香港自2012年推出新高中學制之後，除了考試制度的改革，非正規教育的改革亦馬不停蹄，生涯規劃教育與職業教育的變化特別明顯。自2014年開始，香港全面推行生涯規劃教育，以求改善舊有升學及就業輔導之弊，2015年則開始重塑職業教育為職業專才教育，將職業教育重新納入主要的教育政策議題之中。相對下，生命教育的發展較為停滯不前。直至2019年，香港政府委託顧問就生涯規劃教育推行成效發表研究報告，並建議將生涯規劃教育結合生命教育一同推行，推動學生的全人發展，生命教育方重新成為整個教育改革藍圖的一部份。同年，香港政府提出進一步推動價值觀教育的發展，尤其優先重視生命教育，可見生命教育與價值觀教育將成下一步非正規課程改革的重心。明顯地，生涯規劃教育、生命教育與職業教育三者的拓展似乎正在呼應《教育行動計劃2030》宣言的提倡。有鑑及此，本文將申論三者其實應該如何貫穿實踐，以切合香港實況，並以香港一項大型生涯規劃的項目為切入點作深入分析。Since the introduction of the New Academic Structure in 2012, policy reform in non-formal education was implemented along with a structural change of the public examination system. In 2014, Life Planning Education was launched to optimize the problem in the over-reliance on career counselling and guidance, while Vocational Education was officially rebranded as Vocational Professional Education and Training in 2015, and it is now regarded as one of the main agendas in the current Hong Kong education policy. In comparison, the development of Life Education has stalled for a long time until the publication of one policy consultancy research report in 2019, which recommended the possible merge of Life Education with Life Planning Education in the future implementation. In the same year, the Hong Kong government proposed the strengthening of support on Values Education in schools through prioritizing Life Education in the policy. This implies that critical role of Life and Values Education in the forthcoming non-formal curriculum reform. It is apparent that the newest development of Life Planning Education, Vocational Education and Life Education are all well-aligned with the initiative of ＂Education 2030＂ proposed by UNESCO. In light of this, this paper will examine how these three components have developed and implemented in the local Hong Kong context, with the support of an analytical case study based on a large-scale youth programme for Career and Life Planning for illustration. Copyright © 2020 台灣教育研究院社.

Critical (multimodal) discourse studies of marketing or corporate documents of universities have shown the rapid neoliberalization of higher education and academia around the world. However, little attention has been paid to promotional materials for academic events. This chapter examines posters advertising invited lectures, colloquiums and conferences displayed on the campus of a “top” university in Hong Kong, the University of Hong Kong (HKU). The study draws on multimodal discourse studies and social theories of branding to analyze how different discursive components and semiotic placements of the posters create particular social meanings and values for the academic events and/or institutions. It identifies several dominant “tropes of branding” emerging from the displayed posters such as global connection and leadership, hierarchical internationalization with local advantage and interdisciplinarity. It shows how these tropes manifest or resonate with HKU’s more general self-branding enterprise of building itself into “Asia’s Global University”. The chapter concludes by discussing how its findings can deepen our understanding of institutionality in the areas of higher education and academia under the conditions of neoliberalism and globalization. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

This Hong Kong study evaluated a strengths-based career intervention program for junior secondary school students with special educational needs. The treatment group comprised 19 boys and 13 girls with SEN from 5 schools, with an additional 28 SEN students forming the control group matched for age, gender and parents’ education level. Pre- and post-intervention questionnaires covering career development self-efficacy, personal and social development, and meaning in life were administered to both groups. Several months after the intervention, participants, teachers and social workers involved were interviewed to evaluate effects of the intervention. Findings indicated significant interactions between Time 1 and Time 2, and between control vs. treatment groups in personal goal-setting, career goal-setting, and presence of meaning in life. Several themes emerged from the interviews suggesting that the intervention had positive effects on SEN students’ career, personal and social development, self-efficacy, and meaning in life. Copyright © 2022 Meaning in Life (MIL) International Conference.

Introduction: Movement behaviours in childhood are believed to track to adulthood, potentially impacting later life. The Guidelines on Physical activity, Sedentary behaviour and Sleep for Children under five years of age by the World Health Organisation was adopted by the Centre for Health Protection in Hong Kong. It is being disseminated to early childhood education centres (ECECs) who had volunteered to join a campaign on healthy eating and physical activity. ECEC educators who are aware and knowledgeable of movement guidelines could help promote healthy movement behaviours. We assessed early childhood educators’ awareness and knowledge of the movement guidelines for young children in Hong Kong. Methods: Invitations to participate in an online survey were sent to registered local ECECs. Teachers (N = 301) responded to close-ended questions that were adapted from previous studies that measured the awareness (i.e., whether they had seen or heard of them) and knowledge of physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep guidelines for children aged two to six years. Additional questions enquired about the background of the respondents (i.e., professional qualification, age, sex) and the contexts in which physical activities were being implemented in ECEC settings. Results: Majority of the participants reported awareness and knowledge, respectively, of the guidelines for physical activity (88%, 87%), sedentary behaviour (70%, 80%), and sleep (58%, 84%) of young children. Smaller portions of the participants reported the correct recommended time for physical activity (23%), sedentary behaviour (25%), and sleep (62%). Teachers who have higher degree qualifications tended to be aware of the guidelines for physical activity (Χ2=9.56, p=0.04) and sedentary behaviour (Χ2=13.20, p=0.01), more so than those with lower qualifications. Physical activities were reportedly promoted in ECEC settings during free play (81%), outdoor activities (73%), indoor games (66%), and other learning

Based on a tentative model and a sample of 215 university international students of the second year studying Chinese in the PRC, this research studied the relationships among Motivation in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), Socio-cultural Adaptation, Academic Adaptation, Language Achievement and Institutional Persistence, and evaluated their contributions in a causal model of Adaptation and SLA. The results of the study indicated that the theoretical model provided good fit to the data, and generally supported Gardner's (2005) socio-educational model except that Language Anxiety was not found to have a cause and effect relationship with Language Achievement. Instrumentality seemed to significantly predict the variation of Persistence together with Academic Adaptation. Moreover, Saving Other's Face Scale seemed to be important to predict Motivation, Socio-cultural Adaptation and especially Academic Adaptation. Copyright © 2006 Office of Research, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong.

In most of the Christian churches in Hong Kong, children Sunday schools were established for nurturing children’s spirituality. Bible storytelling is the major activity in Sunday school lessons. Sunday school teachers are church goers and serve voluntarily. However, some of them feel frustrated as they have difficulties in engaging children.Various research studied the characteristics of children’s spirituality and the influences of storytelling. Scholars suggested that adults can learn from children. Therefore, the author of this study is interested in the experience of Sunday school teachers on children’s spirituality in the lessons. Therefore, a conceptual framework of how the Sunday school teachers or Bible storytellers experienced children’s spirituality was established. A qualitative research was worked out and 15 Sunday school teachers were recruited. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and the verbatims were the major data. Five observation sessions were also done, providing supplemented data.This study identified three kinds of Bible stories that are more attractive to children and visualization of the ancient world with suitable teaching materials also facilitated children’s engagement. When the children were engaged, the teachers experienced children’s spirituality in terms of relational consciousness and characteristics of children as spiritual beings.For the relational consciousness, teachers experienced the children making meanings of Bible stories to God’s stories, self-story and others’ story. Interestingly, the teachers also perceived that they experienced spiritual growth in terms of feeling connected to self, God and others.For the experience of the essential characteristics of children as spiritual beings, it was in terms of simple, wholeness, genuine, and joy. It impacted the teachers and they hoped to be “becoming like a child”.Therefore, this study identified that the teachers were spiritually nurtured in terms of growth in relationships

With the rapid change of the technological world, educators have been urgently required to appropriately integrate various and innovative digital technologies to support the diverse learning needs of students in Hong Kong. The flexible learning spaces offer multiple opportunities for educators to integrate innovative toolkits to explore students’ potential learning needs, embracing their design thinking and creativity. An exploratory case study approach was adopted to investigate improving students’ learning by using digital technologies in the technology-mediated classroom and develop practical toolkits for educators. Students’ discourses and learning processes were collected as data. Three students aged 6-8 in Hong Kong were invited to participate in this study. Content analysis was employed to analyse the effectiveness of the toolkits on students’ learning modal and engagement. The findings show that digital technologies can help change students’ learning modal from passive to interactive by stimulating multimodal learning, i.e. making an AR vocabulary card required modals of linguistic, gestural, visual, and aural. The toolkits can build multiple learning spaces for design thinking and creativity, i.e. a map and digital story of the ocean were created by using a toolkit composed of 3D printing models, coding robots, and a digital book App.隨着科技世界日新月異，需要教育工作者整合各種創新數碼科技，以支持年幼學習者的多元化學習需要。靈活的學習空間為教育工作者提供了多種機會，特別是創新工具包，可以用於探索學生的潛在學習需求，提升他們的設計思維和創造力。此研究採用探索性案例研究方法，在技術為媒介的課堂中使用數碼技術來改善學生學習的方法，並嘗試為教育工作者開發實用工具包。研究通過學生的言談分析和學習歷程收集數據，三名6-8歲的香港學生受邀參與這項研究。研究者使用內容分析法來分析工具包和學習空間對學生學習模式和參與的有效性。研究結果表明，數碼技術可以通過刺激多模態學習來幫助學生將學習模態從被動轉變為交互式，即製作需要語言、手勢、視覺和聽覺模態的 AR 詞彙卡。工具包可以搭建多元化的創意學習空間，研究展示1. 3D打印模型、2. 編程玩具和3. 數字圖書App組成的工具包創建了一個關於海洋的學習空間。 Copyright © 2021 Learning and Teaching Expo.

Career and Life Development (CLD) (or ‘Career Development and Life Planning’) refers to a big spectrum of educational practices that aims to help young people embraces a holistic and comprehensive process to plan one’s life and actively implements the goals determined in own social context (Leung, 2005). It usually comprises of three aspects of education: (1) self-understanding, (2) knowing the dynamic world of work, and (3) nurturing reflective habits of mind about own future career pathways or personal planning. The aim of this study is to analyze school-based CLD effectiveness in Hong Kong by adopting a school improvement instrument, ‘the Hong Kong Benchmarks for Career and Life Development’ (HKBM) which is initiated by CLAP@JC, with close reference to the world-recognized framework in the United Kingdom, the Gatsby’s Benchmarks for Career Guidance (Holman, 2014; Holman & Yip, 2020). Using HKBM, whole school self-evaluation was conducted by CLD leaders in each school under support from teams of ‘critical friends’ (Swaffield & Macbeath, 2005). After examining the HKBM dataset collected from 44 secondary schools, key findings are: (a) effective CLD provision requires a visible and stable policy with strong school leaders’ backing; (b) schools are offering insufficient opportunities of career-related experiences and one-to-one personal guidance on CLD, despite the backing from government policy since 2014. There are implications to policies in terms of School-Business Partnerships, and to strategic planning and implementation of school-based CLD. Copyright © 2021 HKERA-APERA International Conference.