Law abidance leadership education for university students in Hong Kong: Post-lecture evaluation

Abstract

Law abidance is very important for effective leaders. Without law abidance, abuse of power and corruption would easily happen, which would eventually erode organizational health. To promote law abidance leadership in university students in Hong Kong, we developed a law abidance leadership program with 3 h of face-to-face lecture and 7 h of self-study of materials disturbed to students. To understand students’ perception of the 3-h lecture, we conducted a post-lecture evaluation study using a 26-item measure (N = 914). Results showed that the scale possessed good reliability and validity. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the assessment tool has three internally consistent and factorial invariant dimensions: program attributes, appreciation of law abidance, and teacher attributes. Regarding students’ perception of the program, students were generally satisfied with the lecture attributes, including design, content, lecture atmosphere, teaching quality, and benefits to students. In particular, students agreed that the lecture helped them understand the importance and value of law abidance and national security; over 95% of the students indicated that they would try their best to serve as law-abiding citizens and socially responsible leaders. Multiple regression analyses showed that program attributes, appreciation of law abidance, and teacher attributes predicted overall satisfaction with the lecture. Qualitative comments of the student echoed the quantitative findings, with most of the comments being positive in nature. The present study replicated the findings reported previously. Local and international contextual factors relevant to the interpretations of the findings are highlighted.

Law Abidance Leadership Education for University Students in Hong Kong: Subjective Outcome Evaluation

“…Law abidance is commonly regarded as the behavior of following the rules and laws of the society. Law abidance is important because violation of law would have devastating consequences for individuals and society (Shek et al, 2018(Shek et al, , 2022a. Obviously, law-abiding leadership and associated law-abiding behaviors should be cultivated among youths as they are tomorrow's leaders.…”

“…Charges against protesters included rioting, unlawful assembly, arson, possession of offensive weapons, assaulting police officers and stopping vehicles on the highway (Ng, 2021). The occurrence of these incidents probably reflects students' insufficient legal awareness and understanding of the value of law abidance, which made them susceptible to external influences and prone to disobeying the laws as an approach to cope with stress (Shek et al, 2022a). Therefore, it has become a very urgent and necessary task to facilitate law-related education on national security in Hong Kong universities and raise the awareness of law abidance among university students and the public.…”

“…It aims to "establish and improve the legal system and implementation mechanism for safeguarding national security in the Special Administrative Region" (HKSAR, 2020a), thereby closing the serious loophole created by the failure to legislate on "Article 23 of the Basic Law" (Lau, 2021). The introduction of NSL was welcomed by most people as it would help restore social order in Hong Kong (Lau, 2021;Shek et al, 2022a). However, as the NSL is a "top-down" initiative and politically sensitive, some people have forcefully argued that NSL education has undermined democracy and human rights in Hong Kong, even damaged academic freedom.…”

“…As a replication study, the current research can be considered together with earlier findings and provide an integrated picture on how students view national security education across a variety of teaching and learning contexts. The evaluation scale was created based on existing measurement scales of student satisfaction with the curriculum , and it has been validated and used in our previous research (Shek et al, 2022a). Conceptually, the 26 items are separated into three areas in terms of perceived lecture attributes, teachers' qualities, as well as students' appreciation of law abidance leadership.…”

“…Conceptually, the 26 items are separated into three areas in terms of perceived lecture attributes, teachers' qualities, as well as students' appreciation of law abidance leadership. The three-factor structure showed good psychometric properties in an online teaching environment (Shek et al, 2022a). In this study, we attempted to offer more insights into the scale's psychometric characteristics and examine the views of students towards national security education by investigating the three research questions below.…”