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published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This research is aims to explore the phenomenon of the higher ratio of female students in Education Faculty in HKU. First of all, in the introduction part, the researcher will give some data supported by authoritative organization such as UGC to show that education disciplines always welcomed to female students when they are facing higher education major choice. Then, in order to study the higher ratio phenomenon in the Education Faculty in HKU, the research will use qualitative research method to do interviews. There is only one central research question: Why female students’ population proportion in education is so high? There are ten interviewees are invited to give their opinion in five related specific questions. In the finding parts, the interviewees’ idea to every question will analyzed in order to explore the deeper reasons behind this higher ratio phenomenon. By analyzing the records of the interviews, this research gives a description about why girls usually like to go to education disciplines. The researcher also puts forward some further thought about this phenomenon: though this fact might have both positive and negative effects, we should take an objective attitude towards it. To minimize its negative effect, it takes the effort of women themselves, the support from society and the cooperation of the educational circles. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Studies on education evolve closely along the debates of social reproduction and students’ actual responses in the process of schooling. Structural influences of class, gender, race or ethnicity are often highlighted and resulted in more or less coherent and consistent student subcultures and typologies. The aim of this study is to capture and explain the neglected complexities and dynamics of schooling by studying a group of ordinary students in a community college in Hong Kong. Ordinary students are under-studied because of their assumed normality and uninteresting experience. By stepping into their world of everyday schooling using an ethnographic approach, it is found that their hopes in life are ordinary but their lives extraordinary with selectivity, inconsistency and transiency as the defining features. Such features result from the everyday interplay of school routines, connections with people, ethics of conduct, as well as visions in life of these students. These interactions shape a certain narrative of life over time and are deployed as cultural tools in particular situations of schooling. The deployment of cultural tools by ordinary students allows an understanding of culture in action although it is fragmented and incoherent, and the lives of them as a whole are characterised by drifting across states of being, rather than formation of any coherent, linear or cumulative narrative. The study contributes to existing scholarship by offering new empirical observations on how thirty two community college students went through and reflected on their schooling experience over a two year span. The study adds to the ongoing theoretical attempt to grasp the complex interaction among structure, institution and agency in social life by capturing the fluid states of drift in ethics and visions among students amidst the highly structured routines of competitive education. Through these we are able to better understand the lives and cultures of ordinary students in a world where to be ordinary is almost like an impossible dream. / published_or_final_version / Sociology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Clinical Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references.

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy