What are the Essential Characteristics for Curriculum Design to Engage Asian Students in Developing Their Self-Confidence?

Abstract

Scholars are calling increasingly for educational reform to embed meaningful out-of-class events in the current curriculum, in order to enhance students’ generic competency development. Towards this goal, featuring self-confidence as an important generic competency, this mixed-method study explores key characteristics of extracurricular activities that lead to enhancement of students’ self-confidence. Based on an extracurricular program designed for developing students’ generic competencies, including self-confidence, questionnaire data was collected from 423 secondary school students in Hong Kong alongside 133 reflective journals. Four important activity characteristics—i.e. authenticity, being challenging, expressivity and reflectivity—have been identified to inform future activity and curricular design.