Filial piety (孝 hsiao) and career exploration-choice in Confucian heritage culture

Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) is described by education research communities as a group of Asian nation-states with their motherland and overseas population who share Confucian values, which consistently render certain social behavior and practices, including academic outcomes and learning approaches. Park (2011) has challenged such a homogenous and simplistic view by differentiating a thin version from a thick version of Confucian values that coexist in CHC. In this paper, we present a quantitative study on career exploration-choice of Hong Kong youth, focusing on the weight of a prototypically Confucian value, namely filial piety (孝hsiao). Our findings on students’ autonomy, competence and relatedness show that parental influence only has a secondary role in contemporary CHC students’ career exploration cum choice.