Introduction Can individuals in emerging democracies learn democratic values and skills through participation in civic education programs? Certainly the U.S. government expects the answer to be yes. The State Department's Agency for International Development (USAID) and other governmental organizations spend tens of millions of dollars annually on civic education programs as part of their effor...

With reference to the mental health and developmental problems among university students, there is a need to review the university's role in nurturing holistic development of students. This paper explores the question of how holistic development of university students in Hong Kong can be promoted. Based on the positive youth development approach, it is argued that promotion of intrapersonal com...

The characteristics of current society and the interest about citizenship education in the context of lifelong learning are essential for a study that aims to describe and understand the development of social and civic competence in the educational field. A Delphi study can make a proposal in which the social and civic competence is composed of 89 items organised into five areas: knowledge, ski...

This study proposes and illustrates a two-stage strategy to analyze differential item functioning in comparative educational studies. At the first stage, within each country, item difficulties are estimated. At the second stage, results are combined across countries using a meta-analytic framework to investigate (a) whether the items function consistently at the country level, and (b) what coun...

In the field of Information Systems, scholars have empirically investigated the use of social media as an IT artifact and its influences, offering various understandings of online human behaviour, particularly for business, psychology and sociology implications. Very often, research on social media usage can be classified into internal (e.g. entertainment and satisfaction) and external factors ...

21st century cyber infrastructures for distributed learning, communication, and knowledge sharing are unprecedented in the opportunities they provide for global citizens to come together to try to solve the great global crises of our time. Science and scientific research plays a critical role, yet to solve these crises requires a range of skills and understandings that include, yet go beyond sc...