PROJECT DETAILS
AIMS
To resolve the loopholes in secondary school curriculum and improve the existing situation in the universities, we propose the idea of mentorship programme to address the students’ career development needs.
We hope our mentorship could:
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Enhance students' self-knowledge (interest & passion)
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Provide chances in exploring the subjects & university lives
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Promote positive attitudinal changes: motivated in aspiring for their goal & committed in their own future plans
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Let the students gain better understanding about their own interests and clarify their future directions.
MEMBERS
We are a group of CUHK Psychology students consisting of 10 Year 2 to Year 4 members. We worked as a team to carry out a mentorship programme with Tak Sun Secondary School.
RATIONALE
REASON 1
Regret studying own majors in the universities
There are approximately 1300 university dropouts in the 18-19 academic year (Oriental Daily, 2019). We often hear university students want to change their majors. The wrong decisions were made due to the mismatch of the subject requirements and their own ability and interest. They complain about having too little knowledge about the majors and very few opportunities of exploration before studying at university, which is consistent with the obtained results from the interviewed secondary school students. Hence, the increasing dropouts and changing majors implies the unfulfilled career development need in the secondary schools.
REASON 2
Limited support in career-related exploration in
the school curriculum
In 2006, Education Bureau purposed the Applied Learning, Life-wide Learning courses and Other Learning Experiences which aim to help students to apply their knowledge, skills and values in practical settings and workplace. However, the outcome is quite disappointing. Local schools mostly focus on the academics achievement, delivering most of the resource to the traditional academic subjects. Limited courses in the Applied Learning (AL) are offered by the schools due to the limited financial support. For Other Learning Experience (OLE), it is likely to include compulsory site visits or volunteer works. Therefore, they perceive those programmes as tasks to be completed instead of actual exploration.
REASON 3
Limited support in career guidance and counselling in the school curriculum
Frontline teachers lack qualifications to deliver career guidance and counselling. Every year, only 30 to 60 teachers are trained in career guidance at tertiary education (Ho, 2008). Hence, many teachers lack confidence and support in providing career services. Meanwhile, teachers have heavy workloads, so they have low priority on the career guidance curriculum. Thus, they would just organize large-scale talks to direct to students’ needs (Lawrence, 2017).
From our information searches and experience, we discover the insufficient self-knowledge from students and inadequate career development support from schools, which in the long run can lead to potential threats to the society. Compared to other Asian countries, such as Singapore and Korea, students in Hong Kong are less competitive as they may have a lack of chances to develop work-related expertises (South China Morning Post, 2017).