This paper reports the findings of a public policy research supported by the University Grant Council on the relationships between the characteristics, school engagement and civic engagement of adolescents in Hong Kong. Data was collected from a sample of 3,024 students, aged 12 to 19, by employing the self-rated modified school engagement scale and the ICCS 2009 student questionnaires. Using local Hong Kong students as a reference, the other students included in the study were non-Chinese South Asians, cross-boundary students who live in Mainland China but who go to schools in Hong Kong, and newly arrived students from Mainland China. Family income and student groups were two predictor variables examined. About 38% of the sample were of low socioeconomic status, in that they reported their family monthly income as being less than 1500 USD. Hierarchical regression was employed to determine the relative influence of student characteristics and school and civic engagement variables. Findings revealed that there was a close connection between the self-assessment of school and civic engagement and there were differences in this regard among the immigrant and minority student groups. Recommendations for both schools and government agencies towards future policy development in facilitating pro-school and civic-oriented attitudes and behaviours of all students were suggested.

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.]

Student engagement is recognised as a key process that can assist students’ learning. This paper reports a study in which three variables were examined to assess their potential in creating engaging and participative classrooms. The focus was on ‘teacher engagement in the community’, ‘teacher engagement in school’ and ‘teachers’ teaching confidence’ and their impact on the way teachers perceive their classrooms. Data was drawn from the International Civics and Citizenship Study, and the views of over 1400 teachers in 90 Hong Kong schools were analysed. The results of the study showed that teacher engagement is an important construct that directly supports teachers’ positive descriptions of their classroom activities. At the same time, teacher engagement also influenced teachers’ confidence in their teaching which in turn influenced the positive descriptions of their usual classroom activities. The theoretical foundations of these results are discussed as well as the implications for teachers’ professional lives, for policymakers concerned with enhancing teacher quality and for school leaders with responsibility for teacher professional development.

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.

School participation rates in Hong Kong are acknowledged to be high but not always for the city’s ethnic minority students. Case study was used to portray the ‘out of school’ phenomenon for ethnic minority students at a secondary school in Hong Kong through the experiences of one such ethnic minority student. Morshed, a Pakistani student, participated with the researchers in an unstructured in-depth interview. In addition, interviews were also conducted with the principal, two teachers, and one support staff from the school. The study showed the complex interaction of school contexts and personal life issues that influenced Morshed’s dropping out of school. Implications are drawn for providing better school support that can facilitate more positive schooling experiences for Hong Kong’s ethnic minority students.
[Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

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.]

Hong Kong has been considered as one of the world’s best performing school systems. Among the six factors attributing to the success of the educational system, three are related to decentralization of pedagogical decision-making and empowerment of school leadership and teachers. Teachers’ voices and their wisdom in decision-making processes in schools has become a prominent topic among policy makers and educators. In the last 40 years, international literature suggests that teacher leadership practices in school-based curriculum development (SBCD) as a form of school capacity building enhances teachers’ empowerment and their professional capabilities, which in turn may result in more effective student learning. This chapter reports a portion of the findings based on the interview data of a case study of school-based curriculum leadership in an elementary school in Hong Kong in 2007. The study adopted a design-based approach. Participating teachers engaged in cycles of planning the objectives of learning, experimenting on redesigning the lesson plans, and reflecting on practice lessons. Multiple data collection methods were adopted. Our findings show that a systematic approach in organizing curriculum development activities based on problem-solving approaches and a distributed leadership style among teachers can be effective in enhancing teacher learning in both curriculum leadership skills and powerful learning.

This paper reports a case study on Maneesha Rai, a Nepalese girl living in Hong Kong and an “out of school” student. Based on in-depth interviews, a case was constructed of her previous school days and current “out of school” days. These provided a vivid picture of her life and several themes were created using schema analysis that help explain the reasons for her “dropping out” of school after Form Five. It has been common to attribute school failure for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong to problems with Chinese language education. Yet Maneesha’s case study shows that her experience of failure in other subjects such as Mathematics and Science contributed to her lack of successful schooling. Maneesha’s school failure was more than simply a consequence of academic failure. Rather, there were many other interrelated factors such as peer and community factors, dropout history in the family, racism, differences in schooling culture found that contributed to her school failure. In addition, Maneesha, like many of her ethnic minority friends, enjoyed the freedom afforded her in Hong Kong, but it seemed such freedom also meant inadequate attention from her teachers.
[Copyright © 2016 National Institute of Education, Singapore.]