Tag: Hong Kong

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and parasympathetic nervous systems have been reported to play important roles in regulating emotion and coping with stress. But their direct relationship with psychological resilience remains unclear. These biophysiological features should be considered together with traditional psychometric properties to study resilience more comprehensively.

A Study of Dr Way Lau Kwok-wai, Assistant Professor at the Department of Special Education and Counselling, The Education University of Hong Kong, examined the role of biophysiological features such as vagal tone and HPA reactivity in resilience and determine the predictive power of resilience with the combination of psychological and biophysiological measures.

The study involved 55 male and 52 female university students with no psychiatric disorders. To examine the physiological changes in response to stress, the participants undertook a 15-minute Trier Social Stress Task (TSST), consisting of five minutes’ preparation, and delivering a five-minute speech in their second language and performing mental arithmetic in front of a review panel.

Psychometric properties of resilience were measured at rest; and vagal heart rate variability (HRV), salivary cortisol, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) levels were captured at baseline during and after the TSST. Multivariate linear regression and support vector regression machine-learning analyses were performed to investigate significant predictors and the predictive power of resilience.

The results showed that positive and negative affects, HRV during the anticipatory phase of stress, and the ratio of cortisol/ DHEA at the first recovery time point were significant predictors of resilience. The addition of biophysiological features increased the predictive power of resilience by 1.2 times compared to psychological features alone. The results from machine-learning analysis further demonstrated that the increased predictive power of resilience by adding the ratio of cortisol/ DHEA was significant in ‘cortisol responders’ (those who demonstrated an increase in cortisol during the stress phrase); whereas a trend level was observed in ‘cortisol non-responders’.

In the investigation of the HPA axis, the researchers did not observe any notable changes in cortisol or DHEA, but there was a marginally significant increase in the ratio of cortisol/ DHEA during and after the TSST in the complete samples, suggesting that the ratio of cortisol/ DHEA could plausibly be a more sensitive marker for acute stress.

The findings extend knowledge from the literature that high vagal activity during the anticipating phase of stress and the ability to restore the balance between cortisol and DHEA after a stress event can be an important feature in predicting resilience. The findings enhance our understanding of the role of vagal tone and HPA functioning in resilience, and further support the notion of combining psychological and biophysiological data in measuring and predicting resilience.

Dr Lao Hongling, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (C&I), The Education University of Hong Kong, has co-authored a book chapter entitled ‘Dancing with Chains: How Does Assessment-as-learning Fit in China?’

Assessment-as-learning aims to provide learning opportunities to students via assessment activities, advocating the development of their long-term learning capacity, such as self-regulation and metacognition. Although students are central to the practice, teachers still play a key role, especially in younger age-groups. Teachers are expected to design, teach, monitor, provide feedback, and modify these assessment activities, so that students can maximise their learning during assessment. This casts a heavy burden of expectation on teachers. However, they may not be ready to implement the new procedures, especially in a deep-rooted examination-oriented culture such as that of mainland China. Working from teachers’ perspectives, the chapter explores whether assessment-as-learning can be accommodated by such a culture.

At first glance, the disjuncture between assessment-as-learning and an examination-oriented assessment culture seems obvious. Firstly, assessment-as-learning aims to develop students’ long-term learning capacity, whereas examination-oriented culture prioritises students’ short-term test performance. Furthermore, driven by these different purposes, the assessment tasks themselves have different goals and formats. However, if assessment-as-learning is treated primarily as a learning strategy, rather than an assessment device, the question arises whether it would be a better fit in an examination-oriented culture. The long-term learning capacities developed via assessment-as-learning could be used to enhance short-term test performance. To maximise students’ learning opportunities, the chapter looks at whether it would be possible to integrate assessment-as-learning into all assessment designs, including both formative and summative scenarios.

To answer these questions, the nature of assessment-as-learning is discussed, highlighting its position as a learning strategy instead of a competing assessment procedure. Then it briefly reviews the assessment culture in China and examines the perceived conflicts between assessment-as-learning and the examination-oriented culture, and attempts to seek alternative perspectives that might potentially alleviate such tension.

Finally, a case study provides a snapshot of the current status of assessment-as-learning in China from the teacher’s perspective. It shows how the examination-oriented culture still casts a long shadow over the conceptions and practices of assessment, by limiting their scope and format. It also studies how recent reforms provide new opportunities for the development and implementation of assessment-as-learning as universal learning strategy, integrated into all classroom assessments, as well as being used to improve short-term academic performance.

Co-authored with Dr Yan Zi, Associate Professor at C&I, the chapter features in the book Assessment as Learning: Maximising Opportunities for Student Learning and Achievement (Z. Yan & L. Yang [Eds], Routledge 2021).

To learn more about the publication, please click here.

Global flows of international students have diversified in recent years. As a result, the common association of this form of mobility with affluent members of the global middle class increasingly does not hold. About six per cent of African tertiary students undertake higher education outside their home country, a higher proportion than in any other region. About half study in Africa; China is the second-largest single host country after France, having hosted 81,562 African students in 2018.

A study by Dr Benjamin Joseph Mulvey, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of International Education (IE), The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK), focused on the migration patterns of African international students in China. The main aim was to establish how international student migration is experienced differentially by students positioned in their home societies in unequal ways. It provided a detailed account of the pre-mobility social backgrounds, overseas experience, and post-study plans of 40 students from 14 African countries, based on data from semi-structured interviews. This enabled a focus on socially-classed differences in pre-mobility habitus, and the mutability of habitus as a consequence of an overseas sojourn. The study revealed that differences in social background in some cases led to distinct trajectories during the sojourn and in terms of post-study plans.

To understand the relationship between study abroad and habitus adjustment, the researchers examined the pre-mobility habitus of students. Students from less advantaged backgrounds tended to reflect on having faced disadvantages and succeeding. There was relatively little evidence of long-term planning for migration, because study abroad was not previously seen as a possibility. In the group of middle-class students, in contrast, studying abroad was always perceived as possible. Many had kinship networks and established study-abroad patterns among their peers.

The study found that pre-mobility habitus was an important factor shaping the trajectories of students’ overseas sojourns. International students from disadvantaged backgrounds tended to be successful academically during their time abroad, as they were able to draw on internal resources developed as a response to a lack of cultural and social capital during childhood and adolescence. These students displayed a strong sense of connection to their home communities, while shunning African students from more privileged backgrounds.

Most students, regardless of their original social background, did not perceive integration in China as possible mainly because of the large cultural gap and racialisation. A profound sense of alienation when initially navigating new social fields in China appeared in most cases to lead to withdrawal from the host society, rather than to attempts to adapt.

In terms of post-graduation plans, a consistent theme among students from disadvantaged backgrounds was giving back to their home communities. The vast majority of middle-class students and graduates, in contrast, planned to move away, some preferring to return home, and some seeking to migrate to third countries for work or further study. A common thread was anxiety around maintaining their middle-class status.

The study was conducted together with Profess Mark Mason at IE of EdUHK. It makes a theoretical contribution to international student migration literature, arguing that the nature of transformation that takes place among student migrants as a result of studying in China is shaped by the nature of mobility, both spatial and social.

To learn more about the study, please click here.