Changing the World for the Better

As the Associate Professor of CityU’s Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences (who will be promoted to Professor with effect from July 2022), Dr Sylvia KWOK LAI Yuk-ching was originally a secondary school social worker and a youth worker. Her transition from instructor to lecturer and associate professor came about deliberately. “The reason why I want to change my job was because I wanted to transfer my knowledge to the students,” she says. In doing so, Kwok hopes to create a “ripple effect”. “That means if I can teach one student to become a social worker, he or she can go out there and affect many clients. That becomes a hundred students, a thousand… They can have great impact as social workers in the social welfare field.”

Kwok is an advocate for positive education. For almost three decades, she has taught about 200 students per academic year—that is about 6,000 students she has sent out into the world with the knowledge to navigate themselves as well as their clients in the social welfare sphere.

After becoming an assistant professor, she devoted much effort on positive education. This means applying concepts of positive psychology to the way she educates. It also brought about her setting up a positive education laboratory in her department.

Her ripples of positive education cascade outwards and have a huge impact on her students. Many of her former students have won the Outstanding Social Worker Award in Hong Kong. This year, one graduate from her class were presented with this accolade by the Hong Kong Social Workers Association.

UGC Honours Teaching Excellence
Kwok isn’t without honours herself (beside her teaching qualifications and ability to empower generations of students). She received the prestigious University Grants Committee (UGC) Teaching Award in 2021 for a CityU-led inter-institutional project called JUMP, which stands for Joint University Mental-wellness Project.

JUMP is a programme aimed to enhance students’ wellbeing and their exposure to university life by way of fostering positive learning experiences and developing a keen sense of social responsibility across five local university institutions. It involves a variety of activities such as student and staff development workshops, camps, a study tour, international conference, mental wellness festival and community projects.

About this recognition, Kwok says, “It shows that what I teach my students, or what I taught them, can really affect their attitudes, knowledge and skills. In fact, my mission in teaching is first of all, self-cultivation. That means to cultivate the character, the wellbeing of the students. And second, we will find some focus, that is to develop their professionalism, social work profession, change their attitudes, knowledge and skills. Then the third is community contribution. That means I want them to contribute to the community, to society, and want them to have an impact on that very fabric of society.” Ultimately, Kwok believes this is the reason why she and her project received the award, “because of the impact brought to the university students and society”.

The project is said to have benefitted over 1,100 staff and professionals as well as around 4,000 university students. On top of that, there are 1,500 members in the wider community who realised the advantages of the programme by engaging university students in initiating their own community projects.

Key criteria for winning the award are the recipient’s abilities to inspire students and demonstrate superior teaching acumen.

Teaching a course in social welfare is not to be taken lightly, and it takes a certain calibre of student to successfully complete the degree and make what they have learnt work in the real world.

“They need to have a warm heart,” says Kwok. “They need to have empathy for their clients, and of course, they need a lot of specific characteristics.” Being sensitive seems like a given. But those who dream of a career in social work will also need to have an aptitude for leadership and creativity. Social skills are indispensable. From having good judgement to critical thinking and analytic skills—these are all traits they should be able to demonstrate in their work. “They need to have positive regard for their clients,” Kwok emphasises. “Also an unconditional acceptance of their clients.”

Far-reaching Ripple Effects
The very ripple effect that Kwok would like to see has been decades in the making. It can now be seen in her inter-institutional projects, like JUMP—of which a 2.0 version is taking place from 2022 to 2025. Her positive education programme has been extended to the training of Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) staff in how they operate on a daily basis—indirectly affecting a large number of the general public. As in May 2022, MTR domestic service passengers averaged about 4.175 million every weekday.

Though the world—and the teaching—of social welfare is not an easy path to walk, Kwok remains steadfast and undeterred. “I want to train professionals, social workers. I want to transfer knowledge to my students and I also want to cultivate the correct skills and knowledge in them so they can become professional social workers and they can experience self-development. They can increase their wellbeing, promote societal wellbeing, and provide professional services. If they become social workers and they can help their clients and build a better society, I think this is the most rewarding aspect of my job.”