scholarly journals Learning, Teaching, and Researching in Shadow Education in Hong Kong: An Autobiographical Narrative Inquiry

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Wai-Ho Yung

Purpose: This article aims to illustrate from the author’s insider perspective the lived experiences of engaging in private tutoring in Hong Kong as a tutee, a tutor, and a researcher and draw implications on several issues arising from the prevalence of shadow education. Design/Approach/Methods: This article adopted an autobiographical narrative approach. Data were collected through the author’s memoir of events, stimulated by the tutorial materials he used when he was a tutee and a tutor, his own video-recorded lessons of tutoring, and reflective journals from his research projects. Findings: Various issues are discussed based on the narrative of the author playing different roles in the tutoring industry, including (1) the positive and negative washback on mainstream education, (2) the lack of strict regulation of the quality of tutors and advertisements, and (3) how shadow education may exacerbate education inequality and how some tutorial companies and nonprofit organizations are addressing the issue. Originality/Value: This article, to the best of the author’s knowledge, is the only one that discusses the issues of shadow education from an author’s own personal experiences as a tutee, a tutor, and a researcher. It illustrates how practices and policies of the private tutoring industry are evolving in Hong Kong from an insider perspective.

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-50
Author(s):  
Ching Ho Cheng

It is becoming more common for students in Hong Kong to take extra lessons after school. Several surveys indicate that more than 70% of students need to take private tutoring classes after school in their final year of secondary school (Bray, 2013). This indicates that “shadow education” has become a trend in Hong Kong. There are different types of private tutoring classes in Hong Kong, such as one-on-one tutoring or tutorial classes for groups of five to eight students. These classes aim to help students to perform better in public examination, but it has become more competitive in recent years. Even if students have satisfactory results at school, they may be expected to take extra classes, since doing so has become a societal trend. However, do students really need to take so many classes after school? Does the quantity of private tutoring lessons taken correlate with good academic results? This study investigates why parents in Hong Kong are sending their children to learning centers after school. Do these children really need extra classes, or are they being affected by the surrounding area?


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-217
Author(s):  
Jianyuan Ni ◽  
Monica L. Bellon-Harn ◽  
Jiang Zhang ◽  
Yueqing Li ◽  
Vinaya Manchaiah

Objective The objective of the study was to examine specific patterns of Twitter usage using common reference to tinnitus. Method The study used cross-sectional analysis of data generated from Twitter data. Twitter content, language, reach, users, accounts, temporal trends, and social networks were examined. Results Around 70,000 tweets were identified and analyzed from May to October 2018. Of the 100 most active Twitter accounts, organizations owned 52%, individuals owned 44%, and 4% of the accounts were unknown. Commercial/for-profit and nonprofit organizations were the most common organization account owners (i.e., 26% and 16%, respectively). Seven unique tweets were identified with a reach of over 400 Twitter users. The greatest reach exceeded 2,000 users. Temporal analysis identified retweet outliers (> 200 retweets per hour) that corresponded to a widely publicized event involving the response of a Twitter user to another user's joke. Content analysis indicated that Twitter is a platform that primarily functions to advocate, share personal experiences, or share information about management of tinnitus rather than to provide social support and build relationships. Conclusions Twitter accounts owned by organizations outnumbered individual accounts, and commercial/for-profit user accounts were the most frequently active organization account type. Analyses of social media use can be helpful in discovering issues of interest to the tinnitus community as well as determining which users and organizations are dominating social network conversations.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Guill ◽  
Oliver Lüdtke ◽  
Olaf Köller

1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Morgan Capron

Over the last decade, standards for when and how to undertake a wide range of medical interventions have poured forth from medical specialty groups, commercial and nonprofit organizations, and state and federal panels. Known by a variety of names—from practice parameters to clinical guidelines—and intended for a range of purposes—from diminishing the incidence of maloccurences in hospitals to cutting the costs of health care—these guidelines share one important feature: the intention of decreasing the range of variation in medical practice. Such standardization immediately appeals to anyone interested in improving the quality of health care and, in particular, reducing inappropriate medical interventions, in light of the difficulties for a conscientious physician today in adhering to the best standard of practice when faced with ever increasing medical knowledge and the growing number and complexity of diagnostic, preventive, and therapeutic interventions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinyi Xu ◽  
Shu-Wen Tu ◽  
Chia-Chin Lin

Abstract Background The proportion of hospital deaths has declined in the past few decades, while the proportions of nursing home deaths have increased. This trend of increasing deaths in long-term care facilities underlines the importance of improving end-of-life care provisions in these settings to meet individual preferences and needs. Under these circumstances, a comprehensive understanding of end-of-life care preferences in local nursing home residents can help healthcare professionals and policymakers develop strategies to increase the advance directive completion rate and quality of care. This study aimed to explore and compare advance directive and end-of-life care preferences of nursing home residents in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Methods A structured questionnaire was developed by the research team to investigate advance directive and end-of-life care preferences in older Chinese nursing home residents. Nursing home residents with frail or pre-frail status and over the age of 64 were invited to participate in the study, and information on demographics, functional status, advance directive experiences, and end-of-life care expectations was collected through questionnaire interviews. Results A total of 325 eligible participants from 32 facilities completed the survey, including 238 older residents in Hong Kong and 87 in Taiwan. A significantly lower proportion of the Hong Kong residents had completed an advance directive compared with the Taiwanese (3 vs. 13%, p = 0.001). Among participants who did not have an advance directive, 46% of the Taiwanese participants said they would consider completing one in the future, compared with 20% of the Hong Kong participants (p < 0.001). A total of 79% of the Hong Kong participants and 80% of the Taiwanese participants responded that prolonging life in the given hypothetical dying scenario was “not important” (p = 0.76). Only 14% of participants in Hong Kong and 18% of participants in Taiwan reported prior occurrence of end-of-life care discussions with family members or health professionals (p = 0.37). Conclusions This paper adds evidence in support of improving end-of-life communication and the advance directive completion rate in nursing homes in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Further research is necessary to explore cross-cultural differences in end-of-life preferences and its applications in predicting decision-making and the quality of end-of-life care.


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