Pedagogical Challenges in International Economic Education within Traditional Classroom Contexts

ABSTRACT

Recent global university rankings show that many Hong Kong universities are among the top 100 in the world. However, they are constantly under fire for the persistent outdated pedagogies in higher education. Because economic education is so highly regarded in Hong Kong as an international business hub, introductory economics has been taken as the focal subject in this case study. This article endeavors to distinguish five ubiquitous pedagogic challenges confronted by educators and students within traditional classroom contexts. Avenues for improvement are correspondingly proposed in order to boost the global competitiveness of local university education. Amongst other confounding factors, the pursuit of higher global university rankings, funding parsimony and vocationalization of tertiary education have caused our particular concern.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic education
• Traditional classroom
• Pedagogical challenges
• Hong Kong

Notes

¹ The five universities are The University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

² UGC’s data indicate that that category has taken a slice of around 20% of the overall student enrolment of UGC-funded programs over the past seven academic years (2010/11–2016/17).

³ The only exception comes from The Education University of Hong Kong, the main mission of which is to nurture outstanding educators by providing teacher education.

⁴ In accordance with international standards, UGC-funded universities in Hong Kong usually assess their academic staff using performance-based indicators on three aspects—research, teaching, and service—with approximate weightings of 40%, 40%, and 20%, respectively. The prerequisite for faculty re-appointments is, however, to meet the requirements on producing quality research publications and securing research grants (Chao & Postiglione, 2017). Hong Kong UGC-funded universities appear to strike a balance between teaching and research or follow a so-called research-driven teaching format. The truth is that, in pursuit of higher global university leagues that often overemphasize influential research outputs, teaching-focused positions tend to be disparaged.

⁵ Shin and Kim (2017) propose a range of factors impinging on the teaching and research nexus, including hard (e.g., natural sciences) versus soft (e.g., social sciences) disciplines, type of research (pure versus applied), and academics’ career stage (early versus mid or late), among others. They attest that only the first factor (hard versus soft) of academic discipline is significant for Hong Kong. Their results reinforce that faculties of soft disciplines better integrate their research into their teaching than that of hard disciplines.

⁶ The corresponding author teaches economics and finance courses at post–compulsory education levels in Hong Kong universities and tertiary institutions. In 2016/17, he tutored HKPU undergraduates three economics courses: AF1605–Introductory Economics and AF2602–Global Economic Environment (semester 1) and AF1605–Introductory Economics and AF3625–Engineering Economics (semester 2). AF1605 and AF2602 are targeted primarily at business freshmen and sophomores, respectively, whereas AF3625 is restricted to engineering sophomores only.

⁷ While teaching at a private tertiary institution in Hong Kong, the corresponding author was interrogated by students to define “absent” and “late” for a 3-hour lecture.

⁸ It appears that some students attend classes simply to fulfill the compulsory attendance requirement. It is observed that some attendees drift off or chat via cell phones, etc.

⁹ In the 2016/17 academic year, a Korean student emailed the corresponding author, querying his assessment criteria on class participation because she did not notice him jotting down anything as she volunteered to partake in instructor–student discussions. Pragmatically, teachers very rarely assign student participation scores based on a preset mathematical formula.

¹⁰ At present, the four HKDSE core subjects are Chinese language, English language, mathematics, and liberal studies.

¹¹ These are collective examples of the SET comments from AF1605 and AF2602 students. Also refer to footnote 6. Both courses have similar assessment methods, except that AF1605 requires submission of an individual written report instead of a group report as required by AF2602.

¹² For instance, the corresponding author attempted to ask AF2602 students to watch an online video by the Technology, Entertainment and Design organization on the topic of globalization and then share their views aloud with others in a week 2 tutorial. Students generally enjoyed it. In a similar vein, many social media tools like YouTube and Twitter can be deployed to aid in a student sense of community.

¹³ Indeed, academic staff are more concerned about undertaking disciplinary researches. Hence, compared to those in the faculty of education, lecturers in other disciplines normally carry out fewer studies on education or pedagogy. For recognition purposes, we checked HKPU’s journal list (June 2016) for economics and finance and found that none of the A- or B-rated journals are education or teaching oriented.

¹⁴ William Fung and Victor Fung were conferred honorary doctorates from HKPU in 2008 and 2018, respectively.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kwok-Chiu Lam

Dr. Kwok-Chiu Lam is an Assistant Professor in Finance at BNU-HKBU United International College, China. Dr. Lam has attained years of experience teaching economics and finance courses at undergraduate and sub-degree levels. His research interests include educational and housing economics, as well as pedagogy in higher education. He is a CFA charterholder, CFP and FRM certificant.

Ping Zou

Dr. Ping Zou is a Professor in Finance at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE), China, from which he was awarded his Master’s degree in Economics. He obtained his PhD in Financial Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. Dr. Zou has possessed years of teaching experience in Financial Econometrics, International Finance, Investment Portfolio and Economics of Money and Banking. His research interests include monetary policy, risk management and capital market asset pricing. Before taking up the concurrent position as the Chinese Director of the Confucius Institute at Queen Mary University of London, UK between 2015 and 2017, Dr. Zou had served as the Deputy Dean of the Graduate School of SUFE.