In many societies, policy-makers have formulated different policies to strengthen moral development, character attributes and/or citizenship for young people. In this review, we examined the related education policies in the Asian (Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore) and Western (the United Kingdom and the United States) contexts and compared them in terms of their aims, core values, strategy, lesson time, evaluation, curriculum materials, and teacher training. With particular reference to Hong Kong, the review shows that there are many challenges for the "moral and citizenship" education. These include a lack of theory and research based policy development, stagnant progress in the past two decades, blurred concepts in the related policies, weak emphasis on related education in schools, problems of the "penetrative" approach, lack of validated and standard curriculum materials, problems in implementation strategies and tactics, and unsystematic evaluation. Copyright © 2021 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

While participation in occupying protest is publicly remarkable, its impact on participants' approval of government, is empirically uncharted. Meanwhile, current research and theory have not been consistent about the impacts of protest participation specifically and civic engagement generally. As the impacts are particularly of concern to college education and democratization, the present study surveyed 527 college students in the Chinese metro- polis of Hong Kong to clarify the impacts. Results reveal that both occupying protest participation and civic engagement increase since the participation tended to reduce approval of government substantially. Such reduction reflects competing commitment between government and protest and civic organizations. The results thus show that the participation and engagement represent challenges to government to meet participants' concerns. Copyright © 2021 Elsevier.

During the turbulent 2018–19 school year, we researched Hong Kong teachers’ perceptions regarding the design and implementation of National Education in schools for students aged 12–17. We seek to make a contribution to understandings of aspects of the cultural, political and social dimensions and contexts relevant to teacher education. 41 civic and/or national education teachers were interviewed about their educational aims, content, teaching methods and assessment approaches. Teachers believe National Education should deliver and assess knowledge of China and nurture students’ identification with the nation through teaching Chinese culture and history via a balanced pedagogical approach and experiential learning. They discuss the relationship between Hong Kong and China, and conclude that teaching about the Chinese government is unavoidable. This indicates that in addition to teachers’ long established cultural, civic and cosmopolitan forms of nationalism, they are now using national unity and economy-induced nationalism to frame their professional work. These findings are significant because they indicate teachers’ fundamental and educational characterisations of National Education at this crucial juncture of Hong Kong; highlight the issues that should be considered for any programmeof initial or in-service teacher education; and, ultimately, indicate the nature of what may possibly be implemented in schools. Copyright © 2021 Australian Teacher Education Association.

This article aims to generate a better understanding of Hong Kong teachers’ perception of national education as implemented in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (hereafter referred to as Hong Kong SAR) and the interrelationship between their perception and the methods they adopt to teach the topic. We outline the Hong Kong context relevant to our research and review the relevant literature to consider typologies and teaching methods about and for national education. Questionnaire data focused on the seven typologies of nationalism and the three teaching methods of national education identified in the literature review. A total of 601 questionnaires were returned from 198 schools. The typologies of cultural nationalism, civic and peripheral nationalism, authoritarian nationalism, unification nationalism and cosmopolitan nationalism, and the teaching methods of group discussion and an affective approach characterize the views of Hong Kong secondary school teachers about national education. We suggest that teachers’ diverse views about nationalism and their varied use of teaching methods to achieve their goals suggest the powerful influence of current initiatives from the Chinese mainland and the need to reflect on established academic literature that proposes the decolonization of the curriculum and interactive and critical teaching methods. Copyright © 2021 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

This preliminary study gathered principals’ and teachers’ views of Hong Kong’s citizenship education as well as the ways it could be facilitated for democratic purposes. On some measures the views of both groups were compared while principals were asked what they did to facilitate democratic citizenship education. The findings revealed principals were more positive than teachers in regard to their schools and citizenship education, and attempted to provide teachers with the autonomy to facilitate civic teaching. Teachers perceived more strongly than principals that the Chinese national government has influenced their schools’ attitude to citizenship education and they showed less confidence than principals in the possibility of nurturing students’ patriotism. Copyright © 2021 AERA21.

In polarized and pluralistic societies, schools are critical for nurturing students towards becoming informed, active citizens. This study of 18 school staff (teachers, principals and vice-principals) at six secondary (high) schools showed three paradigms through which they cultivated students to become good citizens while navigating media influences. School staff in the laissez-faire paradigm were facilitators that emphasized knowledge, social concern, and conservative characteristics of “good citizens.” By contrast, staff in the mediate diversity paradigm inform students and share balancing information from other perspectives. Lastly, staff in the school mission paradigm support student engagement in citizen responsibilities and political processes. All staff reported that media influenced students’ values and perspectives, and sought to reduce students' confirmation bias by fostering their critical thinking skills and media literacy. Understanding how school can nurture citizens can inform instruction and policies. Copyright © 2021 CESHK.

This study aims to investigate, with an action research approach, the possibility of enhancing conscientization by applying critical pedagogy (CP) in the Liberal Studies (LS) curriculum of Hong Kong, in order to introduce a new paradigm of civic education that fosters learners’ transformative actions in sociopolitical issues. Shor’s (1992) model of “empowering education” was taken as the main framework in applying CP. In addition, Shor’s (1992) “Paradigm of Four Domains” was adopted to investigate teachers’ and students’ obstacles and resources in the process. The study was conducted in a local secondary school for approximately 10 weeks, with a Secondary 5 class of 15 students as participants. The findings revealed that there were rich possibilities of conscientization, which means the development of critical consciousness, achieved through applying CP in the LS curriculum. However, some obstacles were found hindering the application of CP in the LS curriculum. Among them were the “teaching to the test” pressure on the teacher and the mentality of didacticism. On students’ side, their weakness in literacy skills and the alienation caused by the authoritarian culture were the main obstacles. Yet, students’ developing interest in experiential learning activities and their willingness for transformative practice were found to be resources that motivated them to learn in the new mode of CP. To complement students’ resources, the willingness and proficiency to support students’ transformative practice, the readiness to explore taboo issues, and an influential relationship with students were the resources that facilitated CP practice on the teacher’s side. This study is significant and advocating in several ways. Throughout this study under the specific school conditions in Hong Kong, Shor’s four-domain paradigm for the practice of CP is developed and enriched. Based on the findings, this study recommends the “Independent Enquiry Study” (IES) in the LS curriculum be expanded

This chapter examines the role of education in the socio-political development of Hong Kong from a historical perspective. Using the framework of “citizenship as process,” it reviews the way in which identity politics and civic movement took place in the condition of a weak political framework for citizenship and explains the Janus-faced nature of the Hong Kong political culture which oscillates between economic instrumentalism and political activism. The chapter proposes how teaching can be designed and conducted for the sake of cultivating a meaningful civic identity and global citizenship against the backdrop of the recent resurgence of nationalism worldwide. It argues that spoon-fed pedagogy of civic and national education is difficult to make positive impact on educational outcome, especially in global and entrepreneurial cities like Hong Kong situated in the digital age. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Special education is necessarily an integral part of universal basic education. Therefore special education has seen substantial development in the past decade in most Chinese societies, which have all accomplished remarkable degrees of universal basic education. However, developing special education, by fundamental principles, is based on the needs of the individual children. Such principles are rather foreign to Chinese education systems which assume that individuals should submit themselves to community needs, and education is the very means to realise such an assumption. Nonetheless, special education also assumes that barriers to learning caused by innate disabilities could be overcome by efforts, but this is very much also basic to the values of education in Chinese societies. This short paper purports to illustrate the interplay between special education and the traditional education values in Chinese societies. Copyright by Special Education Society of Hong Kong Limited. All Rights Reserved.