Hong Kong underwent tremendous changes after the transfer of its sovereignty to China in 1997. This study attempts to explore the changing role of schools in preparing students for future democratic citizenship in the post-colonial era. Different researchers have postulated that schools play a crucial role in the political socialization process in meeting the developmental needs of adolescents. A mixed-method sequential explanatory research design was adopted to assess the effectiveness of Hong Kong schools in promoting civic learning. The significance of the present study was to analyse the school context by using the assessment framework from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Civic Education Study (CivEd) to generate citizenship education studies. An extensive review of research related to the role of schools through formal and informal curricula was conducted. This process helped extend the current understanding of the effectiveness of the political socialization in secondary schools in Hong Kong and contributed to the further development of the research on political socialization in the Chinese context. The findings from this study would help educators or policy makers rethink the future role of schools in citizenship education.
[Copyright © 2017 National Institute of Education, Singapore.]

As classroom and schools are the “miniature political communities” that help incubate students’ civic experiences, they can influence their civic development and civic participation cognitively and behaviorally.Meanwhile, principals and teachers can act as school-site change agents for the development of civically responsive and responsible youngsters at the formative age. However, past studies have not extensively examined how participative classrooms lead to better civic learning and active civic lives in schools. Neither has any responded to the current political circumstances in Hong Kong by relating controversial issues such as students’ democratic values and civic attitudes to future civic engagement including illegal protest. To fill this research gap and provide policy directions, we propose and test amodel of how political socialization at school affects development of early adolescents’ democratic values, attitudes to civic institutions and the nation, and aspirations for conventional and unconventional civic action. As young people in Hong Kong are increasingly active and radical in recent years (e.g., Scholarism, Occupy Central Movement), we examine their possible roots. Specifically we testmultilevel structural equationmodels on a sample of 2902 Hong Kong secondary Form 2 students from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)’s 2009 International Civics and Citizenship Education study (ICCS). These young adults were at the age when the survey was conducted. Their aspirations expressed thenmight have translated into actions now. The results can inform policies to help schools fulfill their civic mission and nurture “politically literate, participatory, and critically thinking” future citizens.

Recent research has shown that schools and their leaders can exert a direct effect on students’ civic learning (Kennedy, Li & Chan, 2014; Li & Kennedy, 2015). These results are context bound so that any prescriptions for actions by schools need to take account of local issues confronting schools and their leaders. This is particularly important in Hong Kong where protest mobilization among Hong Kong young adults has become widespread (Ortman, 2014). The issue for schools is to have a clear understanding of students’ potential for future civic engagement and to develop programmes to enable future citizens to make wise choices about how they exercise their civic engagement options. To provide an evidence based approach to this issue, Hong Kong young adolescents’ civic beliefs and aspirations for civic engagement over ten years from 1999 to 2009 were examined using secondary data from two successive IEA studies. Conscious of the problems of variable-centred analysis, this study used person-centred analysis to maximize the identification of the full range of diverse views among students in two cohorts. This methodology allowed for vertical analyses at the two separate time points and horizontal analysis across time. The outcome was the identification of students’ civic values and aspirations as young adolescents. This provided the basis for articulating ways that school leaders can support the civic development of young people as they progress through adolescence and prepare for adulthood.

Various terms have been used to define civic education (CE) in Hong Kong since the colonial era. This has been particularly true since 2011, when CE has been given many names, causing confusion among educators. Mixed methods were employed to examine teachers’ perceptions of different conceptions of CE expressed as moral, civic and national education. The findings indicate that some teachers might not be able to differentiate among moral education, CE and national education. Most teachers contended that national education should be included in CE, while others believed the opposite. Teachers perceived that moral and civic education was more successful than moral and national education in cultivating students to become ‘good citizens’. Teachers’ comprehension of these terms has policy and pedagogical implications. While the study is set within the context of Hong Kong, the findings are valuable to policymakers and educators in other countries seeking to improve CE.
[Copyright © 2016 British Association for International and Comparative Education.]

"Chinese" is an ambiguous term, depending on whether it is taken to describe a political, linguistic, or cultural entity. While the term has often been considered to represent a politically and culturally homogeneous national identity in recent decades, this article aims to challenge this notion by examining the characteristics and practices of nationalistic education in Hong Kong since 1945. It explores how national identity has been interpreted by different Chinese states over time through different educational policies and practices. Focusing on the evolution of nationalistic education in three phases, this article presents a detailed account and analyses different nationalist narratives over six decades. It describes how different political forces define themselves and come to terms with what are often dual or competing national identities. Historical examples illustrate the challenges in policies and practices of nationalistic education.
[Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group]