This article refers to the case of the Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) in Hong Kong to engage empiric... more This article refers to the case of the Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) in Hong Kong to engage empirically in a debate over school choice. Based on a survey of 910 parents of primary school-leavers on their considerations in making school choices for their children, our analysis shows that DSS schools as an educational option are essentially exclusive to high-income parents, and that DSS schools are opted for as an alternative for the instrumental reason of having higher chances of getting into university rather than such claimed educational reasons as providing students with innovative design of curricula, pedagogies, and assessments.
In the People's Republic of China (PRC), educational expansion together with the promotion of mar... more In the People's Republic of China (PRC), educational expansion together with the promotion of market competition is taken as a measure of addressing a structural rural-urban divide in educational inequality. In following the emotional journeys of pursuing a bachelor's degree for 32 rural students in four elite universities in Shanghai, this paper explores an emotive impact of such a measure on rural students. Despite feeling pride at getting into university, many respondents were ashamed because of their perceived academic and social inadequacies vis-à-vis their urban classmates. The stigmatisation of the rural accentuated their feelings of shame and even made many respondents not feel confident about seeking a career in a city. An individualistic approach framed in a selfreliance discourse, even in a socialist society, to address structural educational inequality, is doomed to fail to confront an unequal opportunity structure, but offloads the cost of change, including the emotional cost, to individual students.
Preface Prologue: Joining an international non-governmental organisation to become a visiting fel... more Preface Prologue: Joining an international non-governmental organisation to become a visiting fellow of Civic Education Project working in Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova Bringing in critical thinking and interactive teaching: Critical of what? Teaching what? Organising a student conference: Bringing in the values of achievement, equality, and democracy? Rekindling elitism and nepotism? Running teacher training workshops for local academics: Voluntarism? Altruism? Working with CEP fellows: Ideal CEP fellows? Co-operation? Internal struggle: Sympathy? Contempt? Guilt? Anger? Civic Education Project and the development logic of international non-governmental organisations Civic Education Project and the development of imperialism Epilogue: The end of an obsession with and the beginning of a reflection on Civic Education Project Appendix 1: The earliest draft of my first article on CEP circulated among AFP and CEP fellows Appendix 2: Responses to the drafted article Index.
This chapter summarises this study’s major findings reported in the four empirical chapters so as... more This chapter summarises this study’s major findings reported in the four empirical chapters so as to conclude whether middle-class students are more advantaged than working-class students in taking advantage of the newly available option of community college to seek a second chance. This summary is followed by a discussion of these findings’ policy implications. This chapter also makes suggestions for further research on community college education in Hong Kong in particular and on higher education in general. Finally, this chapter ends with comments on the community college policy, underscoring that the policy overlooks the fact that education, as long as it is taken as a battlefield for class competition, does not immediately become any less instrumental simply because of its intrinsically valuable liberal-arts education.
School leadership has been concerned about how leadership could improve a school, especially mani... more School leadership has been concerned about how leadership could improve a school, especially manifested in student learning outcomes. Nevertheless, the link between school leadership and inequality of student learning outcomelet alone social justiceis rarely examined in the field. Rather, the issue of educational inequality at school has attracted considerable scholarly attention in Sociology of Education, where one focus is on the impact of what happen in classrooms and staffroomse.g., teaching and learning policiesfor students' learning outcomes. Whether a teaching or learning policy is endorsed and whether some teaching practices are implemented rest with the decisions made primarily, if not
International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, May 3, 2016
Embedded in a new understanding of the concept of parental involvement is that parents work as a ... more Embedded in a new understanding of the concept of parental involvement is that parents work as a collaborator with the school to improve student learning; through involvement in school activities, parents tend to better understand the curriculum and be more closely connected with teachers. However, the literature shows that opportunity available for parental involvement can be better seized by those who are of a higher socioeconomic status (SES). In addition to SES factors, there are also studies that attempt to relate parental involvement to their behavioural dispositions. In this study, we seek to link parental involvement to both SES and parental behavioural dispositions, namely their expectations in their children, self-efficacy in helping their children, and understanding of their children's school life, simultaneously, based on a data-set comprising 921 parents of Hong Kong primary school leavers. Discussions and implications of the findings in the cultural and political contexts will be included.
This article refers to the case of the Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) in Hong Kong to engage empiric... more This article refers to the case of the Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) in Hong Kong to engage empirically in a debate over school choice. Based on a survey of 910 parents of primary school-leavers on their considerations in making school choices for their children, our analysis shows that DSS schools as an educational option are essentially exclusive to high-income parents, and that DSS schools are opted for as an alternative for the instrumental reason of having higher chances of getting into university rather than such claimed educational reasons as providing students with innovative design of curricula, pedagogies, and assessments.
A belief that Hong Kong is a land of opportunities for the talented and the hardworking makes man... more A belief that Hong Kong is a land of opportunities for the talented and the hardworking makes many speculate that an increasing involvement of younger generations in politics in recent years results from their blocked social mobility. What remains unclear is whether new generations are indeed deprived of mobility opportunities in nowadays Hong Kong. We seek to address this issue empirically by analysing two datasets collected in 1989 and 2007. Situating our discussion against the context of the study of social mobility, we discuss our analysis from two perspectives of social mobility: absolute mobility (mobility due to structural changes) and relative mobility (mobility due to changes in social fluidity). Against a changing class structure over the set period, structural opportunities for upward mobility are actually available to the younger generations; but, seemingly, whether they could grasp such opportunities to get ahead has become more strongly dependent on their class backgro...
Community College Journal of Research and Practice, Dec 17, 2014
In order to increase the competitiveness of the workforce at low cost, the Hong Kong government b... more In order to increase the competitiveness of the workforce at low cost, the Hong Kong government brought in the idea of community colleges and the associate degree while keeping the same annual set quota of first-year, first-degree places at publicly-funded universities. At first glance, in doing so, the government could avoid expanding the sector of university education, which could eventually lead to credential inflation usually found in the West. However, the policy, perhaps unintentionally, boosts up students' educational aspiration: while a greater number of students obtain an associate degree, they do not take an associate degree as a final degree but demand a bachelor degree. This rising demand, then, leads to the emergence and subsequent expansion of the self-financing sector of university education. This Hong Kong experience demonstrates that it is perhaps a mission impossible, to let more people have a higher education while keeping the sector of higher education intact. In view of the economic restructuring of Hong Kong towards a so-called knowledge economy, the Hong Kong government intended to design corresponding human resources policies in order to improve the qualifications, and thus the overall competitiveness, of the entire population. To this end, the government promoted lifelong learning. With regard to school-age students, in 2000, the government announced that it sought to increase the proportion of traditional college age students (25 years old and younger) receiving a postsecondary education from 34% in 1999 to 60% in 10 years (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, 2000). But the government insisted that the number of places for these students at universities funded by the University Granted Committee (UGC) each year to do their first bachelor degree-that is, first-year first-degree places in UGC funded universities-should remain the same. In operation, in addition to existing higher diploma (HD) programs (a form of subdegree brought in from the United Kingdom), the government brought in the idea of community college from the United States, as well as an associate degree (AD). Essentially, the government sought to rely on the private sector of education to achieve its goal.
A belief that Hong Kong is a land of opportunities for the talented and the hardworking makes man... more A belief that Hong Kong is a land of opportunities for the talented and the hardworking makes many speculate that an increasing involvement of younger generations in politics in recent years results from their blocked social mobility. What remains unclear is whether new generations are indeed deprived of mobility opportunities in nowadays Hong Kong. We seek to address this issue empirically by analysing two datasets collected in 1989 and 2007. Situating our discussion against the context of the study of social mobility, we discuss our analysis from two perspectives of social mobility: absolute mobility (mobility due to structural changes) and relative mobility (mobility due to changes in social fluidity). Against a changing class structure over the set period, structural opportunities for upward mobility are actually available to the younger generations; but, seemingly, whether they could grasp such opportunities to get ahead has become more strongly dependent on their class background. Keywords class inequality-Hong Kong-Hong Kong dream-political development-social mobility-younger generations * We thank our institutions for support of all kinds, and we are grateful to Prof. Xiaogang Wu for his generosity in letting us use the 2007 dataset for this paper. wong and koo
Two commonly researched leadership practices in the education literature—instructional and transf... more Two commonly researched leadership practices in the education literature—instructional and transformational—can be linked to Schein’s multilevel model on organizational culture. There is a mediating effect of school leadership on the school structure and school culture relationships. The literature related to this subject confirms that the culture of a school, shaped by its principal, affects the competency and capacity of teachers; it also recognizes that school leadership practices affect student academic outcomes. Some studies, however, attempt to understand the impact a school principal can make on its student culture. If school culture is an avenue for understanding the behaviors and performance of school leaders and teachers, then student culture is a platform for understanding the affective and academic performance of students.
Using ethnographic data on the country programme Belarus-Ukraine-Moldova (BUM) of Civic Education... more Using ethnographic data on the country programme Belarus-Ukraine-Moldova (BUM) of Civic Education Project (CEP), an international non-governmental organisation, as an example, this paper seeks to challenge an assumption about the relationship between NGOs and the development of imperialism that their relationship is simple and direct. Contrary to this assumption, the evidence shows that the relationship between CEP and imperialism is neither simple nor direct in that CEP practices could be consistent with, contradictory to, or irrelevant to imperialism. I conclude that the development of imperialism does not necessarily follow a consistent logic that leads to some definite or irresistible outcomes but involves a measure of contingency or indeterminacy.
Objective: In view of the values of individualism and competition embedded in neoliberalism and g... more Objective: In view of the values of individualism and competition embedded in neoliberalism and global capitalism, this paper seeks to illustrate empirically students’ instrumentalism in higher education, and to explore how far such instrumentalism could be conceptualized as student alienation. Method: The illustration relies on experiences of community college students from an ethnographic study of students studying in a liberal-arts oriented community college in Hong Kong. The study begun in 2005 to 2006, continued in 2009, and followed up in 2010 to 2011. Eighty-five students in total were recruited and interviewed; 39 of them were interviewed twice. The interviews were analyzed together with the author’s observations and participation as a lecturer of that community college. Results: Against an intensely competitive environment, community college students were rather instrumental in their studies. Their alienation was also manifested in the following aspects: being instrumental ...
This article refers to the case of the Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) in Hong Kong to engage empiric... more This article refers to the case of the Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) in Hong Kong to engage empirically in a debate over school choice. Based on a survey of 910 parents of primary school-leavers on their considerations in making school choices for their children, our analysis shows that DSS schools as an educational option are essentially exclusive to high-income parents, and that DSS schools are opted for as an alternative for the instrumental reason of having higher chances of getting into university rather than such claimed educational reasons as providing students with innovative design of curricula, pedagogies, and assessments.
In the People's Republic of China (PRC), educational expansion together with the promotion of mar... more In the People's Republic of China (PRC), educational expansion together with the promotion of market competition is taken as a measure of addressing a structural rural-urban divide in educational inequality. In following the emotional journeys of pursuing a bachelor's degree for 32 rural students in four elite universities in Shanghai, this paper explores an emotive impact of such a measure on rural students. Despite feeling pride at getting into university, many respondents were ashamed because of their perceived academic and social inadequacies vis-à-vis their urban classmates. The stigmatisation of the rural accentuated their feelings of shame and even made many respondents not feel confident about seeking a career in a city. An individualistic approach framed in a selfreliance discourse, even in a socialist society, to address structural educational inequality, is doomed to fail to confront an unequal opportunity structure, but offloads the cost of change, including the emotional cost, to individual students.
Preface Prologue: Joining an international non-governmental organisation to become a visiting fel... more Preface Prologue: Joining an international non-governmental organisation to become a visiting fellow of Civic Education Project working in Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova Bringing in critical thinking and interactive teaching: Critical of what? Teaching what? Organising a student conference: Bringing in the values of achievement, equality, and democracy? Rekindling elitism and nepotism? Running teacher training workshops for local academics: Voluntarism? Altruism? Working with CEP fellows: Ideal CEP fellows? Co-operation? Internal struggle: Sympathy? Contempt? Guilt? Anger? Civic Education Project and the development logic of international non-governmental organisations Civic Education Project and the development of imperialism Epilogue: The end of an obsession with and the beginning of a reflection on Civic Education Project Appendix 1: The earliest draft of my first article on CEP circulated among AFP and CEP fellows Appendix 2: Responses to the drafted article Index.
This chapter summarises this study’s major findings reported in the four empirical chapters so as... more This chapter summarises this study’s major findings reported in the four empirical chapters so as to conclude whether middle-class students are more advantaged than working-class students in taking advantage of the newly available option of community college to seek a second chance. This summary is followed by a discussion of these findings’ policy implications. This chapter also makes suggestions for further research on community college education in Hong Kong in particular and on higher education in general. Finally, this chapter ends with comments on the community college policy, underscoring that the policy overlooks the fact that education, as long as it is taken as a battlefield for class competition, does not immediately become any less instrumental simply because of its intrinsically valuable liberal-arts education.
School leadership has been concerned about how leadership could improve a school, especially mani... more School leadership has been concerned about how leadership could improve a school, especially manifested in student learning outcomes. Nevertheless, the link between school leadership and inequality of student learning outcomelet alone social justiceis rarely examined in the field. Rather, the issue of educational inequality at school has attracted considerable scholarly attention in Sociology of Education, where one focus is on the impact of what happen in classrooms and staffroomse.g., teaching and learning policiesfor students' learning outcomes. Whether a teaching or learning policy is endorsed and whether some teaching practices are implemented rest with the decisions made primarily, if not
International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, May 3, 2016
Embedded in a new understanding of the concept of parental involvement is that parents work as a ... more Embedded in a new understanding of the concept of parental involvement is that parents work as a collaborator with the school to improve student learning; through involvement in school activities, parents tend to better understand the curriculum and be more closely connected with teachers. However, the literature shows that opportunity available for parental involvement can be better seized by those who are of a higher socioeconomic status (SES). In addition to SES factors, there are also studies that attempt to relate parental involvement to their behavioural dispositions. In this study, we seek to link parental involvement to both SES and parental behavioural dispositions, namely their expectations in their children, self-efficacy in helping their children, and understanding of their children's school life, simultaneously, based on a data-set comprising 921 parents of Hong Kong primary school leavers. Discussions and implications of the findings in the cultural and political contexts will be included.
This article refers to the case of the Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) in Hong Kong to engage empiric... more This article refers to the case of the Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) in Hong Kong to engage empirically in a debate over school choice. Based on a survey of 910 parents of primary school-leavers on their considerations in making school choices for their children, our analysis shows that DSS schools as an educational option are essentially exclusive to high-income parents, and that DSS schools are opted for as an alternative for the instrumental reason of having higher chances of getting into university rather than such claimed educational reasons as providing students with innovative design of curricula, pedagogies, and assessments.
A belief that Hong Kong is a land of opportunities for the talented and the hardworking makes man... more A belief that Hong Kong is a land of opportunities for the talented and the hardworking makes many speculate that an increasing involvement of younger generations in politics in recent years results from their blocked social mobility. What remains unclear is whether new generations are indeed deprived of mobility opportunities in nowadays Hong Kong. We seek to address this issue empirically by analysing two datasets collected in 1989 and 2007. Situating our discussion against the context of the study of social mobility, we discuss our analysis from two perspectives of social mobility: absolute mobility (mobility due to structural changes) and relative mobility (mobility due to changes in social fluidity). Against a changing class structure over the set period, structural opportunities for upward mobility are actually available to the younger generations; but, seemingly, whether they could grasp such opportunities to get ahead has become more strongly dependent on their class backgro...
Community College Journal of Research and Practice, Dec 17, 2014
In order to increase the competitiveness of the workforce at low cost, the Hong Kong government b... more In order to increase the competitiveness of the workforce at low cost, the Hong Kong government brought in the idea of community colleges and the associate degree while keeping the same annual set quota of first-year, first-degree places at publicly-funded universities. At first glance, in doing so, the government could avoid expanding the sector of university education, which could eventually lead to credential inflation usually found in the West. However, the policy, perhaps unintentionally, boosts up students' educational aspiration: while a greater number of students obtain an associate degree, they do not take an associate degree as a final degree but demand a bachelor degree. This rising demand, then, leads to the emergence and subsequent expansion of the self-financing sector of university education. This Hong Kong experience demonstrates that it is perhaps a mission impossible, to let more people have a higher education while keeping the sector of higher education intact. In view of the economic restructuring of Hong Kong towards a so-called knowledge economy, the Hong Kong government intended to design corresponding human resources policies in order to improve the qualifications, and thus the overall competitiveness, of the entire population. To this end, the government promoted lifelong learning. With regard to school-age students, in 2000, the government announced that it sought to increase the proportion of traditional college age students (25 years old and younger) receiving a postsecondary education from 34% in 1999 to 60% in 10 years (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, 2000). But the government insisted that the number of places for these students at universities funded by the University Granted Committee (UGC) each year to do their first bachelor degree-that is, first-year first-degree places in UGC funded universities-should remain the same. In operation, in addition to existing higher diploma (HD) programs (a form of subdegree brought in from the United Kingdom), the government brought in the idea of community college from the United States, as well as an associate degree (AD). Essentially, the government sought to rely on the private sector of education to achieve its goal.
A belief that Hong Kong is a land of opportunities for the talented and the hardworking makes man... more A belief that Hong Kong is a land of opportunities for the talented and the hardworking makes many speculate that an increasing involvement of younger generations in politics in recent years results from their blocked social mobility. What remains unclear is whether new generations are indeed deprived of mobility opportunities in nowadays Hong Kong. We seek to address this issue empirically by analysing two datasets collected in 1989 and 2007. Situating our discussion against the context of the study of social mobility, we discuss our analysis from two perspectives of social mobility: absolute mobility (mobility due to structural changes) and relative mobility (mobility due to changes in social fluidity). Against a changing class structure over the set period, structural opportunities for upward mobility are actually available to the younger generations; but, seemingly, whether they could grasp such opportunities to get ahead has become more strongly dependent on their class background. Keywords class inequality-Hong Kong-Hong Kong dream-political development-social mobility-younger generations * We thank our institutions for support of all kinds, and we are grateful to Prof. Xiaogang Wu for his generosity in letting us use the 2007 dataset for this paper. wong and koo
Two commonly researched leadership practices in the education literature—instructional and transf... more Two commonly researched leadership practices in the education literature—instructional and transformational—can be linked to Schein’s multilevel model on organizational culture. There is a mediating effect of school leadership on the school structure and school culture relationships. The literature related to this subject confirms that the culture of a school, shaped by its principal, affects the competency and capacity of teachers; it also recognizes that school leadership practices affect student academic outcomes. Some studies, however, attempt to understand the impact a school principal can make on its student culture. If school culture is an avenue for understanding the behaviors and performance of school leaders and teachers, then student culture is a platform for understanding the affective and academic performance of students.
Using ethnographic data on the country programme Belarus-Ukraine-Moldova (BUM) of Civic Education... more Using ethnographic data on the country programme Belarus-Ukraine-Moldova (BUM) of Civic Education Project (CEP), an international non-governmental organisation, as an example, this paper seeks to challenge an assumption about the relationship between NGOs and the development of imperialism that their relationship is simple and direct. Contrary to this assumption, the evidence shows that the relationship between CEP and imperialism is neither simple nor direct in that CEP practices could be consistent with, contradictory to, or irrelevant to imperialism. I conclude that the development of imperialism does not necessarily follow a consistent logic that leads to some definite or irresistible outcomes but involves a measure of contingency or indeterminacy.
Objective: In view of the values of individualism and competition embedded in neoliberalism and g... more Objective: In view of the values of individualism and competition embedded in neoliberalism and global capitalism, this paper seeks to illustrate empirically students’ instrumentalism in higher education, and to explore how far such instrumentalism could be conceptualized as student alienation. Method: The illustration relies on experiences of community college students from an ethnographic study of students studying in a liberal-arts oriented community college in Hong Kong. The study begun in 2005 to 2006, continued in 2009, and followed up in 2010 to 2011. Eighty-five students in total were recruited and interviewed; 39 of them were interviewed twice. The interviews were analyzed together with the author’s observations and participation as a lecturer of that community college. Results: Against an intensely competitive environment, community college students were rather instrumental in their studies. Their alienation was also manifested in the following aspects: being instrumental ...
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Papers by Yi-Lee Wong