SOE student candidates attended the CESHK Annual Conference 2024 and gave conference reports

With the theme of “Comparative Education: Historical Roots, New Beginnings”, the CESHK Annual Conference 2024 was held at the University of Hong Kong. The conference attracted more than 100 scholars from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Indonesia, China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and other regions to discuss the changes and development of basic education, lifelong education and higher education. Three PhD candidates from the School of Education participated in this conference.

ZHANG Yanzhi made a presentation titles “The Policy Orientation of Digital Transformation of ‘Double First-class’ Universities” in the third parallel forum. Digital transformation policies at universities accelerate modernization and high-quality development in higher education. This study employs content analysis, using the ‘policy tools-policy elements’ framework, to analyze digital transformation policies in the 14th Five-Year Plan of China’s 31 “Double First-Class” universities. The analysis reveals a trend toward supply-oriented, environment-oriented, and demand-oriented policy tools, with a focus on university governance.

ZHANG Chuanjian made a presentation titles “Whether Peer Tutoring Intervention Can Improve Colleges Students Academic Performance Effectively? A Meta-Analysis Based on 27 International Studies” in the fourth parallel forum. Based on 5031 samples from 27 international experiments and quasi-experiments, this study analyzes the overall effect size and influencing factors of peer tutoring in higher education on the college students’ academic performance. The results indicate that peer tutoring can effectively promote students’ academic performance, with a medium overall effect size (g=0.480). However, the influence of intervention type, tutoring category, and education level on the relationship between peer tutoring and students’ academic performance is not statistically significant. Furthermore, disciplines and regions have a significant moderating effect on this relationship. Consequently, the implications of this study suggest that universities can adopt peer tutoring as a teaching method to enhance students’ academic performance. Additionally, optimizing talent training plans to foster positive peer-support relationships among college students and increasing administrators’ awareness of discipline differences in students’ academic performance while implementing effective self-assessment strategies are recommended.

SHI Xueyi presented “Exploring Intentional Persistence Among Graduate Students: The Impact of Research Project” in the third parallel forum. Through responses from 574 graduate students at a leading research-intensive Chinese university, this study reveals that graduate students who participate in thesis-related research projects (TRRP) have higher intentional persistence in their majors. The effect of research project-based learning (RPBL) on graduate students’ intentional persistence in their majors is mediated by major self-efficacy and subjective task value. Specifically, TRRP offers substantial benefits to STEM students in terms of major self-efficacy, intrinsic, attainment, and utility values, alongside intentional persistence, whereas these positive outcomes are not evident among non-STEM students. These findings add to our current understanding about the role of different RPBL on graduate students’ intentional persistence in their majors, and point to the importance of TRRP on the development of intentional persistence through major self-efficacy and subjective task value, especially for STEM graduate students.