence/retention witnesses a lack of research on the subjective sense of belonging on campus among ethnic minoritised students who have been historically marginalised in higher education and are now part of the emerging demographic on campus. This study attempted to fill the gap. Engaging qualitative individual interviews with 12 university students of South/Southeast Asian ethnicity in Hong Kong, the purpose of this study was to examine their perceptions and experiences of institutional affiliations and engagement in university. Findings suggested that being connected to the programme and university, and the depth and quality of intragroup dynamics, are key to a sense of belonging among ethnic minority students. Findings also elucidated a lack of cross‐cultural interaction and racial/ethnic diversity within the university environment, which shaped participants’ feelings of isolation and exclusionary experiences as they sought to adjust to the campus academically and socially. The study’s findings could help inform the development and evaluation of institutional strategies that can sustain minoritised students in university transitions and promote institutional connectedness and academic success among all students on campus. Copyright © 2021 British Educational Research Association

While there is growing recognition of the mutually shaping relationship between teaching with information technology (IT) and teachers' beliefs, skills and self‐efficacy, there has been a paucity of research attention on the construction of teacher identity during actual IT‐assisted in‐class teaching and out‐of‐class networking with students, in a full institutional and social context. This study investigates how a group of secondary school English as a second language (ESL) teachers regulated their teaching and practices and constructed their identities in relation to governmental requirements for the use of IT in teaching. Teachers from seven government‐subsidised schools in Hong Kong were interviewed about their experiences of using IT in teaching. We frame the reported practices of these teachers as a process of construction of identity, formed in the context of the 'governmentality' supporting current examination‐oriented educational policy. Observing from the perspective of what has been termed 'governmentality' and an ethical framework for self‐formation of personal identity makes it possible to see these teachers' professional identities constructed through the use of IT practices within the contradictory conditions of professional/personal demands, compliance/resistance, school promotion/peer non‐cooperation, advantage/disadvantage in use of IT, use of IT/content and pedagogical knowledge. This study has implications for developing a more supportive and rational environment for the use of IT in teaching, in which more autonomy and identity options—rather than constraints—can be provided for teachers in the digital era. This study also informs practitioners and policy makers in other educational settings experiencing a similar IT boom in teaching. Copyright © 2019 British Educational Research Association.

This study examined the mediator and moderator roles of self-regulation and motivation constructs in the relationship between learning experience and academic success. Self-reported measures of learning experience, self-regulation and motivation were obtained from 384 undergraduate students from a university in Hong Kong. Structural equation modelling indicated that self-regulation and motivation fully mediated the learning experience-academic performance relation. In addition, hierarchical regression analysis also showed that both self-regulation and motivation had small moderating effects on the link between learning experience and academic performance. That is, the association between learning experience and cumulative GPA was stronger for students with lower levels of self-regulation and motivation. The implications of fostering motivation and enhancing university learning experience are discussed.
[Copyright of British Educational Research Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411926.2010.538468]

This article examines how Hong Kong secondary school teachers define caring and the strategies they adopt for behaviour management. The influence of Taoism, emerging as a theme from the data, was prominent, as its principles were incorporated into the teachers' knowledge of caring. The findings illuminate the influence of Taoism in local schools. Implications for the promotion of culturally responsive programmes of caring are drawn.
[Copyright of British Educational Research Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411920903018158]

The study sought to investigate Hong Kong secondary school vice-principals' job facets leading to overall job satisfaction, and to differentiate the satisfaction of vice-principals of different career orientations and gender groups. The findings indicated that there are four main facets of satisfaction, in rank order of influence on overall satisfaction, 'professional commitment', 'level of personal challenge', 'sense of efficacy' and 'sense of synchrony'. The study also found that vice-principals who aspired to the principalship exhibited a higher degree of professional commitment, a stronger sense of efficacy, and experienced lower levels of stress associated with personal challenge than vice-principals who did not aspire to a principalship.
[Copyright of British Educational Research Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411920903018026]

The study on which this article is based examined the gender differences in educational achievements based on a longitudinal sample of more than 45,000 secondary school students in Hong Kong who took a public examination in 1997. The results coincided with the findings from recent British studies that boys did less well than girls in all areas of the school curriculum. The multilevel analyses of the effects of schooling, after controlling for initial ability, indicated that schooling did have an effect on gender differences. Girls achieved better results studying in single-sex schools whereas boys achieved better in co-educational schools. Compared with other students, it was those boys studying in the arts stream that did the least well in the public examination. The results are discussed in the context of the methodology of investigating gender differences and of the substantive questions of school effectiveness.
[Copyright of British Educational Research Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0141192022000019080]