1. 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

2. 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

3. 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?

4. 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

5. 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

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

7. 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
0.018
0.025

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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?

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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
0.018
0.025

14. 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.