The UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (Conference report, international conference on learning cities, October 21–23, Beijing, China, 2014) has promoted the idea of the learning city which highlights inclusive, lifelong learning and learning for and in the workplace as well as emphasizing quality and excellence in learning involving the use of modern technologies and the revitalization of learning in families and communities. In this chapter, we focus on the emergence and evolution of entrepreneurship education (EE) in Hong Kong, seen as a city region. In particular, we address the importance of partnerships and the participation of various stakeholders in providing quality learning opportunities. Very few studies have addressed the needs and approaches required for the continued delivery of EE programmes and activities in a sustainable way. After reviewing the literature relevant to EE, we draw on experience in Hong Kong to discuss how EE can be continued over a sustained period of time so as to create wider ranging impacts that match higher level objectives other than those at the individual level.

Hong Kong, a leading city of China, is a place with students having good examination results but being regarded as incapable of thinking critically. In 2005, the Education Bureau decided to make Liberal Studies as a core subject and aroused controversial debate. This change, proposing to use a core subject to nurture student critical thinking skills, is a drastic curriculum change in this society. This study, inquiring into the perceptions and practices of teachers teaching Liberal Studies, consists of two research questions. First, how do teachers perceive the aims and nature of the core subject Liberal Studies in the new curriculum? Second, how do they nurture the critical thinking habits of students in their classroom? Qualitative study was conducted to investigate teachers’ perception and practices of critical thinking in Liberal Studies. Both interview and documentary analysis are used in this study. First, the researcher interviewed five Liberal Studies teachers, who were experienced in teaching Liberal Studies. Each teacher individually attended the interview for about one hour. The researcher audio-recorded the conversation and transcribed word by word. Second, in order to follow up with interviews, teachers were invited to provide supporting materials such as teaching plan for further analysis. The study showed that a positive side in this reform. Teachers with strong perceptions for nurturing critical thinking skills of pupils were empathetic in teaching Liberal Studies. Teachers had initiated various methods to provide students opportunities to reflect on thinking and learning, which were drastically differed from traditional culture of Hong Kong. This study also showed that teachers’ perception of critical thinking skills in Liberal Studies also influences their practices in teaching the discipline. However, with the traditional pedagogical culture and examination bounded system, shifting from transmission of knowledge to nurturing critical thinking

Stemming from a long tradition of liberal education in Hong Kong universities, General Education (GE) courses and programs have been part of Hong Kong tertiary education structure for less than a decade. Together with the recently implemented compulsory 2009 New Senior Secondary Liberal Studies (NSS LS) curriculum, GE represents a continues and sustainable structure of liberal education in the city. Although thousands of young Hongkongers participate in liberal studies courses and programs through secondary and tertiary levels of education, the influence of this structure of liberal education on their mindset remains unclear. This paper features selected results of the RGC funded study, which investigated sustainability consciousness of Hong Kong first year university students, enrolled in GE programs. The analysis of ~5000 student surveys and over 1000 reflections revealed three main features of students' sustainability consciousness: intentionality to make a difference; engagement with complex questions about identity, society and nature; and eschatological perspectives, which included imaginative, future-oriented and action-oriented approaches to critical reflection, supported by the rhetoric of hope, promises and commitment for better future. This presentation aims to discuss ways for implementing these findings in the GE and NSS LS classrooms with reference to local and international practices of liberal studies education.

Learning about political issues through the new core subject of Liberal Studies (LS) in senior secondary education in Hong Kong has become ‘socially problematic' amid mounting concern of politicians and pundits who see a link between such learning and the recent waves of student protests. Using data from in-depth interviews with senior secondary students in Hong Kong, we explore how politically disengaged and engaged youth experienced their LS learning and how they perceived and made sense of the relationship between LS learning and political participation or its absence. Our findings indicate that while there appear to be circumstances that give rise to diversified learning experiences, LS has little bearing on youth political participation or otherwise.
[Copyright © 2017 Sage Publications and YOUNG Editorial Group.]

This study reveals the perceptions of over one hundred Hong Kong teachers who were asked to reflect upon the implementation of Liberal Studies in secondary schools in response to the latest government review of the subject's curriculum. Questionnaire-based surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted to probe the participating teachers' perceptions and suggestions in such areas as the subject's objectives, content and assessment, with the ultimate goal of tracing the subject's developmental trajectory. The findings indicate that, whilst the teachers appear to have faith in Liberal Studies' objective to develop students into critical and independent thinkers, they feel that the pedagogical challenges with which they have been confronted have influenced their teaching motivation and support for the subject's mandatory status in secondary education. Further, the potential tension between the challenges they have encountered in reality and the ideal outcomes envisaged by policymakers raises the question of how Liberal Studies can move forward in giving teachers a greater role in educational reform. Recommendations for relieving that tension, as well as the findings' implications for future research on curriculum development in Hong Kong and elsewhere, are also discussed.
[Asia Pacific Education Review is a copyright of Springer, 2017]

The flipped classroom is an educational strategy about inverting the traditional use of in-class time for conducting lower-level learning activities and out-of-class time for conducting higher-level learning activities. Guided social inquiry learning (GSIL), which is a scaffolded constructivist pedagogic approach, has been conventionally adopted in learning and teaching of Liberal Studies (a "young" core senior secondary subject of social and humanities education in Hong Kong). In this research, we aimed to integrate the idea of the flipped classroom into the process of GSIL for promoting students??learning achievement and self-efficacy in studying Liberal Studies. Apart from delineating the pedagogic design of the proposed "flipped" social inquiry learning (FSIL) approach, this paper also reports our quasiexperimental study on investigating the pedagogic effectiveness of FSIL in comparison with GSIL. There was a total of 215 Grade-11 students from top, middle, and bottom academic-banding schools participating in this study. Results indicated that, compared to the conventional approach, FSIL had different degrees of positive effects on the high, moderate, and low academic-achieving participants. The findings provide grounds for further studying a wider adoption of the flipped classroom in social and humanities education, as well as in constructivist learning and teaching activities.

Schools are one of the major agents of socialisation in society along with the family, community, mass media and peer group. One of the important functions or purpose of education and schooling is to equip learners to live and work effectively in an ever-changing and evolving society. As new and growing challenges emerge which need to be met, such as concerns about environmental issues including destruction of the environment, global warming and an expanding carbon footprint, schools are one of the key agents of socialisation in society which seek to bring about changes in behaviour into more desirable directions. This chapter reports on the results of a research study that examined whether the schooling provided in Hong Kong has been successful in actually getting learners to modify their behaviour in ways and directions which are likely to successfully promote improvements to the environment and sustainable development. The results show that although there was a perceived increase in knowledge of the selected environmental issues, with regard to behaviour changes, 29.4–50.6% of students believed that their environmental behaviour had not changed. The chapter then examines pedagogies that can be successful in changing students’ behaviour and argues that to increase effectiveness of environmental studies, particular types of learning should occur, including discovery learning, systems thinking-based learning, critical thinking-based learning, interdisciplinary learning, problem-based learning and participatory/collaborative learning. Teachers should provide an opportunity to engage students in pro-environmental activities and address values that are going beyond an economic imperative.