Students’ Participation in School Governance and Their Citizenship Development On Predicating Students’ Participation in School Governance: The Hong Kong Experience Eric Cheng Department of Curriculum and instruction The Hong Kong Institute of Education 19th November 2014 The Asia Pacific Educational Research Association (APERA) & The Hong Kong Educational Research Association (HKERA) International Conference 2014

Background: The General Research Fund Project (Project Code: 1-6-E031-31-R1065) Part of a research project: The Civic Mission of Schools: Citizenship Education, Democratic School Governance and Students’ Participation Aims to explore a model for schools to nurture good citizenship and to identify factors affecting students participation in school governance. Assumption Nurture good citizenship in school by “a here and now” participatory model

Research Questions How to promote students’ participation in school governance? What are the civic missions of the schools in HK? What are the factors affecting students’ participation in school governance? Which decision domains should open for students’ participation?

Conceptual Framework of this Study School values on Civic Education process of enacting the civic mission Outcomes of The Civil mission Civic Mission Student Participation in School Governance Teacher Factor affecting implementation of Civic School Factor affecting implementation of Civic Implementation of Civic

Research Methods Instruments Sampling methods Subject IEA (Torney-Purta et al., 2001; Amadeo et al.,2002), NFER (Keating et al., 2009), and ICSS (Schulz et al., 2009), for content validity Sampling methods Stratified random sampling with geographic local as 1st layer and type of schools as 2nd level Subject 3209 S2 & S3 students selected from 51 secondary schools out of 450 Data collection via self-responded questionnaire survey Data analysis: EFA via SPSS and SEM via Mplus for confirming constructed validity

SEM CFI TLI RMSEA Chi-square d.f. P-value .944 .937 .047 3262.309 410 0.0000

Personally responsible RQ 1 RQ 2 RQ 3 Personally responsible Patriotic Affective Justice Oriented Cognitive   Enactment of Civil Mission Teacher Factor School Student Participation 0.224 0.491 0.294 0.248 0.186 0.230 - 0.078 0.018 0.025

RQ 1 What are the civic missions of the schools in HK? obey the law work hard for the career Personally Responsible possess appropriate moral behaviour and attitude participation in the community activities participation in environmental protection work voluntarily respect of government representatives Patriotic Affective loyalty to the country loyalty to the ruling party identification with the country

RQ 1 What are the civic missions of the schools in HK? voice out for unjust social issues Justice Oriented pursue an understanding of human rights, the rule of law and justice Participation in social movement for social justice Have personal judgment on right or wrong on country affaire Patriotic Cognitive interest in the country’s current situation and development interest in the country’s constitution, constitutional structure and legal structure

Implementation of Civic RQ 2 What are the factors affecting students’ participation in school governance? Implementation of Civil Mission Implementation of Civic Mission The overall atmosphere of my school values nurturing students to be “good citizens” My school puts adequate resources in nurturing “good citizens” My school always organizes activities related to nurturing “good citizens” My school has a unit specifically for nurturing “good citizens” School culture, recourse allocation, organization structure and curriculum plan for civic education How do the schools manage their curriculum of civic education?

School factor affecting students participation RQ 2 What are the factors affecting students’ participation in school governance? School level and teacher level factors affecting students’ participation School culture: Trust, liberal & transparent Students believe that school accepts their opinions School has a transparent and clear procedure for formulating school policies School has open and liberal attitudes toward student participation in school governance School has a culture of mutual trust between school and students School has a tradition for students to participate in school governance School factor affecting students participation Staff lack enthusiasm Staff worry that the authority of staff will be challenged Staff worry that there will be chaos in school policies School worries about the reduction in efficiency of decision making Teacher Factor affecting student participation Teachers’ worry

RQ 3 Which decision domains should open for students’ participation in school governance? School’s development plan School’s self-evaluation Formulation of school rules Schools must speak for themselves (John E. C. MacBeath. 1999) in responding to SSE As the aims of the SDP is to improve T&L, schools should allow students to speak for their needs and difficulties in learning for formulating SDP, and to collect their views for SSE by filling in stakeholder questionnaire Involve students in setting school rules that could protect their learning

Personally responsible Patriotic Affective Justice Oriented Cognitive   Enactment of Civil Mission Teacher Factor School Student Participation 0.224 0.491 0.294 0.248 0.186 0.230 - 0.078 0.018 0.025

Conclusion & implications Curriculum implementation and school culture are critical to improve student participation “Teachers worry” means nothing! To improve student participation in school governance, school leaders may consider: Institutionalizing a civic education committee to manage the curriculum of the civic education, providing resource to run activities to nurture good citizenship Cultivating a school culture of trust, liberal and transparency Involving students in conducing School Self-evaluation, formulating School Development Plan and school rules.