Chinese immigrant students in Hong Kong: Exploring performance and influences on their civic learning

Abstract

Guided by the “opportunity–propensity” (O‐P) framework, this study explores how immigrant status might affect students’ civic knowledge through an antecedent factor (socioeconomic status [SES]), opportunity factors (civic learning at school and civic participation at school), and propensity factors (perceived open classroom climate, perceived student–teacher relationship, and perceived importance of conventional citizenship). The data were taken from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016. The sample comprised 2,544 eighth graders from Hong Kong. Results of two‐level path analysis showed that, at the student level, mainland Chinese immigrant grant students had a higher level of civic knowledge. Although perceived open classroom climate and perceived importance of conventional citizenship were found to be two positive mediators and family SES (via civic learning at school) was a negative mediator, the mediation effects at the student level were quite small. In contrast, quite a large amount of variance was explained at the school level: School‐aggregated immigrant status was positively linked to school‐aggregated civic knowledge and negatively via school‐aggregated students’ family SES via school‐aggregated civic learning.

Civic learning for alienated, disaffected and disadvantaged students: measurement, theory and practice

“…However, given the high education expenditure in Denmark, questions might be asked whether the results of this model can be extended to countries with low education expenditure. Indeed, a different picture was shown in Hong Kong, where mainland Chinese immigrant students had a higher level of civic knowledge at both the student and school level; moreover, unlike the Denmark case where school variance accounts for 17%, quite a large amount of variance (48%) was explained at the school level in Hong Kong (Zhu, Kennedy, Mok, & Halse, 2019). Future studies can be conducted to examine how the study's framework regarding the three sets of factors can be applied in other counties/societies.…”

Asian Students’ Citizenship Values: Exploring Theory by Reviewing Secondary Data Analysis

“…There are also informative analyses focused on Asian data in the main survey. For example, Zhu et al (2019) have compared native born Hong Kong students and immigrant students (born in Mainland China but going to school in Hong Kong) to understand better why immigrant students often seem to have higher civic knowledge scores than the native born. As mentioned earlier, Reichert and Torney-Purta (2019) have developed profiles of Asian teachers based on their responses to the teacher questionnaire and compared them with those of teachers in several parts of Europe.…”