Starting from June 2021, I was assigned to follow the research project conducted by Mr. Gao and Mr. Ho from the Centre for Special Educational Needs and Inclusive Education. The research aims to investigate the impacts of a career and life planning project “覓向” for ADHD and ASD students. I was assigned to conduct the data analysis by SPSS and interview transcript which are the quantitative and qualitative analyses in the research. Through proceeding with the quantitative analysis, I have learned how to use statistical methods by computer software to show the research findings. As I was not familiar with coding and proceeding programs, I spent time after my working hours to understand the fundamental functions of SPSS. With my co-worker’s kind and supportive instructions and guidelines, I understood how to present the changes in results before and after the program statistically and clearly in a survey report related to Special Education. It is believed these statistical research skills can be adopted in my honours project in my final year.

The past 2 months had been fruitful. I got to learn a bunch of new things that were almost impossible for me to get access to during my usual psychology classes — I did coding tasks, ran studies, and even got the opportunity to further explore my research interest with my colleague Joyce. Among everything I had experienced in the scheme, I liked running studies the most, as you don’t usually get the chance to see how a study and the whole process of data collection work. Being a part of it was amazing. I learnt a lot about how data collection works, especially the technological know-how to do an eye-tracking test. I really had a lot of fun and I sincerely thank my supervisor Jiang Da and her RA Sophy, as they patiently taught me all the skills I needed for this scheme and gave me opportunities to explore new topics. I really think I gained much experience in the scheme and I would probably join similar schemes again.

I am deeply honoured to be part of the Undergraduate Research Engagement Scheme and to participate in Professor Sing's programme. The Jockey Club "Wonderland" learning project aims to investigate and evaluate the application of experiential and immersive learning methods in special education, with a focus on enhancing the collective competencies of students with special learning needs over a 3-year period. Currently, our program is concentrating on six common abilities and four levels. Our primary task is to assist in developing items tailored for students with special educational needs (SEN). Our initial step involved conducting a preliminary review of 332 items and identifying similarities among items from various sources, including researchers, teachers, and educationalists. This process revealed subtle differences in how academic and experiential items were described from different perspectives. Subsequently, we refined and categorised these items into four levels, addressing text, phrases, and sentence structure issues. This experience has highlighted the meticulous effort required in designing a questionnaire for a study, emphasising the importance of academic rigour. I am grateful to Professor Sing and my colleague Frank for their invaluable guidance, not only in the context of this project but also in shaping my own research and future development plans. I extend my sincere thanks to all the teachers and students who have dedicated themselves to this project. It is a great honour for me to have participated in the URES project.

Throughout the research engagement scheme, I have benefited from the discussions with my supervisor and built up critical thinking for special education issues. During the scheme, I was mainly doing a research summary review on the topic of “what personal, social and contextual factors promote happiness among children and adolescents with ASD” by reading, summarising and interpreting the previous research articles. However, I found that there were limited research articles about the well-being of children with autism. It was one of the difficulties for me to complete the summary review as it was necessary to explore different articles related to the happiness of students with autism. After the discussion with my supervisor, we realised that the previous scholars might have insufficient attention to boosting the happiness of students with autism. This difficulty helped to remind me of the necessity for me to summarise the possible factors in promoting their happiness as their well-being should not be eliminated. To summarize my feelings and findings from the summary review, the well-being of children and adolescents with autism should be considered by researchers for further investigation, teachers for designing effective inclusive teaching strategies and the policy makers for improving inclusive education’s effectiveness.

It’s my honour to work under Dr Randolph Chan’s supervision and get my hands on different research-related tasks. During the scheme, I mainly focused on the work that related to qualitative research, like compiling literature review, editing interview protocol as well as modifying interview questions. I am glad and appreciate the help from Randolph and his research assistant - Fei, which helped me to understand more about both quantitive and qualitative research methods in terms of how to consolidate the articles and ideas. The interaction and working atmosphere between me, Stephaine, Tilman, Randolph, and Fei, and I are sincere and positive, which I enjoy so much.