Both Hong Kong and Macau issued civic education documents before their sovereignty was returned to China. These two internationalized cities aimed to prepare for the future when their colonial governance was coming to an end. Having taken decolonization policies into consideration, it is understandable that sovereignty regimes have their own self-designed citizenship education plans. Judgments with selective commentaries on public and political events could transmit various and crucial political messages. Their proposed curriculum might differ in contents but their essential qualities of civic education targeted at facilitating students’ core values and positive attitudes. Deficiencies are thus identified and how such deficiencies are later reflected in history is noted. The new concepts of citizenship were merely prominent in these two areas and the contents were no longer creative. It is observable that the lack of adoption of recommendations on education concerned with the nurturing of young people and their empowerment with self-determinism is clearly perceptible, under the so-called “one country, two systems” governance. Or, it may well be that something was overlooked. If so, it may be that there may be a lack of planning for social harmony and sustainability of these metropolitan cities. The problem is quite thought-provoking. Coryright © 2018 David Publishing Company.

How migrants, refugees and minority groups acquire a sense of belonging in their adopted society is a concern for nations worldwide as they aim to balance the diversity and inclusion of growing numbers of migrants with ensuring harmony and cohesion across society. In postcolonial Hong Kong, the population diversity is accompanied with a swift change in the racialisation of Hong Kong where minorities in schools find themselves categorised as 'non-Chinese speaking' ('NCS') rather than a 'Hongkonger'. The NCS label stigmatises young people as linguistically and academically deficit, de-legitimises acceptance by the local Chinese, Cantonese speaking majority designated as 'Hongkongers'. Yet how minority youth interpret their status as 'NCS' and negotiate belonging in Hong Kong has received scant attention. This qualitative study is a substantive and theoretical contribution to the literature on how multilingual minorities can construct a positive sense of place-belonging to their adopted city. Reflecting the contentious nature of the politics of belonging, we found that students challenged and sought to redefine the narrow, prevailing identity of a 'Hongkonger'. Rather, they stressed their multilingual identity, historical affiliations, emotional attachments and place-belongingness to the city in order to legitimate their entitlement to sociopolitical belonging in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This paper critically examines the dominant Asian Higher Education managerialism from the perspectives of the so-called Southern and/or Post-colonial Epistemology. Despite the fact that the archaic form of colonization—with its territorial occupation, exploitation, loss of subjectivity and knowledge manipulations —seems to be over, Asian Higher Education today shows clear signs of being engulfed, once more, by new forms of colonization and imperialism under the guise of rational administration and management that affect its core missions of knowledge production and subjectivity formation. This paper compares Higher Education in Korea, Japan and Hong Kong to argue that there is a significant resemblance between Asian modernization process hijacked by colonialism and the ongoing neo-liberal waves against Asian higher education. Copyright © 2018 CESHK.

Educators and politicians in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea expound the necessity for their East Asian school systems to become more like those in the West. They complain that there is too much rote learning, uniformity, and standardization and too little emphasis on creativity, diversity, and problem solving. In addition, competition is fierce for scarce places in elite schools and universities, leading to unfulfilled ambitions and wastage of talent among the high proportions of young people failing to gain entry. Meanwhile, their counterparts in North America, Australia, and Great Britain look in the reverse direction to these same East Asian countries and wonder what they can learn from the superior academic results of East Asian students on International Achievement Tests in mathematics and science (Atkin & Black, 1997). Copyright © 2002 by Routledge.

On 1 July 1997, after 150 years of British colonial rule, Hong Kong returned to its mother country, the People's Republic of China (PRC). Anticipation of reunification spawned speculation about the possibilities, prospects and problems for the political, economic and social life of Hong Kong after 1997. This paper argues that the unpredictability and uncertainty which have characterized the educational policy environment in Hong Kong for many years were compounded by the imminence of the change of sovereignty. It is suggested that examination of the policy process in the contemporary Hong Kong context can best be understood by examining both macro‐ and micro‐policy perspectives, and the interrelationships between them. Two guiding questions related to the influence of sovereignty change on education are addressed. The first question asks how system‐level policies are being interpreted in schools. The second question asks whether, how and to what extent change of sovereignty has politicized the policy process, particularly at the school level. The paper has three parts: the first provides a socio‐politico‐economic context to Hong Kong's handover; the second describes important educational policies shaping the system during the period of transition; and the third discusses school‐level responses and reactions to the policies within the context of a politicized environment. Copyright © 1998 Taylor & Francis Ltd.

Plans by the Hong Kong Government to introduce moral and national education (MNE) as a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools in 2010 encountered strong opposition. The controversy over the plans has lasted for two years, with the government and its supporters claiming that the subject will help to instil a stronger sense of national identity in children and critics deriding it as biased and constituting a form of brainwashing. The subject is also seen as posing troubles or a considerable threat to local Christian schools because most of them have had their own religious education programmes for years. Most Christian school-sponsoring bodies and parachurch organisations oppose the subject's introduction, urging the government to scrap its curricular guidelines, and many say they will boycott its implementation. To bring the issues surrounding MNE into sharper focus, this article traces the development of Christian education in Hong Kong and analyses how local Christian communities perceive and have responded to the official proposal. Three prominent themes commonly emphasised in the Christian discourse are plural identities, conditional patriotism and universal values. These themes could shed light on wider theoretical discussion about the positive roles of religion and religious education for citizenship education.
[Copyright of British Journal of Religious Education is the property of Routledge.]

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss nationalistic education in Hong Kong from a cultural perspective. It highlights the challenges faced by the Hong Kong Government and the growing antagonism and mistrust between the young generation and the government. The paper reviews the cultural policies adopted by the Western Zhou, Han and Tang dynasties in ancient China.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts a historical approach by reviewing the policies in music and culture in the Chinese history and argues for the adoption of a soft approach to nationalistic education in Hong Kong.FindingsResults show that being inclusive toward diverse cultures, trusting and valuing people's voices and accepting differences of opinion are effective policies that were adopted by the respective dynasties. The results shed light on the possibility of nurturing nationalism through education in music and culture.Research limitations/implicationsThe historical examples mentioned in this paper are only selected periods of the Chinese history. Thus, the survey could not be taken as a comprehensive review.Practical implicationsThis paper reviews the policies concerning music and culture in ancient China and argues for transferring the soft approach of predecessors toward these subjects as part of the nationalistic education of Hong Kong.Social implicationsThe results shown should be considered seriously by the Hong Kong Government as an effective substitute policy for the past stringent approach of implementing national education in Hong Kong. Nationalistic education focusing on music and culture is a common root for all Chinese and should be used in future to build up trust and common values between China and Hong Kong.Originality/valueThe originality of this research lies in its dealing with nationalism and national education, recommending a soft approach to education viewed through the prisms of music and culture.
[Copyright of Asian Education and Development Studies is the

The study explores secondary students' decision making about socio-scientific issues (SSIs) related to biological conservation, from cross-cultural, cross-age and cross-gender perspectives. It has been widely recognized that many SSIs have profound repercussions on global environmental sustainability that transcend cultural boundaries. Research on SSIs has been focused on multi-perspective reasoning, the evaluation of evidence, value judgement, and the formulation of the criteria for decision-making, but not on the possible roles of culture, gender, and age-related developmental factors as mediators of students' decision making. This study was to fill this gap. It adopted a comparative perspective and used mixed methods including student worksheets, class discussion records and focus groups. A total of 97 HK students, with 55 aged 11-13 and 42 aged 15-17, and 54 UK students, with 41 aged 11-13 and 13 aged 15-17 were involved in decision making about shark hunting within their own classes, and in cross-cultural exchange between HK and UK classes. The aim was to study gender, cultural and age-related differences in students' decision-making about shark hunting, and the impact of cultural exchanges through watching videotaped presentations from another locality. Preliminary findings showed that while nearly all the students in both localities agreed to protect sharks to different extents, there were differences across age, gender and culture in various aspects of their decisions including their justifications. For instance, there was statistically significant difference in the number of concerns on which the justifications of HK and UK junior students were based upon; UK senior students targeted at a wider range of stakeholders in their final decisions than their HK counterparts; and far more senior students in both localities resorted to education as a means to protect sharks than their junior counterparts. More junior students in both localities thought they needed

The last decade has witnessed a sharp decrease of school-aged children in the East-Asia and Pacific regions. In some affected districts in Hong Kong, for example, the insufficient student enrolment has brought to school closure. Teacher job satisfaction and principal leadership approaches have been greatly affected. In response to the situation, the Education Bureau of Hong Kong launched the Voluntary Optimisation of Class Structure Scheme (hereafter the Scheme) to cushion the shock and to lower the risk of secondary school closures. There are 220 schools participate in the Scheme involving around 12,000 principals and teachers. The Scheme has direct implications on the number of class structure and teacher career advancement. The negative impacts of the Scheme on teacher job satisfaction has since been widely discussed. Yet, there has no parallel research attention been given to this situation. This doctoral study is the first of its kind to conduct a systematic investigation into the impact of the Scheme on teacher job satisfaction looking at both the individual and contextual factors. Mixed methods include semi-structured interviews and questionnaire survey were employed. Multiple Regression analyses were performed to examine the impacts of the Scheme on principal leadership and teacher job satisfaction. Additionally, the predictive factors of principal leadership for teacher job satisfaction were determined. Based on the empirical data, this presentation will discuss the obstacles and success factors of the implementation of Scheme for teacher job satisfaction. Recommendations will be made for addressing the problem in terms of principal leadership and policy enactment.

Much of the existing literature on social capital and university choice processes postulates that family networks of underrepresented students from poor and minority backgrounds are disadvantaged in university resources and in turn deficit in social capital returns. The literature implies that school-based networks are essential to fill the university information voids at home. Less research, however, poses questions about whether the university resources occupied by school personnel are automatically available to less-privileged minority youths. To grasp the dynamic interplay between ethnicity, class and school-based social capital, this study drew on Lin's conceptualisation of homophilous and heterophilous social networking and explored the university choice and application processes among poor and working-class South/Southeast Asian minority students in Hong Kong. The participants' accounts uncovered the restrictions of school networks on norms, expectations and accessibility of information sources. The research results raise concerns about how to activate both homophilous and heterophilous ties for minority youths' widening access to higher education.
[Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]