In the Fall of 2024, Dr. Jet Uy Buenconsejo, the Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Special Education and Counselling (SEC), completed an insightful two-month visiting scholarship at the Department of Psychosocial Science at the University of Bergen, Norway, supported by the esteemed Research Grants Council Scheme.
During his visit, Dr. Buenconsejo represented both Hong Kong and the Philippines within the Cross-national Network on Positive Youth Development (CN-PYD). He collaborated with Professor Nora Wiium, the Principal Investigator of CN-PYD at the University of Bergen, to explore developmental assets and thriving outcomes among youth.
In a three-day Positive Youth Development (PYD) workshop, Dr. Buenconsejo presented his research on adapting the PYD framework in educational settings. He also fostered international collaboration by establishing new research partnerships with PYD scholars from various European countries, including Sweden, Spain, Slovenia, Norway, Italy, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as researchers from Ghana and Canada.
This collaboration with CN-PYD aligns with the SEC's mission to emphasize internationalization, aiming to achieve the goals of special education and counselling while promoting positive youth development in Hong Kong and beyond.
Dr. Buenconsejo's current research focuses on the characteristics of PYD and their relationships with academic and psychological functioning among adolescents and emerging adults in Southeast Asia (including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) and East Asia (including Hong Kong and mainland China).
The cross-national project, initiated in 2014, now involves partner researchers from over 40 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North and South America, as well as Australia and New Zealand. This diverse collaboration brings together expertise from various scientific fields, including health psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, cross-cultural psychology, public health, environmental science, sociology, health promotion, speech-language pathology, family studies, and intervention and implementation science.
