Positive Parenting: A Model of Sustainable Development

Overview

Alongside the heated discussions about teenage mental health development in Hong Kong, positive parent education has gained priority within the education sector. In 2023/24, the Education Bureau has provided curriculum frameworks and resources for schools to develop school-based parent education. Given that most educators are not professionally trained in parent education, it is challenging for them to navigate parent education with strategies. What then calls for attention is the measurement of the impact and sustainability of these efforts. This paper presents a parent education model that reinforces home-school collaboration's organic and sustainable development. The model references Lea Waters’ strength-based parenting and the implementation model of positive education at Geelong Grammar School. It provides pointers for school principals, teachers, and social workers on cultivating sustainability with a parent-led approach. Educators and practitioners will gain insights into the nuances of strategic planning of positive parent education and mobilisation.
The programme structure suggested by this team has been carried out in various school settings in Hong Kong. With six selected schools as exemplars, this seminar highlights the evolutionary process of the programme structure since 2016 and shares the considerations and modifications between 2016-2024 in adapting different school cultures. With an open discussion of the hits and misses, the seminar aims to provide insights from practitioners' perspectives on impact sustainability.
Among the six selected schools, Catholic Mission School and PLK Wu Chung College implemented parent education in 2021. Due to the multi-national background of its students, parents from Catholic Mission School have diverse needs and backgrounds. The speaker from this school will share her footprints on how to grasp the needs of parents and adjust the mode and focus of parent education within a few years. The school created a structured ‘Journey to the Heart’ family education programme in 2022 and established a ‘Home-School Academy’, with over 100 participating families and a continual increase. They also successfully established a core group of parent leaders, mobilising and promoting positive family education.

The seminar will illustrate the model of sustainable development using the experiences of Catholic Mission School and PLK Wu Chung College and conclude with a list of considerations for educators eager to implement parent education.

Participants of this seminar will understand:
- a model of parent education that yields sustainable development;
- the strategies for parenting education to work; and
- factors that affect training effectiveness in school settings.