Conference Presentation Shanghai on 24.10.09
International Learning in the Transition from School to University: The Rocks on which Yew Chung Community
College (YCCC) and its Programmes are founded
Initial Background
1. What are Community Colleges (CCs) and what do they do?
 CCs started in USA and then spread to Canada.
 In addition to serving community vocational needs, CCs provide an alternative route towards a Bachelor
Degree for a wide range of students. In the USA and Canada, they provide the first two years of a University
Programme, enable students to obtain an Associate Degree and then transfer to a University Programme for
the final two years of a Bachelor Degree programme.
 Students choose to go to CCs rather than a University, because:
o they are cheaper;;
o their entrance standards are less rigorous;
o the classes tend to be smaller;
o they are taught, rather than lectured at;
o the teaching staff are dedicated to teaching rather than to research and publication;
o students are guaranteed transfer into a University Programme, if they obtain the necessary
Grades in their Associate Degree.
 Community Colleges are so successful that some are accredited to run their own full 4 year degrees.
2. CCs were launched in HK around 2001 to provide a much needed increase in post-secondary education provision of
a diversified nature to respond to the needs of the employment sector for employees with greater knowledge and
skill than schools are able to provide. Manufacturing had gone from Hong Kong to China, and Hong Kong required
a workforce able to upgrade to knowledge-based industries.
3. YCCC was launched in response to the need for a more diversified post-secondary provision through the setting up
of Community Colleges offering a range of courses.
 YCCC was set up by Yew Chung Education Foundation (YCEF) and is funded and subsidised at present by
YCEF. It opened in HK in 2008.
 YCCC recruits local and international students, employs local and international staff, and provides an
international environment and international learning. In our first two years, as well as students from Hong
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Kong, we have had students from Australia, Indonesia, Canada, Malaysia, The Ivory Coast in Africa, and
from Columbia in South America.
YCCC Programmes are accredited in Hong Kong by the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic
and Vocational Qualifications.
YCCC will extend its Programmes to Study Centres in China. The first YCCC Study Centre will open in Yew
Wah International Education School in Shanghai in September 2010.
YCCC has 3 Programmes:
o a One-year University Foundation Diploma (UFD) Programme;
o a Two-year Associate Degree (AD) Programme; and
o a Pre-UFD programme for those who require to upgrade their qualifications to meet the UFD
entrance requirements.
The Programmes are all designed to enable YCCC graduates to transfer into English-medium Universities
around the world.
YCCC has signed Articulation Agreements with around 32 English-medium Universities in UK, Australia, USA,
Canada, Europe and Asia. These permit UFD graduates to enter the first year of a large range of Bachelor
Degree courses, and enable Associate Degree graduates to enter the final two years of over 100 University
degree courses.
We hope soon to have an Agreement with a few Chinese Universities and to have a Chinese-medium stream
for those who wish to prepare themselves for study in a Chinese-medium University.
The programmes that we will be running from September 2010 are in Social Sciences, Internati onal Business
and Media and Communication.
Further information on YCCC can be had from our website
info@yccc.edu.hk
www.yccc.hk or by contacting is by email at
[To start the central part of my talk, I told the Philosopher’s Story about the Jar and the Rocks, Pebbles, Sand and
Bottle of beer, in order to highlight the image about the real essentials – the Rocks – that we have to build on in a
Programme designed to enable students to make the transition between School and University, but in this written
version of my talk I will not include the story]
4. YCCC is essentially a Liberal Arts College, in which education is designed to enable students to contribute, each in
their different ways, to humanity and to the world in which they live, not just in vocational ways, but as whole
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persons. As a Liberal Arts College, we tend to see the essence of humanity and of human evolution and progress as
resting on four fundamentals:
 our requirement and ability to relate to others;
 our ability to think [Je pense, donc je suis (I think, therefore I am) – Descartes];
 our ability to learn and develop knowledge and skill; and
 our capacity for language.
We are born totally dependent on our mother and are programmed to relate to her in ways that enable us to be fed
and watered and played with. Gradually, if nurtured to do so, we develop the ability to relate to an ever wider circle
of others. The better we are at relating and the wider we relate, the richer our life can be. The requirement to relate
from birth, and our ability to continue to do so throughout our life is the first and most important feature of our
humanity, but one that can be all too easily undermined, through, for example, being abused or bullied and then
withdrawing into oneself, or through being over-criticised by parents or teachers and made to think that one is of little
worth etc.
It is through relating to others and having access to their thoughts that we start to learn to think. The more we
expose ourselves to ideas and the more we think and reflect on our experiences, the wiser we can become. The
more we think, the more we can contribute to the world.
We are also given a capacity to learn in order to develop knowledge and skill and to evolve, improve and respond to
an ever-changing set of circumstances. The ability to learn and to evolve is a third fundamental feature of our
humanity.
These three intertwined features of our human nature – the ability to relate, to think and to learn – have over time
enabled us through evolution to develop a capacity for language and other visual and physical forms of
communication. Language is our primary tool for relating, learning and thinking. Perhaps one day, our capacity to
replicate our thinking ability and to imbue machines with the capacity to think will mark the next stage of our
evolution, but I digress.
These four essential features of our humanity - relating, thinking, learning and
communicating seem to me to form the deep substrata on which we can safely ground our Liberal Arts education.
5. I have chosen to outline 10 Rocks on which YCCC has built its College and its educational Programmes to enable
students to make the transition between school and university. You will readily see how these 10 rocks are
grounded on the 4 essential features of humanity that I have outlined above.
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6. What I have tried to do in what follows is to set out where our students are in their learning with regard to each of the
10 rocks, to set out where our students need to be by the time they leave us, and to outline a few of the strategies
we use to enable them to make the journey between the two. Like all educational ventures, ours is a work in
progress.
7. After my talk, my colleague, Simon LI, our Social Sciences and International Studies lecturer, will do the real work of
providing examples of what we do in practice in his Subject Areas which combine Learning and Thinking and Social
Sciences.
8. The 10 Rocks or essential features on which our Programmes are built can be summarised as follows:
 The provision of an international environment through which students can widen their ability to relate,
overcome prejudice, gain better understandings, develop respect for “otherness” and cultural diversity,
understand themselves better and enrich their lives;
 Improving the students’ ability and confidence to think, and to think for themselves when exposed to the
knowledge of others, to think rationally and at times to think creatively to solve problems ;
 Improving the students’ ability to Learn;
 Improving students’ Knowledge and Skill and their ability to apply them in a wide range of tasks and projects;
 Improving the student’s ability to use language (in YCCC English) for study purposes, to obtain information
and to make it part of their own knowledge resource, and to share it courteously with others + the ability to
use Technology effectively to assist in all this;
 Improving the ability to communicate in at least two languages effectively for a range of purposes;
 Improving appreciation of the arts as the most enriching form of communication;
 Improving self-awareness and self-confidence;
 Improving the taking of initiative, the exercise of responsibility as a young adult within a democratic
community, and developing organisational and sensitive leadership skills;
 Exploring ethical values, encouraging ethical and caring behaviour, and encouraging students to search for
their own best way
I will try to outline briefly for each of these, where we have found students to be, where we believe they should move to,
and the strategies used by the College to help them to get there. I have used a table form in which to map out the
whole picture.
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The Rocks
1 Provision of an
international
environment, in
which students
relate to those
from another
culture and learn
to respect and
enjoy cultural
diversity
Where HK students are
Students:
Tend to have had a narrow, monocultural and unilingual upbringing
in Hong Kong and therefore have
had little experience of
“otherness”, leading at times to
fear of the unknown, and even to
the harbouring of discriminatory
beliefs.
Possess little knowledge or
understanding of other cultures,
even of those in Hong Kong, and
may have been taught to believe
that the races and cultures are
best kept separate.
When in multiracial and
multicultural situations, tend to
want to group together only with
those from the same race and
culture, for comfort’s sake.
Are nowadays strongly
encouraged in Hong Kong to
develop national pride to
overcome the years of
estrangement from China and
Chinese culture. It can be argued
Where students need to be
Students need to be able to:
Relate to a wide range of others and
find one’s own identity. In contact
with others from another culture, this
may lead to having a wider sense of
identity that is no longer rigidly
defined by one’s own culture.
A few of the Strategies used
The College:
Welcomes local and international
students and staff from around
the world to establish an
international environment in
which students learn to interact
with others from other cultures.
Experience “otherness” in an
international environment leading to
an understanding of the need to
respect different views and
practices.
Has zero tolerance for
discrimination of any sort. This
forms part of the Code of Ethics
set out for staff and students.
Feel comfort in interaction with
people from other races and
cultures.
Shunning an aggressive promotion
of one’s own particular race, nation
and culture and developing the same
level of critical thinking towards
one’s own culture as towards the
cultures of others.
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Has this year benefited from
YCEF’s generous offer of Grants
to bring in international students
from developing countries. We
now have 2 students from the
Ivory Coast in Africa and 1 from
Columbia. This encourages all
students to extend their range of
cross-cultural experience.
In discussions, encourages
students to adopt a critical stance
towards their own culturallytransmitted ways of thinking and
doing, by making them take and
argue other view points and think
through them.
that this is being overdone at
present to the point where it may
disencourage internationalmindedness, and actively
encourage nationalism.
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The Rocks
Thinking
and the use of
Reason
Where HK students are
Where students need to be
Students:
Prefer teachers to do the
thinking for them.
Students need to be able to:
Are heavily influenced by
cultural patterns in thinking and
by culturally-driven ideas.
There is little incentive to think
critically about them or to
challenge them.
Challenge “received ideas and
practices” (i.e. culturally
transmitted ones) sensitively but
with confidence.
Students are very
uncomfortable when having to
work out a creative solution to a
problem which cannot be
solved in a previously
rehearsed way.
Use their thinking creatively when
required for solving problems.
Lack confidence in their own
thinking, and avoid divergent
thinking. They are afraid of
being thought of as “odd” by
others. They are generally
afraid of “speaking out”.
Think for themselves and express
their own thinking clearly and
logically.
Take a stand that is divergent
from others where necessary
without fear of seeming odd.
A few of the Strategies used
The College and its lecturers
Teach thinking strategies and
provide practice in a focused
way on different ways of
thinking.
Encourage and reward
students in assessment for
experimenting with thinking
based on reason or evidence
in all courses, applying the
principle that can be summed
up as follows: “How do I know
what I think until I hear myself
say or write something? How
can I improve my thinking
without trying it out on others
and getting feedback from
them?”
Encourage students to
challenge received ideas and
practices.
Develop student confidence
through providing lots of
opportunities to think aloud
and to express opinion and
reward divergent thinking.
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The Rocks
Learning
Where HK students are
Students:
Wait to be taught.
Where students need to be
Students need to be able to:
Take initiatives and learn independently
with less and less guidance as they
progress through the Programme.
Are used to learning facts through
memorisation from Textbooks/Notes.
They tend to believe that in life there
are right and wrong answers and that
one simply needs to learn the right
ones. They are uncomfortable with
uncertainty.
Use a variety of learning strategies and
multi-media sources from which to turn
information into personal knowledge.
Do few investigations of their own at
school.
Undertake investigative projects, Field
Studies etc. and present findings.
Learn in an interdependent group.
Learn in competition with others rather
than against standards set out at
different levels.
Learn independently against standards
rather than classmates.
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A few of the Strategies used
The College and its lecturers
Teach how to go about independent
learning and provide lots of practice
in this through the building up of
portfolios of work, journal-keeping
etc.
Teach a range of Learning Strategies
and provide practice in them, and
engage students in investigations,
discussions and presentations.
Have small classes (around 10 to 15
is the target) in which it is possible to
get students to do small-scale
research projects with data analysis
and presentations of findings in all
courses. Students are taught how to
undertake investigations, write them
up and present them.
Students undertake an Investigative
Field Study or Internship outside HK
where they explore a topic or event
and report on their findings and
experience.
Involve students in group projects
and
In Independent assignments towards
standards, with explicit grading
schemes known to students in
advance.
The Rocks
Knowledge and Skills
and the ability to apply
them
Where HK students are
Students:
Are strong in Conceptual Knowledge – the
“whats” in learning and some of the “whys”.
HK students come top in international exams
in their knowledge of “whats” and “whys” in
science).
Where students need to be
Students need to be able to:
Show continued strength in Conceptual
Knowledge in a wide range of subject areas,
and make connections in knowledge across
these areas.
A few of the Strategies used
The College and its lecturers:
Introduce theories and conceptual
knowledge in all courses in the various
subject areas and get students to apply
these in activities.
Are strong in Skill-based Knowledge in
some subject areas (HK students are among
the best in Maths in the world), but are
sometimes rather weak in other skill areas
associated with analysis, defining problems
for themselves and language.
Apply skills-based knowledge in a wide range of
task-types appropriate to the various subject
areas.
Give lots of assignments and tasks
involving the use of knowledge and skills in
every course.
Are weak in Verbal Representational
Knowledge, i.e. using language to describe,
explain, argue etc, but strong in Visual
Representational Knowledge (I.e. using
tables, diagrams, flowcharts).
Use language and visual representation
effectively for sharing knowledge with others.
Provide proper and consistent use of
English as the medium of teaching and
learning and encourage visual
representation where relevant.
Are weak in Executive Knowledge
(knowing how to go about things without
being told), e.g. doing an investigative
project.
Have some local knowledge but rather little
Knowledge of the World or how it works.
Have some knowledge of local issues but
little knowledge of global contemporary
issues. (Students seldom read newspapers
or listen to news or documentaries or show
much interest in these).
Inevitably, have little specialist knowledge in
the Concentration that they have chosen to
study.
Conduct larger-scale tasks and projects in
which they are responsible for carrying them out
from start to finish.
Draw on knowledge of the historical context that
lies behind today’s world to shed light on it, and
express knowledge of how it works socioculturally, politically, economically, and
communicatively.
Discuss and contextualise issues of
contemporary importance using a background
of knowledge.
Draw on a foundation of specialist knowledge in
a particular Concentration as a preparation for
pursuing a major at University.
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Provide practice in organising and
participating in projects and other largerscale task involving learning how to do
things.
Teach a number of core courses such as
The Changing World Order, China since
1949, Socio-cultural Patterns and Change
in the Modern World to provide a historical
background and contemporary context to
how the world works and to discussions of
contemporary issues.
Get students to read newspapers and
magazines, view videos, search issues on
the internet, work with the information and
discuss it taking different viewpoints, in
order to bring about an understanding of
contemporary global issues and an interest
in them.
Provide students with a choice between
Concentrations in Social Sciences,
International Business and Media and
Communication.
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The Rocks
Ability to study in
English and use
Technology to assist
in this
Where HK students are
Students:
Lack ability and confidence in the use of
English for study purposes, due to
widespread use in the majority of schools
in Hong Kong of Cantonese and mixed
code as a quicker way of achieving
understanding.
Where students need to be
Students need to be able to:
Be confident and fluent in their use of English
for study and communication purposes
across all four skills in all subject areas in the
Programme, and master the genres
appropriate to each.
A few of the Strategies used
The College and its lecturers:
Integrate the work done in English
courses (5 in each Programme), with
student performance in the use of
English as medium of teaching and
learning in all other courses. For
example, in Academic English courses,
students learn how to structure and write
an expository essay in a logical and
coherent manner, and in other subject
areas they get practice in doing this, with
feedback on performance passed back
to the English lecturer for improvement
work..
Provide consistent use of English as
medium of teaching and learning in all
courses, with other languages used
solely for occasional support.
Achieve an IELTS Level 6 or better by the
end of UFD, and IELTS Level 6.5 or better by
the end of AD.
Have poor knowledge of how to go about
learning through language.
Possess rather strong I.T. knowledge and
skills for using I.T. to enhance and
embellish communication.
Use a variety of language learning strategies
and techniques and select wisely amongst
them for self-improvement.
Use I.T. applications confidently for academic
and communicative purposes and some
professional ones.
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Provide lots of investigative work through
English in books and on the Internet, and
provide a host of opportunities for
discussion, presentations and
assignments.
Provide additional, voluntary IELTS
preparation courses in every semester in
both the UFD and AD programmes.
Teach strategies for language learning
and independent learning and get
students to apply them.
Provide short courses on I.T.
applications for study, general
communication, presentations and some
professional purposes in both UFD and
AD Programmes, to build on the
knowledge and skills obtained at school
and elsewhere.
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The Rocks
Effective
Communication
in 2 Languages
Where HK students are
Students:
Tend to have rather little English
and rather little Putonghua, but do
have some written Chinese
knowledge from school.
Language 1 (English)
Lack confidence and are reluctant
to communicate in English. Some
have a resistance and a sense of
guilt, built up as a result of the
pressures put on students to
improve their English by parents,
teachers, businessmen and
Government.
Where students need to be
Students need to be able to:
Communicate effectively in two
languages to different standards and
for different purposes, as set out in
the Programmes.
Have effective communicative skills
and feel comfort and confidence in
the use of English, in order to be
able to benefit to the maximum from
living in an English-speaking
environment at University.
Use English for basic professional
purposes when they embark on a
career.
Do not use English outside school.
Feel comfortable using English with
others from another culture for social
and leisure purposes.
Language 2 (Putonghua +
Standard Written Chinese)
Have some knowledge of
Putonghua and a fair knowledge
of written Chinese but are
Cantonese speakers.
Have a reasonable level of accuracy
and fluency for communication in
Putonghua and written Chinese (HK
continuers)
or
Communicate at a basic but effective
level in Chinese if a beginner.
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A few of the Strategies used
The College and its lecturers:
Have established a bilingual
framework in Programmes in
which Language 1 is English, and
Language 2 is another language,
normally Chinese, which may be
studied at continuer or beginner
level.
Provide 5 English courses (225
contact hours) in each
Programme covering English for
academic purposes, English for
effective social and professional
communication and English for
enrichment through literature.
These provide ample
opportunities for students to
focus on English in a range of
situations.
Provide an International
Environment in the College which
provides opportunities for use of
English and Chinese outside the
classroom.
Provide courses in Chinese
(Putonghua and standard written
Chinese) at two levels, one for
continuers and one for beginners
in both UFD and AD
Programmes. Courses
emphasise effective
communication for social and
basic workplace purposes.
The Rocks
Where HK students are
Where students need to be
A few of the Strategies used
Appreciation of
the Arts as the
most enriching
form of
communication
Students:
Tend to be rather ignorant
about the Arts and its forms and
functions, except about pop
music, pop films, and pop idols
about whose lives they are very
knowledgeable (!).
Students need to be able to:
Appreciate and respond
meaningfully to creative works
from around the world in written
or spoken forms of English and/or
in Language 2 (stories, novels,
poetry, plays, films etc.), and for
some create themselves.
The College and its
lecturers:
Provide an English course in
the appreciation of literature in
the UFD and AD Programmes,
in which students are asked to
give reader/viewer responses
to stories, novels, poetry and
films based on a basic
understanding of literary
devices and language effects.
Provide an Elective course on
Creative Writing.
Appreciate and respond
meaningfully to a range of other
Art forms, and where appropriate
perform.
They know little about the
enriching roles that the Arts
play in exploring our humanity,
or in communicating beauty, or
in communicating criticism and
challenge to the status quo.
Understand the role that the arts
play in our lives through
exploring, depicting, imagining
and critiquing our world, enriching
our understanding of life and its
infinite possibilities, and
providing us with enjoyment and
intellectual stimulation.
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Provide an AD core course on
appreciating and responding to
a range of other Art forms
(Visual, Performing Arts,
Alternative Arts (Graffiti for
example) in the AD
Programme, and an
opportunity to perform in an art
form (e.g. take part in a play,
or play a musical instrument).
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The Rocks
Self-awareness and
Self- confidence
Where HK students are
Students:
Tend to lack self-awareness and
knowledge of their strengths and
weaknesses and of potential areas of
interest.
Where students need to be
Students need to be able to:
Show some awareness of their own
potential, strengths and weaknesses
and interests.
Lack self-confidence, because so
often they have been told that they
are not working hard enough or doing
well enough.
Be self-confident when undertaking
familiar and unfamiliar tasks.
Have usually had their study and
career plans made for them by their
parents.
Have developed some tentative
study/career/life plans based on selfknowledge and reality, rather than on
unrealistic dreams or parental
imposition.
A few of the Strategies used
The College and its lecturers:
Discuss individual strengths and
weaknesses and areas where
improvement is needed with
students in all courses as a
precursor to guiding their
independent learning. Students are
encouraged to become aware of
their progress through keeping
portfolios and journals of reflection
as part of course assessment.
Expose students to a variety of
subjects rather than limiting them to
one narrow academic or vocational
area, so that they can explore what
interests them.
Use encouragement and support
rather than homilies and criticisms.
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Provide each student with a personal
Tutor to monitor progress across the
curriculum, and provide Study and
University Counselling that supports
students to make wise
study/career/life choices, based on
reality rather than dream or parental
pressures.
The Rocks
Initiative,
Responsibility,
Organisation and
Leadership skills
Where HK students are
Where students need to be
A few of the Strategies used
Students:
Have usually had some experience of
participating in activities at school and
of accepting responsibility for a role
within them. Some may have had
organisational roles and a few may
have played a leadership role.
However, leadership tends towards
the autocratic in the culture from
which they come.
Students need to be able to:
Take the initiative in setting up an
activity, take responsibility for an aspect
of it, organise an activity and exercise
sensitive leadership.
The College and its lecturers:
Give different individuals
responsibility for different aspects of
work to be done.
May have had little experience of
democratic practices.
Understand democratic principles and
know how to be democratic, particularly
with regard to freedom of speech and
abiding by the rules.
Have not ever been treated yet as
young, responsible adults, given the
somewhat autocratic role played by
parents in Hong Kong and by
Principals and Teachers in school.
Demonstrate understanding of what is
expected of a young adult in today’s
world in terms of rights, obligations and
behaviour and behave like one.
Have encouraged students to set up
a Student Association to take the
initiative in organising activities.
Students are democratically elected
to posts of responsibility which they
then fulfil within the regulations set.
Are not very clear about what the
transition from adolescence to young
adulthood implies in terms of rights,
obligations and behaviour.
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Students are also democratically
elected to College bodies such as
the College Governing Council and
the Academic Board, so that they
can play a role in the development of
the College.
The College has set out a “Code of
Ethics” – a set of principles to guide
behaviour in the College for staff and
students. At the core of this is the
requirement for staff to treat students
as young adults, and for students to
behave as young adults.
The Rocks
Ethical Values and
Ethical Behaviour.
Personal search for
“The Way” (Lao
Tzu)
Where HK students are
Students:
Have heard many homilies from
parents, teachers, the Government
and the media on how to behave and
make the world a better place.
Where students need to be
Students need to be able to:
Discuss some of the current ethical
dilemmas that we face in the modern
world and develop an understanding of
different viewpoints on them.
Are ignorant of the frameworks from
which ethical values derive.
Show basic understanding of some of
the important moral and philosophical
frameworks from which ethical values
derive.
Show an understanding of the
importance of ethical values in all
aspects of work and of life, and apply
this understanding to their own situation.
Some have taken part in Good Acts
of one sort or another but as one-off
exercises.
Have not consciously thought about
constructing their own set of ethical
values and exploring what Lao Tzu’s
“The Way” would mean for them.
Undertake ethical and caring acts during
their course of study and reflect on
these.
Develop a personal construct of ethical
values and explore their own best way of
implementing these.
JLC
23.10.09
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A few of the Strategies used
The College and its lecturers:
Provide a course on Ethical Values
in both the UFD and AD
Programmes covering frameworks of
theory and practice, generally based
on illustrative stories and dilemmas
to be discussed.
Highlight applications of ethical
values to the specialised areas of
work within each Concentration (e.g.
Global Business Ethics and
Corporate Responsibility and Media
Criticism and Professional Ethics).
Engage all students in both the UFD
and AD Ethical Values courses in
undertaking “Good Acts” on an
individual or group basis, within
Community Service where
appropriate, with reflection upon the
experience.
Encourage students to develop and
articulate their own personal
construct of ethical values.