This paper explores the construction of local and national identities among secondary school students in post-colonial Hong Kong. As a Chinese society that has undergone a prolonged period of British colonial rule, the reunification of capitalist Hong Kong with the motherland under socialism in 1997 has set the context for a negotiation of identities. It has been revealed that the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has tried to foster a stronger sense of national identity and a sense of belonging among the younger generations through its education reform measures in the new millennium. Nation-building is part and parcel of the reform, although it is being interpreted and implemented diversely by local officials, school principals and teachers. The intersecting and overlapping nature of students' different identities has set the parameters of their identity formation but allows different latitudes of observance and/or choice of different identities.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2010.519691]

Collaborating with universities in Hong Kong, Finland, the United Kingdom and Australia the research project outlined in this paper takes up one of the key initial findings related to the importance of children's online spaces away from school. The project brings together complementary strengths from each partner nation to assist our mutual need to understand the worlds of our young "netizens" - the new public citizens of cyberspace. Differing in social and cultural context, each setting is recognised as a strong contributor to understanding the competencies of young people's digital expertise. We work from the shared view that the arrival of Web 2.0 and 3.0 social networking tools is educationally challenging and demands futuristic thinking for sustainable education and social connectivity globally. Our research aim is to use a common research design to discover how young people are behaving in the new online spaces; what guides their decision-making; and what, if any, common values appear to emerge when results between countries are compared. Locally derived knowledge gained from samples of 12-year-olds will be subjected to cross-cultural comparisons and validation. In doing so, we make some assumptions about the homogenising process that shared global networks may be fostering. Bringing together these contributions will strengthen the decision-making process and provide new knowledge about meaning making, agency and citizenship for the twenty-first-century e-democracy. This paper reports on the conceptual process underlying the research and the research design.
[Copyright of International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10382040903251158]

Background: During the period of British colonial rule, the nature of civic education in Hong Kong was characterized as denationalized, depoliticized and decontextualized. The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration substantially altered the nature of civic education. The "China Today" module of Liberal Studies (LS) was one of the results of the re-engineering the civic education. The teachers' paradigms of the "China Today" module were explored because the module used national themes as materials to inculcate values in students and is directly related to both citizenship education and national education.
Aim: The aim of this study is to examine teachers' paradigms of the "China Today" module through their conceptualization of citizenship and their perspective on teaching. Samples: Four secondary teachers of the "China Today" module were invited to participate.
Methods: Questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and non-participant observation were used to assess the teachers' perception and practices.
Results: Data from the questionnaire and interviews revealed that the four teachers highly valued moral, socially concerned citizens and democratic citizens. In terms of aims and approaches to citizenship education, the four teachers embraced the notion of citizenship as competence as aim and reflective-inquiry approach, but only two teachers were able to carry them out in the classroom setting. Another two teachers used transmission approach.
Conclusion: Framed by the notion of citizenship as competence as their aim and equipped in issue-enquiry or reflective-inquiry approach, and experienced in developmental perspective on teaching, the CSS2 and CSS3 teachers were able to cultivate in student' dispositions and skills. Teachers unaware of the citizenship framework and unfamiliar with the developmental perspective on teaching found it difficult to cultivate rational aspects of students.
背景：在英國統治期間，香港公民教育有以下的特色：就是課程不涉及祖國和政治，並且沒有脈絡。1984年，中英聯合聲明大大改變這本質