Hong Kong’s youth population has experienced tremendous social change over the past decade, having grown up in a culture partly influenced by globalization, colonial governance and local Chinese traditions. Yet how much do we know about them? What are their perceptions of self and others? Their aspirations? What has shaped their identities and hopes for the future? These are important questions for higher education to reflect on in formulating culturally and age relevant curriculum. This paper reflects on these questions drawing from our learning and teaching experiences over the past eight years with over 2,000 undergraduate students from across disciplines and cohorts, in an interdisciplinary broadening course, “Body, Beauty and Fashion.” The paper focuses specifically on the social cultural factors, family, peers, school, media, consumerism -that shape students’ identity, attitudes, appearance, behaviors - goals for the future. The research for this study is based on students’ portfolios, and was made possible by the Wu Jieh-Yee Research Fund.
Social workers are expected to help with the social problems in the community. With the changing social environment, they have to handle problems which are very complicated. Training institutes are in constant search for a method that could help to equip the social work students adequately for practice. The University of Hong Kong Department of Social work has experimented the use of PBL to cultivate students’ self learning ability so that they could continue to grow and develop themselves in the field. With the use of small groups, it was also hoped that students could acquire the competence in group learning and teamwork. A Problem-Based Learning Questionnaire was devised to assess the growth of students in these areas. After launching the PBL programme for four years, we have also called for a focus group with the graduates to see if they felt the PBL training could help them in their real practice. While the scale reflected moderate growth, we had very positive feedback from the graduates. The training seems to serve the students well in preparing them for the harsh demands of the social work duties these days. This paper will report on both the quantitative and qualitative findings.
This progress report draws on my interpretive enquiry into mainland Chinese students’ language learning experiences and in particular, their strategic efforts in learning English at the University of Hong Kong. The study regards the participants’ strategic learning efforts as phenomena emerging from the interplay between human agency and contextual structure. It has three research stages. In the first stage, I interviewed twenty-two mainland Chinese undergraduates who just arrived in Hong Kong to find out their previous language learning experiences and strategy use on the Chinese mainland. In the second stage, I followed six interview participants for two years (2004-2006), using ethnographic methods to collect data about their language learning experiences, strategic learning efforts, and daily life at the university. In the third stage, I interviewed fifteen participants out of the twenty-two who were interviewed two years ago about their language learning experiences in Hong Kong. This preliminary report focuses on the participants’ perceptions of language learning context at the University of Hong Kong.
The paper describes a 4-day psycho-educational program for pre-university students (aged between 17-19) under the Early Admission Scheme. The program is a character-based leadership training program, which aims at preparing students' transition from high school to university, with particular address to their high academic achievement, personal growth and life goals towards future. Experiential in nature, the program touched on themes of self-awareness, multiple intelligence and spiritual discovery through different kinds of expressive arts activities. The program consisted of 60 adolescents (aged 17-19 yrs) meeting 4 times within two consecutive weeks. To investigate the efficacy of the program, measures including hope, self-esteem and sense of coherence were taken at both the start and the end of the program. We discuss the program's effectiveness, and suggest implications for designing university adaptation programs in the local society in accordance with the favorable feedback regarding the training program from the participants.
"Crime in the University of Hong Kong Campus"
Dr. Yiu-kong Chu
No systemic studies have been conducted to examine the prevalence of campus crime in Hong Kong. This study aims to serve as a pioneer study to crime victimization amongst students at the University of Hong Kong during the academic year September 2004 to August 2005. An online victimization study was designed to ensure anonymity due to the sensitive nature of some of the questions and was sent with an email three times. The target sample was all students of the University of Hong Kong. Questions on experience of victimization against property, victimization of robbery, victimization of common assault and sexual assault (for female respondents only), fear of crime and crime prevention were asked. Due to low response rate, the respondents are not representative for all students at the University.
Overall, the number of crime victimization at the University is extremely low. Only 30 respondents had experience of items stolen whilst on campus. Most had items that are valued less than $1,000 stolen. Only 3 had items worth $3,001-$6,000 and more than $9,000 stolen at the time of theft. No student had experience of robbery. Only one student had experienced common assault. For questions on sexual assault on campus, 1 respondent reported to have experience of a situation where a man threatened her verbally to engage in sexual intercourse. When asked if respondents knew of any student from this university that had been forced to be kissed or fondled against her will during the academic year 2003-2004, 3 respondents reported ‘yes’.
In terms of the fear of crime, female respondents experienced a higher level of fear of crime in campus compared to the male respondents. Although most respondents did not know the location of the Security Control Room, more than half of the respondents thought that the Estate Office can help them if they become a crime victim. Places where many respondents reported experience unsafe feeling at night were Haking Wong, “Time Tunnel” and library extension. Respondents suggested that the university should increase lighting, patrol and exercise visitor control.
The purpose of this study is to develop a model of emotional resilience in acculturation for students from mainland China in HK. Specifically, it aims at understanding the protective mechanisms of cognitive appraisal, meaning-focused coping, meaning of life, and acculturative strategy in the relationship between acculturative stressor and emotional well-being. A cross-sectional research design was adopted by this study. The proposed model was tested by a total of 400 mainland postgraduate students from six universities in Hong Kong. The participants were recruited to complete a questionnaire which included: (1) Stress Appraisal Measure (Peacock & Wong, 1989); (2) Acculturative Strategy Scale (Chan, 2002); (3) Personal Meaning Profile (Lin, 2001); (4) Chinese Affect Scale (Hamid & Cheng, 1996); (5) and other two self-developed scales to measure acculturative stresssor and meaning-focused coping. The results of path analysis demostrated that acculturative stressors contributed to positive and negative affect through both direct and indirect pathways. Specifically, acculturative stressor is found to have a negative effect on positive affect and a positive effect on negative affcet. These effects were mediated by threat appraisal, meaning-focused coping, meaning of life, and acculturative strategy of marginalization. The theorectical contributions for resilience research in acculturation and practical implications for resilience-based and meaning-oriented intervention for students from mainland China in HK were discussed.
"Happiness and Its Correlates Among HKU Students"
Mr. Shengquan Ye
This study investigated happiness (i.e., mood and life satisfaction) among three samples of university students (144 from HKU, 258 from HKIED, and 403 from Xiamen University). The results indicated that among the HKU students, females were less happy than were males. Both HKU and HKIED students were more satisfied with their life but less happy than students from Xiamen University. Among the background variables, health and interpersonal relationship were the most stable predictors for both mood and life satisfaction among the students in Hong Kong. Besides, love predicted mood among students in HKU and HKIED and it predicted life satisfaction among the HKIED students. Extracurricular activity was also a significant predictor for mood and life satisfaction among the HKIED students. Finally, academic achievement predicted HKU students' life satisfaction and finance status predicted HKIED students' life satisfaction.