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This study examines the influence of religious beliefs on the perceptions on bullying and cheating among students in Hong Kong. 727 secondary school students (age 16 to 18) were involved as participants. Data collection utilized validated measures of religious beliefs, bullying, and cheating. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the data and investigate the proposed relationships. Results suggested students who demonstrated high religious faith seemed to have negative attitude towards academic cheating, but religious faith did not seem to have any significant influence on students' academic cheating behaviors and other unethical behaviors, such as bullying. These findings underscore the importance of religious education in schools as it is still beneficial for students to have high religious faith so that they may feel repulsive to adherent behaviors in order not to develop positive attitude towards cheating and bullying.

There has been increasing discussion among educators and researchers about harnessing the idea of gamification to enhance the current learning and teaching practices in school education. Leveraging the context-aware mobile technology and student-centred learning theories, we have developed a mobile application, Gamified Authentic Mobile Enquiry in Society (GAMES), to support students in conducting authentic outdoor enquiry-based learning in social humanities education. This paper reports the quasi-experimental study in which we evaluated the learning effectiveness of GAMES in terms of supporting students’ knowledge construction, in comparison with the conventional outdoor enquiry-based learning approach. It involved a total of 559 Grade-10 students from top, middle, and bottom academic-banding schools. Results indicated that, compared to the conventional approach, GAMES had different degrees of positive effects on the high, moderate, and low academic-achieving participants. This study not only provides grounds for a wider adoption of GAMES in social humanities education, but also makes a contribution to empirical evidence in the field by designing, implementing and evaluating gamified mobile learning in authentic outdoor contexts.

A way that education is desirable is its integrative function for society and its sectors, according to structural-functionalist theory. This function consists in the promotion of the student’s belongingness to society and its sectors. In consolidating empirical support for the function, this present study analyses survey data on 417 students in Hong Kong, China. Results show that the student’s academic achievement had significant positive effects on belongingness to the society, neighbourhood and school. In addition, the student’s educational level displayed a significant positive effect on belongingness to society. In endorsing the integrative function of education, the results imply the merit of promoting education to enhance the student’s belongingness.

Purpose: Developing a sense of belonging among immigrant youth in multicultural contexts has attracted significant attention from scholars during the last few decades. Studies have already underscored how various educational factors hinder or facilitate students' sense of belonging to the school or the larger society. Although most students in Hong Kong schools are ethnic Chinese, a significant number of non-Chinese children make students diversity an essential aspect of schooling. The study investigated how schools can develop a sense of belonging among ethnic minority youth in Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach: As the education system in Hong Kong lacks a multicultural education policy, how can schools help develop a sense of belonging to the school and the larger society among young ethnic minority people? To answer this question, this paper consolidates the two sets of data originally gathered for two research projects. The data was collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with nine secondary school teachers (Chinese and non-Chinese) and 15 students (non-Chinese) and analysed thematically. Findings: The thematic analysis of the qualitative data identified several challenges and opportunities for developing ethnic minority students' sense of belonging in Hong Kong. Research limitations/implications: Researchers in comparative education can further explore how multicultural education and inclusive education approach together can help ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all and cater to students' diverse learning needs across the education systems. Practical implications: Given that the aims of multicultural education and inclusive education resonate with each other, schools can focus on the Whole School Approach to developing a sense of belonging among ethnic minority youth in Hong Kong. However, policymakers and practitioners may need to adopt a multifaceted perspective on inclusive education that strives to ensure equitable quality education for all. Originality/value: The study contributes to the existing body of scholarship on multicultural education and inclusive education. The study findings underscore the importance of an interdisciplinary research framework in education and advocate an integrative approach to supporting students with diverse learning needs in multicultural contexts.

An important feature of Hong Kong’s education reform over the past decade has been the articulation of the “no loser principle”. This policy statement was meant to signal that all students are valuable and will benefit from both basic and senior secondary education. Yet barriers remain for the 2.9% of students under the age of 15 who can be classified as ethnic minorities. Until the 2008 Racial Discrimination Ordinance (RDO), the educational needs of these students remained an invisible issue for the school system. This article examines the policy context in which Hong Kong schools have made provisions for ethnic minority students, and reviews classroom practices that operationalize these policies on a daily basis. In an interview study involving 32 teachers’ narratives of how they managed the cultural diversity of ethnic minority students in classrooms (Hue & Kennedy, 2012, 2013), it was reported that at the practical level, teachers struggle to meet the diverse needs of students and to conceptualize a new rationale for responding to cultural diversity. The implications of promoting ethnic minority education at the three levels of policy, practice and research are discussed.Un rasgo importante de las reformas educativas puesta en marcha en Hong Kong a lo largo de la última década ha sido el “principio del no perdedor”. Esta afirmación política estaba orientada a señalar que todos los alumnos son importantes y se beneficiarán de una educación básica y secundaria. Sin embargo, se mantiene una barrera para el 2,9% de alumnos menores de 15 años clasificados como pertenecientes a alguna minoría étnica. Hasta la Orden de Discriminación Racial (Racial Discrimination Ordinance, RDO) de 2008, las necesidades educativas de estos alumnos permanecían ocultas para el sistema educativo. Este artículo examina el contexto político en el que las escuelas de Hong Kong han aprobado medidas especiales para los alumnos de minorías étnicas, y revisa las prácticas de aula que a diario hacen operativas estas políticas. A través de un estudio de entrevistas que recogen los testimonios de 32 profesores sobre cómo abordan la diversidad cultural que representan los alumnos pertenecientes a minorías étnicas (Hue y Kennedy, 2012, 2013), se pude establecer que al nivel de la práctica, los profesores luchan por responder a las diversas necesidades de sus alumnos y encontrar los medios para atender a la diversidad cultural. Se discuten las implicaciones que tiene promover la educación de las minorías étnicas en los tres niveles: político, práctico e investigador.

Most Hong Kong secondary schools have two teams of guidance and discipline teachers to manage students’ misbehaviour. The guidance team is mainly responsible for providing a personal counselling service and for carrying out guidance programmes, such as sex education. The discipline team works with students who have been identified as having behavioural problems. They are also responsible for enforcing discipline policy, such as the wearing of school uniform. Most teachers and school managers are concerned with the difficulty of integrating guidance and discipline into schooling. Many studies have shown that guidance teachers are described as ‘soft’ whereas discipline teachers as described as ‘strict’ and ‘tough’. Each team of teachers has a contrasting rationale as to how best to help students resolve their difficulties. However, no research has yet been completed into how guidance and discipline are implemented in the classroom. This article focuses on this area and reports a study of what classroom knowledge teachers and students construct, with respect to the relationship between guidance and discipline. The qualitative methods for data collection are described and two case studies are presented. The analysis shows that such a relationship differs from school to school, and that teachers’ construct of classroom knowledge of guidance and discipline is closely linked to the features of school organisation of the schools to which these teachers belong. Finally, the paper looks at the implication of this study in drawing school managers’ and policy makers’ attention to the impact of school organisation on guidance and discipline in the classroom.

There has been increasing discussion among educators and researchers about harnessing the idea of gamification to enhance the current learning and teaching practices in school education. Leveraging the context-aware mobile technology and student-centred learning theories, we have developed a mobile application, Gamified Authentic Mobile Enquiry in Society (GAMES), to support students in conducting authentic outdoor enquiry-based learning in social humanities education. This paper reports the quasiexperimental study in which we evaluated the learning effectiveness of GAMES in terms of supporting students' knowledge construction, in comparison with the conventional outdoor enquiry-based learning approach. It involved a total of 559 Grade-10 students from top, middle, and bottom academic-banding schools. Results indicated that, compared to the conventional approach, GAMES had different degrees of positive effects on the high, moderate, and low academic-achieving participants. This study not only provides grounds for a wider adoption of GAMES in social humanities education, but also makes a contribution to empirical evidence in the field by designing, implementing and evaluating gamified mobile learning in authentic outdoor contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Hong Kong schools are concerned about the effective use of educational planning for fulfilling the diverse needs of ethnic minority students particularly given their growing numbers. No matter what educational plans for ethnic minority students are made, how they are implemented becomes critical. This article examines teachers 'narratives of the cross-cultural experiences of ethnic minority students from India, Pakistan, Philippines, Nepal and Thailand, and the diversity of those students' different learning needs. Qualitative data were collected from interviews, through which the constructs of thirty-two teachers from three secondary schools were explored. This paper argues that when devising and implementing an educational plan for promoting the welfare of ethnic minority students, it is not only necessary for the plan to promote the intercultural sensitivity of all practitioners, but it is equally important to develop a connected school system where ethnic minority students and parents can be consistently supported in the subsystems of classroom, school, and home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers Chinese calligraphy as an expression of aestheticism and spirituality that allows the artist to explore the self and Chinese culture and how important it is to teach calligraphy to students. The author feels that instruction in calligraphy would provide a multicultural education to Chinese students and help them to develop as people. Calligraphy as a vehicle for the author's personal narrative and storytelling is considered and the author relates his own education in calligraphy. When discussing the spiritual aspects of calligraphy, the author describes the method for making brush strokes and its emotional and physiological impact on his body. The author also discusses the connection between the Tao and calligraphy.

Teachers in Hong Kong, as elsewhere, are concerned with students' misbehaviour. In secondary schools two teams of teachers, a guidance team and a discipline team, deal with it. This article examines how teachers make sense of their caring work and strategies for behaviour management. Taking an interactionist perspective, the framework suggested by Stebbin (1969, 1975) was adopted for exploring how teachers defined the situation in which they participated. Qualitative data were collected using interviews and classroom observation. Sixty teachers were interviewed. Eighteen classrooms were observed. The influence of the Chinese philosophy of Confucianism, emerging as a main theme from the data, was prominent, as its key principles were incorporated into the teachers' personal system of caring. The findings illuminate the influence of Chinese culture in Hong Kong schools. Implications are drawn for the promotion of culturally responsive programmes of pastoral care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing population of Mainland Chinese students at the local government-funded universities in Hong Kong, little is known about their acculturation experiences and psychosocial adjustment. Drawing on an acculturation framework (Berry, 2003) and theories of coping (Folkman, 1984), resilience (Masten, 2001), and socioecological processes (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006), this article provides an in-depth account of acculturative stress and coping behaviors experienced by Mainland Chinese university students in Hong Kong. Using qualitative research methods, we conducted seven focus groups with a total of 32 Mainland Chinese students from a public university in Hong Kong over a 3-month period. Analytic strategy included identifying the unit of analysis, coding, sorting code, checking code, and creating salient themes. Findings suggested that Mainland Chinese university students faced acculturative stress stemming from "language barriers," "prejudice and discrimination," "cultural differences," and "transport, food, and accommodation." The study also found that the participants used a number of adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies in the face of acculturative stress. As an extension of this research, future studies should examine the subtle difference between a subculture (Hong Kong) and its mother culture (Mainland China) and how that affects acculturative stress. Implications of these findings are discussed at the levels of theory, policy, and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]