AbstractThe status of a student depends on participation in the narrative production, specifically the retelling of past lives and recovered memories. Several examples are given. The ethnographer’s experience of the phenomenological lifeworld of Unarius takes shape as she participates in a past-life readings and momentary glimpses of member experience. The ethnographer explains the problems of fieldwork in the context of the balance between immersion and objectivity. Because of this issue, she restrains herself from contributing to the narrative.
Several credit-bearing subjects have been developed at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), including a 2-credit "service leadership" subject, a 3-credit "service leadership" subject in the Cluster Area Requirement, a free elective 3-credit "service leadership" subject, and a 3-credit "service leadership through serving children and families with special needs" subject. Noncredit-bearing service leadership programs including the Global Youth Leadership Program and Wofoo Leaders' Network have also been designed. Different evaluation mechanisms including objective outcome evaluation, subjective outcome evaluation, process evaluation, and qualitative evaluation were carried out to evaluate the credit-bearing subjects. Results generally revealed that students showed positive change in service leadership qualities and well-being after they took the subjects and they gave very positive feedback about the subjects. Research and publication programs have also been carried out at PolyU.
The present longitudinal study explored the development of personal well-being in university students over 4 years. Personal well-being was indexed by multiple indicators including life satisfaction, positive youth development qualities, and university engagement. A sample of 434 students enrolled in the new 4-year undergraduate program in one university in Hong Kong was successfully followed up for 4 years since they started their university study in 2012-2013 academic year. Students completed an online survey on a yearly basis and four waves of data were collected. Results revealed significant changes in most well-being indicators over time with three main observations. First, students' life satisfaction remained at a stable level during 4 years. Second, most students' self-reported positive youth development competencies followed a U-shaped developmental trajectory, which was characterised by a dip in the second year and a continuous rebound in the third year and fourth year. Third, students' university engagement in different aspects showed significant increments in the third and fourth year of university study. The findings underscore the disparate developmental patterns of different aspects of student well-being during university study. This suggests that there is a need to take into account students' developmental characteristics and related challenges in different stages of university life when develop and implement programs in university to promote student well-being.
