Positive youth development and academic behavior in Chinese secondary school students in Hong Kong

Abstract With the launching of the education reform in Hong Kong, the secondary school structure was changed from 7 years to 6 years in the 2006–07 school year. This paper describes Secondary four students’ views about the new secondary school curriculum, including their confidence and related stress. The students were also asked to assess the importance of life skills and its perceived adequacy in the formal curriculum. Results showed that roughly four-tenths of the students did not feel confident about their study and around six-tenths felt stressed. Although most of the students agreed that life skills were important, around 37% of them thought that the coverage of such knowledge in the formal curriculum was not adequate. Consistent with our hypotheses, academic confidence, academic stress, support provided by the school, and positive youth development were significantly related, with positive youth development predicting academic confidence.