In the era of colonial rule, citizenship education was characterized by depoliticization in which the British government did not allow teachers to do any form of political teaching in schools before the 1990s and there was a lack of any democratic values and critical thinking skills in the content of civic education or social studies curriculum. After the sovereignty was returned to China in 1997, Civic Education in Hong Kong has still been criticized as being apolitical in nature. The intention of developing students with the ideology of participatory democracy and active citizens has been minimised while patriotic and national education has been put in top priority in the curriculum reform since 2001. Interestingly, a few secondary students took initiatives to participate in the mass demonstrations on 1st July and in the candle nights of memorizing the victims in the Tiananmen Square Incident on 4th June every year. The aim of this article is to report a study of how some young people have become active and participatory citizens in an apolitical educational context of Hong Kong. The interpretive methodological approach for collecting and analyzing data was employed in this qualitative study. Based on data collected from focus group and individual interviews with secondary school students and civic education teachers respectively, this article explores how students are socialized to be active and participatory citizens. The results show that students experience primary socialization in schools where civic education teachers having critical mindsets and deep beliefs in pursuing social justice will help catalyze their political socialization process during which the students gradually develop within themselves the passion of civic consciousness and the competence of civic courage. These are the necessary qualities that help facilitate youngsters to participate in social services, social and political gatherings and demonstrations. It is also found that other secondary

Modern classroom learning models have delineated that student characteristics factors, the teaching context and the learning process all have important influence on learning outcomes. Biggs' 3P model of classroom learning has provided a comprehensive conception of the interrelationships of the various components involved. It has also provided a conceptual framework for many studies in student learning in recent years. Following Biggs' conceptual model, this study investigates students' personality characteristics, the learning context as perceived by learners, the way they go about studying and the influence they cast on achievement outcomes. Previous studies have shown that motivational orientations, self-esteem, and the way students approach their learning have effects on their academic achievement. Contextual factors such as course demand, workload pressure or method of assessment also contribute to the final learning outcomes. A number of studies have investigated the nature and the interrelationships of these variables following the quantitative paradigm. While the quantitative approach provides objective, scientific evidence, the opportunity for probing deeper into the phenomenological experiences of the learners is limited. It was believed that an investigation using a qualitative method would bring more light to the subject under study. This study adopts a qualitative approach making use of interview analysis to tap deeper into the causal attributions, self-concept, perceived environment and learning approaches of Hong Kong university students. The objective was to examine the complexities of these characteristics and their impact on academic achievement. The interview sample consisted of 36 students drawn from the construction and engineering discipline in one of the universities in Hong Kong. Of the 36 students, half were high achievers and half low achievers who represented the top 10% and the bottom 10% range of academic results respectively. The author carried

This study reconceptualizes and operationalizes peer status in elementary school classrooms by considering both teachers’ and peers’ preferences. Within this framework, a sample of 1411 students (Grades 1-6) in Hong Kong were classified into four types based on combinations of their peers’ and teachers’ preference scores: (1) popular stars—those liked by both peers and teachers; (2) teachers’ pets—those liked by teachers but not by peers; (3) students’ heroes—those liked by peers but not by teachers; and (4) rejected—those disliked by both peers and teachers. Results of MANOVA tests revealed significant differences among the four status groups in their leadership, aggression, social withdrawal, and academic performance. Path analyses showed both similarities and differences among the four status groups in terms of students’ attributes and how they predicted teachers’ and peers’ preferences.
[Copyright © 2015 Canadian Center of Science and Education.]

From 2009 to 2011, the authors launched the Basic Law Education Project: Education for Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Hong Kong. This article focuses on a subset of the overarching data-set and discusses the findings that resulted from a comparative analysis of two participating schools. A survey was deployed to assess the extent to which a human rights friendly ethos existed in several institutions. Randomly selected students and all teachers from both schools were invited to participate. The collected data revealed noteworthy trends in mean scores between teachers and students in areas such as equal and fair treatment; protection of and appeal for rights; and feelings of being loved, respected, and blessed. School mission and leadership style appeared to account for significant differences. Additionally, we offer recommendations for practices that may improve human rights ethos in schools.
[Copyright © 2015 Taylor & Francis.]

公民能力的教育是現時公民教學的教育重點，非正規課程的教育愈見重要。香港學校的公民教育隨著2001年《課程發展路向》報告書的發表，在公民教學的策略上，學校改變過往知識學習的路向，提倡 “學習者為中心” 和 “生活事件” 的教學。學校生活實踐的教育，如學生會的選舉參與和組織活動等，逐漸成為公民教育的重要媒介。我們透過對學生在學校學生會的活動參與情況的探討，嘗試檢視學校非正規課程學習的優點和局限。我們從訪問學生的個案中，發現公民學習在教學方法和施行方面，存在問題，影響學習成效。

The teaching profession, similar to other human service occupations, requires recruits to have a strong sense of social responsibility, as their commitment is to help their students to become better citizens. Success in recruiting qualified and committed teachers, nevertheless, depends on whether the teaching career is attractive to quality and motivated young people. This paper reports a quantitative and qualitative study of the perceptions of teaching as a career by graduates from twenty secondary schools with different backgrounds in Hong Kong. It analyzed the relationship of the characteristics of these students with their interest in teaching, and examined the factors which may have influenced their choice of teaching as a career. It is hoped that the findings of the study could increase our understanding of young people's perceptions of a teaching career in different societies, and help policy makers adopt more effective measures to increase the attractiveness of teaching to qualified school leavers.

In Hong Kong, the move towards quality education has stirred up waves of changes in the education setting in the late 90s. Drastic changes have been implemented in terms of curriculum, methodology and forms of school management. Borrowed heavily from the Western democracies, the contemporary educational policy and practice in Hong Kong are increasingly directed by the market model of educational provision valuing consumer choice; accountability; quality assurance; devolution of authority and participative management process. In the face of these changes, three issues are pertinent to school leadership - Firstly, the approaches towards School-based Management stress the importance of school heads to work closely with the various stakeholders who may have different and often conflicting role expectations on their school heads. Role incumbents may find themselves confused when determining framework of defined outcomes and accountability. Secondly, the injection of consumer control into school operation and the marketisation of educational provision denote the need of school heads to have a deeper understanding of the needs, expectations and aspirations of the various stakeholders directly or indirectly involved in school management. Thirdly, increasing demands for school heads to seek professional development opportunities that will broaden their existing knowledge and increase their array of management skills to cope with the current changes. While research literature is enormous on the studies of role expectations and job aspirations of school heads especially from the perspective of teachers, parents and even heads themselves, however, there is a lack of robust research locally and abroad on the perspective of the neglected and yet the most directly involved stakeholder - the students. The present study attempts to develop understanding of the role expectations of primary school heads as viewed from the students' perspective and to identify the effects of such expectations

Apart from fun, challenges, and social interaction, one apparent learning outcome of physical education (PE) is the development of physical competence or attributes in terms of sport skills, general motor abilities, physical fitness, body outlook, etc. It seems likely that through school PE positive self-perceptions can be developed. Previous studies conducted among university and high school students across different countries confirmed that sport participation is related to more positive self-perceptions. However, it is not clear whether similar patterns can also be found in primary school children. This paper reports the findings of a recent study that involved 60 classes of upper primary pupils (N=2000) of ten Hong Kong schools. Cluster analysis was utilized to determine the relationship between sport participation and a set of psychological measures including goal orientations, global self-esteem, physical self-worth, and four sub-domain physical self-perceptions (sport competence, physical condition, body attractiveness, and physical strength). Findings were discussed in the light of social cognitive perspectives. Guidelines for teaching primary physical education were recommended.