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Moral education is a practice to promote the moral competence of adolescents, particularly in nurturing their moral judgement and moral behaviour. In China, under the rapid development of social work practice at schools, moral education could serve as a collaborative point between teachers, school counsellors, social workers and policymakers to promote the moral, holistic and healthy development of students. However, moral education is not as yet widely and systematically evaluated? particularly the details of relevant policy, curriculum, textbooks, teaching and learning approach, examination and evaluation. This paper takes an initiative to conduct a comprehensive literature review and theoretical discussion on the subject ‘Moral and Character Education’ (Sixiangpinde????) which is a mandatory moral education subject for Grade 7–9 students in junior high schools in China. It also provides reflections and suggestions on how the subject and moral education could be promoted under the contexts of promotion of adolescent holistic development and involvement of social work practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Sichuan earthquake on May 12, 2008, schools were hardest hit. The School Social Work service at the You Ai School of Dujiangyan became a major factor in assisting 140 children, disabled in the disaster, in their psychosocial recovery. This article aims to identify indicators of recovery for children from early primary to junior high. Content analysis is used instead of a lengthy psychological scale, as the latter might not be applicable for young children. Results show that disabled children are capable of recovery 3 years after the disaster. Effects of social work intervention and inclusive education have yet to be studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a contextualized analysis of the ways in which school social workers may address the impact of economic, social and political challenges as they will be experienced by the children of mainland China, and how the profession of school social work may serve to ameliorate the negative effects on children as they transition through these developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper chronicles and consolidates my personal experience and professional journey in China in the past one year after the 512 Sichuan earthquake erupted on 12 May 2008.Several summer children projects I helped to organize had evolved into an expanded school mental health network. As I critically reflect on the pertinent issues in developing professional school social work practice in Sichuan, I shall also outline the challenges and opportunities of relief work in China's context, drawing from the systems perspective. Maximizing available local resources and facilitating the natural development of support network seems to be a useful approach in disaster recovery work. Furthermore, the need for professionals, especially outsiders, to be respectful and be culturally sensitive is valuable. [image omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a qualitative analysis of Hong Kong school social workers' experiences in generating empowering practices, this paper discusses how a critical social work perspective provides a new frame of reference in which to examine the concept of empowerment in youth work. The recurrent themes of the narratives collected through in-depth interviews with 15 school social workers suggest that empowerment can be generated through a number of ways and understood in terms of dialogical process, reflexive practice, discourse construction, localized actions, and collective actions. The synthesis of these themes opens up the possibility for developing a framework of empowerment-oriented school social work practice. This framework provides a "map" to guide practitioners to work with power in diverse, dynamic, creative, and contextual ways. It is in many ways parallel to a critical social work perspective that emphasizes a dialectical view between the individual and social environment and synthesizes the critical theory and postmodernism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While empowerment has become a popular concept in working with adolescents, few attempts have been made to explore the possibilities for empowering school personnel to create an environment in which young people can make maximum use of the opportunity to learn and grow. Based on the field experiences of 15 Hong Kong school social workers, this article examines how practitioners use various strategies to interact with school personnel to generate empowering practices in the school setting: namely, (1) exerting influence on school personnel in daily conversations and interactions; (2) creating an environment conducive to the teacher-student relationship; (3) achieving consensus with school personnel through lobbying and negotiation; and (4) collaborating with school personnel to organize life education and positive youth development programs. The findings provide valuable reference materials to guide other practitioners in applying the empowerment approach in actual practice. It also helps fill the gap in existing literature on empowerment and school social work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empowerment has become a popular concept in working with adolescents in recent years. It challenges the deficit model of youth work and focuses on creating a facilitative climate in which young people can make maximum use of the opportunity to learn and grow. While many practitioners have adopted the empowerment approach in youth services, however, we know little about the possibilities for empowerment practice in the field of school social work. Based on the findings of a qualitative study conducted in Hong Kong, this paper explores how school social workers engage in different dimensions of empowerment: (1) the personal dimension in regard to how students recapture a sense of competence to meet life challenges and fight for their own benefits; (2) the school and community dimensions in regard to how practitioners collaborate with service users and partners to initiate constructive changes to school policies and strengthen the school-community partnership for student development; and (3) the institutional dimension in regard to how practitioners play the advocacy role in the education sector. The findings provide rich information for other youth workers, especially those who render service in the school setting, as they apply the empowerment approach in daily practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article incorporates Foucault's conception of power to study how power relations exist in school discipline and contribute to the constitution of Hong Kong students' and teachers' subjectivities. It is argued that such an analysis of a significant aspect of the school social work profession can help practitioners enhance their reflexivity and promote empowering practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]