Positive Youth Development: The Tin Ka Ping P.A.T.H.S. Project in Mainland China (eBook)

Starting out, the history and development of Tin Ka Ping P.A.T.H.S. Program is outlined and its achievement. For the pilot studies from 2011 to 2014, the Editors found that students joining the program performed better in the developmental outcomes as compared to the control participants. For the training programs conducted in the project, subjective outcome evaluation findings are also very positive. Finally, the Editors conducted evaluation for the programs launched from 2015 to 2018. Basically, the findings showed that students benefitted from the program. Furthermore, how Tin Ka Ping P.A.T.H.S. Program is aligned with the education reform taking place in China is discussed, where holistic development and student-centered intervention are emphasized. Then the publications arising from Tin Ka Ping P.A.T.H.S. Project. This is important because most of the publications are in Chinese and this book can definitely help non-Chinese speaking colleagues understand what work has been done. As mentioned, to understand further the views of the teachers regarding the development and impact of Tin Ka Ping P.A.T.H.S. Project, the Editors conducted a qualitative study based on individual interviews with nine teachers of Tin Ka Ping P.A.T.H.S. Program participating in the study. In Chapter 5, they presented findings on the perceived benefits of the program to students. Generally speaking, the findings clearly show that the program benefitted the students in different domains, including intrapersonal and interpersonal competences. These findings corroborated with the findings obtained in Hong Kong and the earlier studies in Tin Ka Ping P.A.T.H.S. Project. In Chapter 6, findings on the benefits to the teachers and other stakeholders were presented. Overall speaking, the findings suggest that Tin Ka Ping P.A.T.H.S. Program created many benefits for the teachers. In particular, the program helped teachers to be better teachers and better parents. As not many papers have been written on how positive youth development programs benefit the implementers, the related findings are very valuable. In the final paper, the views of the teachers are examined on the training programs and the related benefits. The findings showed that the teachers were very positive about the training programs and they found the training programs to be very helpful. These findings are consistent with the previous findings on the value and positive impact of the training programs.