Childhood bullying is one of the most serious and overlooked problems facing Hong Kong today. So say faculty members of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS), City University of Hong Kong (CityU). Fortunately, those academics, who have conducted much of the most important research on the subject in Hong Kong, have shared their ideas on how the city’s parents, teachers and the government can work together to combat the matter.

Identifying the problem

Bullying can be surprisingly difficult to define. CLASS criminology expert Professor Dennis WONG Sing-wing defines bullying as repeated acts of aggression by a person in a position of power with the intent to harm the victim. “This has always been the most traditional form of bullying, and it has existed in schools for hundreds of years,” Wong says.

Wong admits that it can be difficult to pinpoint clear-cut cases of bullying using this definition. After all, what counts as an act of aggression? How do we determine who is in a position of power? And how many times must hostile acts be repeated for them to constitute as bullying?

Associate Professor and bullying research specialist Dr Annis FUNG Lai-chu prefers a revised version of the traditional bullying model. “Typically, when one talks about bullying, people instantly associate the one with aggressive behaviour as the bully, which is oversimplified and misleading,” she says. “The fact is, bullying is definitely more complicated.”

Fung separates aggressors into two main archetypes – the proactive and the reactive aggressor.

Proactive aggressors are the ones we would typically identify as bullies and are prone to lashing out unprovoked. Reactive aggression, on the other hand, is defined as a “defensive reaction” to a real or perceived provocation. In some cases, children extremely prone to reactive aggression may feel like victims of bullying, even when they aren’t being bullied at all. Using this analysis, bullying can be considered a far more complicated topic than many people realise.

Bullying in Hong Kong

Fung’s research indicates that the bullying situation in Hong Kong is not just bad, it is “the worst in the world”.

“In a 2017 worldwide survey of 540,000 schoolchildren, the Programme for International Students Assessment, Hong Kong was ranked the worst for school bullying amongst 72 countries and regions,” Fung says.

The survey found that 32.3 per cent of Hong Kong students reported being victims of bullying – three times higher than that of Taiwan and nearly double that of the United States.

Fung believes that the reason bullying is so pervasive in Hong Kong is due to the alarmingly high number of reactive aggressors. These types of children are prone to several negative characteristics such as low self-esteem, anger management issues, impulsivity and poor social skills.

“Reactive aggressors are usually overlooked when it comes to bullying,” Fung states. “For both types of aggressors, poor parenting is often to blame. However, reactive aggression is more common in low-income families, and proactive aggression is more common in students from wealthier families.”

Fung’s research also indicates that proactive aggressors are more likely to suffer from mental illnesses like narcissism and psychopathic disorder – both of which are likely to lead to criminal behaviour.

“There is a very strong correlation between people who show signs of proactive aggression from a young age, and murderers,” claims Fung. “So this is a very serious problem Dr Annis Fung Lai-chu that needs to be addressed.”

The rise of cyber-bullying

It is not just traditional workplace or classroom bullying that is a problem anymore either. Modern technology has given rise to an entirely new form of aggression: cyber-bullying, a phenomenon which Wong has researched extensively.

“We have traditional forms of bullying, which can involve violence or name-calling in schools,” Wong explains. “This is still a very serious problem in Hong Kong. But nowadays, with so many kids being addicted to their mobile phones, cyberbullying might be even more common.”

When most people think of cyber-bullying, they usually imagine widespread public humiliation on social media platforms like Facebook. But Wong says this is actually an extreme example and that the majority of cyber-bullying is in fact much more subtle.

“A lot of cyber-bullying can take place on group chats on apps like WhatsApp and WeChat,” he explains. “It can range from starting rumours, to deliberately excluding [victims] from activities to make them feel like outcasts. These types of bullying are actually very serious, as they can make the victims feel lonely, frustrated, depressed, and afraid.”

When it comes to cyber-bullying, Wong says no platform is safe. Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat or a new platform that has not been invented yet, each of these platforms can include bullying on a scale never seen before. “It is extremely important for parents and teachers to learn more about the different types of cyber-bullying, in order to protect their children,” Wong says.

It is hardly a secret that children are increasingly addicted to smartphones and social media and, unfortunately, things only seem to be getting worse. Wong says these developments have led to an increased prevalence in cyberbullying. “Research has shown that the more involved a child is with online activities, the more likely he or she is to be involved with cyber-bullying; either as a perpetrator or a victim,” he says. “If you are always browsing social media, then it becomes your entire world, and you are more likely to become a victim of some form of cyber-bullying.”

Effects of bullying: suicide

Bullying can have a number of effects on the abused. At its worst, it can drive a person to suicide. Worryingly, Hong Kong has an alarmingly high number of suicide attempts among young people. “Our research has shown that Hong Kong has a very high number of children with suicidal potential – about 25 per cent of primary school students and 29 per cent of secondary students last year,” explains Associate Professor Dr Sylvia KWOK LAI Yuk-ching, who worked as a social worker for many years before joining CityU. “Although these numbers are lower than in previous years, there is still a lot of work to be done.”

The importance of parenting

Given its seeming ubiquity, what can be done to combat bullying? All three experts are in agreement that parenting plays arguably the most important role in youth behavioural problems – be it bullying, suicide or other issues.

“Schoolwork and peer relationships can also play a role, but research has shown that parenting styles, and whether the parents have mental health or marital problems, play the biggest part in youth suicide,” Kwok explains. “If parents have their own mental or marital problems, they will often scapegoat the child, or in other words, blame the child for their own problems. This leads to many types of emotional problems for the children.”

Kwok says that when children face this type of abuse from parents, they often suppress their negative emotions and “explode” either by attempting suicide or by acting extremely aggressively towards their peers. In fact, poor parenting has been shown to be one of the leading factors in bullying.

Positive education

Kwok, who is the convenor of the Positive Education Laboratory, believes another effective way to combat bullying, as well as improve children’s overall mental health, is through “positive education”, which involves teaching children the importance of attributes like gratitude and positive thinking.

She has implemented a positive education curriculum in dozens of primary schools across Hong Kong. This curriculum is based on six virtues of character strength: wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, temperance, transcendence, and justice. “On this foundation, we aim to build up children’s positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, life meaning, and also a sense of accomplishment,” says Kwok. “This will allow them to live a more flourishing life.”

Kwok states that it is her “mission” to get Hong Kong schools to adopt positive education as part of the self-development curriculum. She is currently lobbying for more government support. “We have mathematics, science, languages as core subjects but we believe that positive education is equally, if not more important than other subjects,” Kwok argues. “But in fact, many primary schools have partnered with us and started adopting this curriculum and they have seen significant results.

Tackling online addiction

Wong believes parents and teachers must do a better job of educating children about the dangers of cyber-bullying and potentially dangerous online activities, while also limiting the amount of time their children are on the Internet. “Some kids spend a lot of time online, but they use the Internet to learn new things,” Wong says. “In that way, being online can be absolutely amazing for young people. But if kids are going online just for entertainment or for gossip and social media, it’s not good for their mental health, and we find it’s usually these kids that fall victim to cyber-bullying.”

Wong is convinced this explains Hong Kong youngsters’ declining physical health as online addiction has resulted in a waning interest in sports and outdoor activities. A lack of exercise can result in further mental health problems, which, in a vicious cycle, can lead to more instances of cyber-bullying.

The solutions Wong and his team have proposed is to urge parents against letting their children have unlimited access to technology from such an early age, and to instead encourage them to live fit, active lifestyles.

“You see it all the time at restaurants, the adults are tired from work and don’t have the energy to talk to their children, so they let them play on their iPads for the entire dinner,” Wong says. “That is just poor parenting.” He points out that the more healthy hobbies a child has, the less likely he or she is to fall victim to cyber-bullying and online addictions.

“If I were [the parents], I would take them swimming. I would take them cycling. I would take them hiking; maybe travelling. The more healthy substitutes the children have for cyber-space and the happier the children are with their parents, the less they will feel the need to spend all of their free time online,” says Wong.

Fung concurs that physical activity is a must, before adding that a sensible diet and dietary supplements like omega 3 fatty acids can also be useful tools in tackling mental illness.

Removing the stigma

For a final step in dealing with this problem, Fung insists that removing the stigma surrounding mental illness in Hong Kong is a must. Doing so would allow both proactive and reactive aggressors to get the treatment they need, whether it is through medication, therapy or both. This goes for parents as well as students. And if the mental health of Hongkongers improves, incidences of bullying and suicide will certainly decline, saving many lives.

The world we live in is rapidly changing. Whether it is the workplace, our everyday lives or at society level, we are thrust into contact with problems we have never encountered before.

To navigate this constantly changing world, young people need to develop a keen motivation to learn, the curiosity to discover, and be problem-solvers who can think critically and innovatively. They should be confident in themselves and able to thrive on challenges. To develop the qualities they need to succeed beyond the classroom, they need a great deal of support and guidance from their teachers.

Educators at the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) are fully aware of their responsibility to nurture future leaders and have been busy evolving their teaching practices for the purpose. To encourage and recognise innovative, effective and well-implemented practices in teaching and learning, CLASS gives the annual Teaching Innovation Award, which also seeks to promote the sharing of outstanding teaching pedagogies among faculty members. The award is presented to a team as well as an individual.

Award-winning projects should be unique in design, inspiring in approach, and display synergy with CityU’s Discovery-enriched Curriculum, the guiding principle of teaching and learning at the university. Applicants are required to submit evidence of how the project has helped students learn more effectively, and explain ways that the quality of teaching is to be monitored and maintained, among other criteria. Meanwhile, the winner of the team category should demonstrate the impact of collaborative work.

Winners of the team and individual categories in this year’s Teaching Innovation Award share the mission to help students connect text-book knowledge with real-life situations. This has been achieved through ingenious curriculum design and enhancement - including the incorporation of practical components into the curriculum - which brings relevance to what the students are learning and thereby engages them more effectively. Applying theories and analytical frameworks in real life will enable students to sharpen their problem-solving and communication skills and develop a more positive mindset.

The teaching team which won this year’s team category comprises four Associate Professors from the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences: team leader Dr Sylvia KWOK LAI Yukching who teaches social work subjects, Dr Oliver CHAN Hengchoon who specialises in criminology, sociologist Dr HO Wing-chung, and Dr Julian LAI Chuk-ling whose expertise is in psychology. They have designed and applied a new teaching approach to the course “Discovering the Mystery of Applied Social Sciences”.

The approach, a six-level pedagogy, is derived from integrating two existing education and learning theories. The six stages of the team’s teaching framework are: “learn it”, “live it”, “reflect it”, “conceptualise it”, “apply it” and “embed it”.

“Students are guided at every step to discover their strengths and potentials, while acquiring knowledge and skills in applied social sciences,” says Kwok. “They then tap into their creativity and apply the concepts and theories in real life, including a local primary school attended by ethnic minority children. Many students have shown personal growth during the process.”

The team is determined to make learning engaging at every level of the teaching framework to help students internalise what they have learnt. At the “learn it” stage, for example, rather than being spoon-fed the information, students learn through debates and discussions, games, videos and experiential exercises in class.

For Chan, one of the intended learning outcomes of this stage is for students to develop the ability to think from different perspectives.

“When I teach the concept of school bullying, for instance, I ask my students to put themselves in the shoes of both the victim and the offender. We want to help students learn to reflect deeply on an issue from multiple angles,” he says.

Among the tasks undertaken at the “live it” stage are writing letters of appreciation to significant others (applying the concept of gratitude), setting and pursuing a goal and responding to others more constructively (putting positive psychology to use), and re-examining their own points of view in everyday conversations (recalling what they learn about biases in psychology).

Meanwhile, “apply it” requires students to form small groups and design an activity for ethnic minority children. Starting from the concepts and learning frameworks taken from psychology, sociology, criminology and social work, such as self-esteem, ethnic minority, discrimination, hierarchy of needs, and programme design, students have put in place a number of thoughtful programmes with the aims of building trust, increasing self-esteem and strengthening communication skills of the ethnic minority children.

Lai believes that by integrating the theories from different disciplines and applying them in a project, students can see the impact of what they learn in a real-life setting.

“This is very useful for knowledge retention. Hopefully the knowledge they have acquired will stay with them not only after graduation but many years after,” he says.

Helping his students connect the dots between theories and the real world is also what Dr HSIEH Chih-wei, winner of the individual category in this year’s Teaching Innovation Award, has been working tirelessly to achieve.

Since 2018, the Assistant Professor of CityU’s Department of Public Policy has revamped two courses, “Managing Human Resources in Public and Private Sectors” and “Managing Human Resources in the Public Sector”. As part of the new teaching practice, Hsieh illustrates concepts and theories with case studies - real or fictional - that shed light on the problems faced by human resources professionals in Hong Kong.

“The course content used to be excessively Western-centric and the delivery method primarily theory-oriented. We have brought in cases with a focus on Hong Kong and the Greater China region to address local issues,” says Hsieh.

Hsieh’s students are no strangers to the analytical challenges he poses in lectures, which touch upon controversial issues from the use of company property versus right to privacy, to overtime work and discrimination. In going over a case, students become the decision-maker and try to come up with a solution with a reasonable justification.

“This method relies on the students to explore a topic and think critically before reaching a solution or decision. Instructors no longer explain the problem to them or divulge the answer directly,” says Hsieh.

Also as a requirement of the courses, students have to investigate real-life problems in small teams. After coming up with a topic in consultation with Hsieh, they carry out research as well as interviews with stakeholders before making a recommendation. The topics they have investigated include breast-feeding in the workplace, inclement weather policy for street cleaners and strike prevention. Hsieh hopes to eventually develop a “case bank”, consisting of selected and modified case studies written by his students, to facilitate further learning and knowledge sharing within the Department of Public Policy as well as CLASS.

“Most students find the case study approach challenging initially,” says Hsieh. There are many possible solutions to each case and students find it difficult to embrace the idea that there is no absolute right or wrong. And of course it is no small feat having to justify their decision legally and meanwhile being reasonable to the parties involved.

Despite the challenges, helping his students improve their problem-solving capacity has certainly been the right thing to do. “In human resources you need to be sensitive to people’s needs. You need to put your books down, go outside the classroom, talk to the people affected and solve a problem,” Hsieh says.

Benjamin FRANKLIN, one of the founding fathers of the US, once said: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” Through involving their students in real-life problem-solving activities, Hsieh, Kwok and her team have brought enthusiasm back into the classroom and helped their students develop essential skills for the future.