published_or_final_version / History / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

published_or_final_version / Applied Geosciences / Master / Master of Science

published_or_final_version / Applied Geosciences / Master / Master of Science

published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

In theoretical development history, the issue of “urban public space” is one of the central themes in the domain of urban planning and design, which has played as a medium for interdisciplinary discussions on the relationship between built environment and the social relations behind. In present Chinese cities, the market economic reform in recent decades has brought profound impacts on Chinese society, which is mostly represented by an infusing of private realm to the universal public realm in the planned economic era at all dimensions of space production. However, the production of urban space in China under market economic reform is not lead by an articulated theory of public space. The notion of “Chinese urban public space” remains as a technical definition, and the essential attribute, namely, the “publicness” of urban public space, seems to be conspicuously absent from theoretical discourses in present Chinese urban planning and design. This dissertation is an empirical study on Chinese urban public space in cities under market economic reform. It aims to find out how space production mechanisms in the economic reform period constitute the nature—the attribute of “publicness”—of Chinese urban public space. The study is built upon a set of theoretical underpinnings— the public space theories in urban studies and the theories on the relationship between built environment and the socioeconomic background. In particular, the study adopts the sociospatial perspective of the “production of space” theory established by French philosopher Henry Lefebvre as the theoretical rationale for the methodology. It takes a case study method for its empirical exploration, for which, the city of Shenzhen is chosen as the case study area. Through case investigations, the study demonstrates that the universal socialist publicness of Chinese urban public space in the planned economic era has disappeared with the market economic reform. The production of urban public space in Chinese cities is no longer a technical issue dealing with merely the physical dimension of space, instead, it represents a process of conflicts and contradictions, in which different actors, interests, and ideologies fight as well as interact for the use, interest, and representation of space, and wherein sociospatial relations are reconstructed. Further, through investigation on the institutional forces behind space production, the study demonstrates that there are institutional paradoxes in present Chinese space production mechanisms, which are roots of the conflicts and contradictions in the production of public space. These paradoxes have led to a general “loss” of “publicness” in Chinese urban public space, which are represented in some common and yet fundamental aspects of changes. The findings of this study are considered to have important implications for understanding the nature of Chinese urban public space in Chinese cities in the market economic reform era. It also contributes to a better understanding on the space production mechanisms as well as their relationship with the social-economic settings in present Chinese transitional society. / published_or_final_version / Architecture / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Precious local character and distinct neighborhood network are intangible assets that are worth to be retained, revealed and inherited. This differentiates a place from others with its diversified and unique essence, but again links up its community members through a shared understanding and appreciation of their own cultural legacy. Wanchai is one noticeable example of embracing rich local heritage and strong social network which are, however, at stake under development projects in the pipeline across the region. It is not uncommon to see that different community-based conservation efforts have been put forth to retain local value and heritage in many countries. One example is the set-up of community museums which have their presence across the globe since 60's, serving to retain and revitalize the vanishing local skills, and reveal the local stories and knowledge through local community force. Two successful examples in U.S. and Taiwan will be referenced to as an understanding of the characteristics and achievements of a community museum model. In Wanchai, a similar community-involved museum model is seen i.e. the Wanchai Livelihood Place (WCLP) established by a local NGO and a group of enthusiastic residents. WCLP is characterised by its aims to preserve and reveal the cultural essence of Wanchai and involve wide local participation in all aspects, ranging from operation, management and decision-making of WCLP. To be specific, its relationship with the community is of great important to be studied which can help assess its role - as a community museum - in achieving the conservation end together with the Wanchai community. In this dissertation, by a thorough investigation of the case of WCLP, it is held with the objective to study and evaluate this bottom-up conservation museum model regarding its relationship with the community in terms of preserving, revealing and revitalizing local culture, stories, traditions and addressing local issues for the Wanchai community; as well as its contribution to the Wanchai community in terms of local involvement, identity building and sustainable community development. Furthermore, the opportunities and challenges of this community-oriented conservation model will be discussed. In a wider context, this will help serve as a reference for other similar examples in Hong Kong. Lastly, it is important to note that the discussion will focus on the period from the establishment of WCLP in 2007 to end of Feb 2012, during the time when it was named the Wanchai Livelihood Place and was very much based on community support. After then, since March 2012, WCLP has changed its name to Hong Kong House of Stories under the Hongkong Bank Foundation's sponsorship and also as a result of the preparation for the official launch of the “Viva Blue House” Revitalization Project in 2014. From then, its mission and depth of activities have been expanded. This is worth to be looked into as the challenges and opportunities encountered by WCLP regarding its future development. / published_or_final_version / Conservation / Master / Master of Science in Conservation

Youth need guidance to maximize their potentials, develop in a sound and well-rounded way, and steer clear of trouble. This is especially so nowadays, due to the complexity of today’s world as well as the greater exposure to a variety of influences that advances in communications technology have brought with them. However, familial trends are such that less rather than more guidance might be available through the home or extended family today. Schools have taken on the brunt of providing this guidance through a variety of guidance programs. One way a particular secondary school in Hong Kong provides this guidance is by instituting a school-wide mentoring program, providing each student with a teacher designated as his personal mentor. While it is true that teachers in Hong Kong have always understood themselves as having a guidance role especially as class tutors for their own classes, and it is also true that mentoring has already been widely used in a variety of youth settings to provide guidance, efforts to combine the two and use teachers as mentors in a formal mentoring program for all the students in the school are less common but also seem to be on the rise. At any rate, research evidence for such programs is lacking and in the context of Hong Kong, virtually non-existent. Questions thus arise as to whether such school-wide, school-based mentoring programs using teachers can actually be successfully put in place; whether they actually have merit when put in place; and if they do have benefits, what kind and what extent of benefits actually accrue, and how might they be maximized. This case study is an attempt to address the above questions by seeking a deeper understanding of the mentoring program in the particular school. Specifically, it seeks first to clarify what the actual implementation of the mentoring program in the school looks like. Secondly, it seeks to consider how the program can be made more effective by identifying factors that affect the outcomes of such mentoring as well as by uncovering points of leverage specific to the case school. The research context of this study is in the domain of mentoring literature. At the same time, perspectives from the field of guidance in schools are also given due consideration. As a case study, a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods are used alongside each other and these include in-depth interviews with students and teachers and a survey of the student population of the school at large. The results show that though the actual implementation may not be as smooth as theorized, the program has already been reaping benefits. The program is also likely to reap even greater benefits if steps are taken to address issues such as clarity of objectives and commitment of staff and if it incorporates certain features of other well-run mentoring programs such as the provision of ongoing training, and program activities to support the development of the mentoring relationship. The results also confirm that factors commonly expected to be moderators of mentoring effectiveness such as the intensity and quality of the mentor-mentee relationship were indeed also moderators in the school’s program and that factors more specific to the program’s context such as goal-setting and whether the personal tutor was also the class tutor also had significant effects. It further suggested that mentoring the mentors could also be a key part of the equation in the bid to enhance program effectiveness. Overall, while acknowledging several areas requiring further research, the findings of the study do endorse the case school’s model of a teacher-led school-wide mentoring program for students as an effective guidance strategy which fits well into a whole-school approach to guidance. The study has also been a significant step towards understanding the inner workings and potential difficulties in implementing such mentoring programs and can thus serve as a guide to schools wishing to venture into this area and can contribute to the base of literature regarding such mentoring programs. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Although school-based teacher developmental activities have been launched for years in general education system, such comparatively systematic and effective work have yet been thoroughly adopted by most of the out-of-school educational institutions. Studies on Children’s Palaces education and school-based teacher development are extremely limited, not only because the overall management of out-of-school education system is not as complete as that of general education system, but also the features of Children’s Palace education made the study hard but more and more necessary. Guided by the theoretical framework of Lifelong Education and Professionalism Theory, the purpose of this dissertation aims at finding out the problems of the children's palace school-based staff development, and exploring reasons behind through analyzing quantitative and qualitative research data from the case study of No.2 Children’s Palace of Jinshan District, give recommendations so that teachers may gain more concrete benefit through the system of school-based teacher development. The questionnaire for quantitative research contains two parts. Part I contains questions about the need of teacher development in No.2 CP, and Part II contains question about perspectives and current situation concerning school-based teacher development in No.2 CP. After the quantitative approach and research data analysis, qualitative approach of follow-up interviews will be carried out. Synthesized data analysis aims at answering research questions such as current status of school-based teacher development in No.2 CP and mode and examples that might be drawn to inspire the school-based teacher development in Children’s Palaces in Shanghai. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

What is civil society? This term is no longer new to Hong Kong people in the past 10 years. Nowadays we learn about the conflicts between the HKSARG and civil society groups from time to time given the increasingly weak governance under Hong Kong’s political landscape. A new type of nonprofits (NGOs) formed after 2000 in Hong Kong is closely related to the development of civil society. This paper attempts to argue that the state-nonprofit relationship in Hong Kong can be classified as statist-corporatist, a term used by Lee (2005a) with reference to Salamon, Sokolowski, and Anheier’s Social Origins Theory (2000). The “statist” character refers to the authoritarianism undertaken by the government to grip the control of nonprofits in order to consolidate its ruling; on the other hand, the “corporatist” character is displayed by its consistently generous support to social welfare through funding the non-government service providers. This paper further argues that with the rise of civil society, the non-profit regime also displays a “liberal” character, a term used in Lee and Liu (2011), which has been taking shape in the past 10 years. Under the liberal regime, there is a sizeable civil society comprising smaller individual nonprofits with state financing only one of the possible funding sources. Then, how are the NGOs or civil society groups performing under the liberal regime with respect to their relationship with the state? The majority of these nonprofits work on policy advocacy to fight against the government. The current study will use the case of Hong Kong Unison, an influential nonprofit serving ethnic minorities, to demonstrate how a self-funded NGO, deficient in financial support from the government, carries out advocacy works to call for policy change to suit the need of ethnic residents in the areas of education, employment, and race discrimination. It is found that its size, composition and financing are evident to the features of a liberal regime. Furthermore, with reference to Lee and Liu’s (2011) paper on factors influencing network formation among Hong Kong nonprofits, the present study seeks to explore how this policy advocacy NGO makes use of networking as an effective strategy to form alliance with like-minded parties, given its limited resources. The interactions with different parties such as politicians, government officials, private donors, ethnic minority community, human rights groups, and the media have been discussed. What is civil society? This term is no longer new to Hong Kong people in the past 10 years. Nowadays we learn about the conflicts between the HKSARG and civil society groups from time to time given the increasingly weak governance under Hong Kong’s political landscape. A new type of nonprofits (NGOs) formed after 2000 in Hong Kong is closely related to the development of civil society. This paper attempts to argue that the state-nonprofit relationship in Hong Kong can be classified as statist-corporatist, a term used by Lee (2005a) with reference to Salamon, Sokolowski, and Anheier’s Social Origins Theory (2000). The “statist” character refers to the authoritarianism undertaken by the government to grip the control of nonprofits in order to consolidate its ruling; on the other hand, the “corporatist” character is displayed by its consistently generous support to social welfare through funding the non-government service providers. This paper further argues that with the rise of civil society, the non-profit regime also displays a “liberal” character, a term used in Lee and Liu (2011), which has been taking shape in the past 10 years. Under the liberal regime, there is a sizeable civil society comprising smaller individual nonprofits with state financing only one of the possible funding sources. Then, how are the NGOs or civil society groups performing under the liberal regime with respect to their relationship with the state? The majority of these nonprofits work on policy advocacy to fight against the government. The current study will use the case of Hong Kong Unison, an influential nonprofit serving ethnic minorities, to demonstrate how a self-funded NGO, deficient in financial support from the government, carries out advocacy works to call for policy change to suit the need of ethnic residents in the areas of education, employment, and race discrimination. It is found that its size, composition and financing are evident to the features of a liberal regime. Furthermore, with reference to Lee and Liu’s (2011) paper on factors influencing network formation among Hong Kong nonprofits, the present study seeks to explore how this policy advocacy NGO makes use of networking as an effective strategy to form alliance with like-minded parties, given its limited resources. The interactions with different parties such as politicians, government officials, private donors, ethnic minority community, human rights groups, and the media have been discussed. The present study has certain limitations. However, it is meaningful as it provides insights into the state-nonprofit relationship as the society evolves. It argues that the tension between the government and policy advocacy NGOs cannot be resolved if Hong Kong is not to run democratisation as promised by the Beijing Central Government1. Recommendations are made to call for further research on the development of policy advocacy NGOs following the establishment of the Fourth Term Government of the HKSAR on 1 July 2012. / published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration