In the face of the rising tension between Hong Kong and mainland China, Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam blamed the city's education system for its inability to develop a sense of 'I am Chinese' national identity and vowed to step up 'national education' from preschool. This article explores how 188 young preschool teachers perceived their national identity and viewed the applicability of national education in Hong Kong preschools. Data were collected using both quantitative and qualitative measures. The findings showed that even though the participants strongly resisted their Chinese identity, they agreed that national education could be introduced in preschools if it would be rendered rational and apolitical. Nevertheless, they suspected that the administration's motive behind national education was political indoctrination. They also noted several pedagogical difficulties. Finally, the implications are discussed against the changing socio-political context, serving as lessons for local and international readers. Copyright © 2022 Routledge.

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 paper gives some preliminary analysis on the relationships between perceptions of national identity and national education by using quantitative data. A pilot-tested questionnaire has been sent to all civic education team teachers in Hong Kong secondary schools in 2018. Through quantitative analysis, it is found that some possible types of national education are adopted by teachers. The qualitative interviews with some teachers also reveal a diversified range of teaching methods on national education. All these findings can, hopefully, contribute to the existing literature. This study shall be useful for anyone interested in understanding how teachers perceive their national identity and national education in this post-materialistic and globalized world. Copyright © 2019 CiCea.

Purpose: National identification among young people and the issues about how national education should be conducted have been the significant topics when the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was entering its third decade of the establishment. This paper was written based on data the authors obtained upon participation in a project organized by the Centre for Catholic Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The project was carried out after the official curriculum, known as the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide, was shelved due to popular resentment. The project aimed at capturing the timely opportunity for substantial resources available for school-based operation of moral and national education and developing an alternative curriculum about teaching national issues and identification for Catholic Diocese and Convent primary schools to adopt. This paper aims to investigate the nature of this Catholic Project and examines the extent to which it is a counterhegemonic project or one for teaching to belong to a nation (Mathews, Ma and Lui, 2007). It assesses the project's possible contribution to citizenship and national education in Hong Kong, since the withdrawal of the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide.Design/methodology/approach: The authors of this paper worked in an education university of Hong Kong and were invited to be team members of this Catholic Project. The role comprised proposing topics for teacher training, conducting seminars, giving comments to teaching resources, observing and giving feedback to schools that tried out the teaching and designing/implementing an evaluative survey and conducting follow-up interviews with involved parties such as teachers and key officials of the Catholic Centre. Given this, the research involved can be perceived as action research. This paper was written up with both the qualitative and quantitative data the authors collected when working the project.Findings: This paper reported a Catholic

The implementation of moral and national education (MNE) in Hong Kong came to a stand-still when in 2012 anti-MNE student protests triumphantly saw it being shelved. Many perceived MNE as indoctrination and politically motivated by the leadership. Five years have gone by since the demise of the MNE. Ostensibly, the struggle for hegemonic control over the MNE curriculum is lost for the moment. However, this paper argues that the battle for control over the implementation of MNE is not yet over. Simmering politics about the shelved MNE continues to be a point of debate in the media. I frame this argument using subterfuge hegemony in conjunction with analysis of news discourse on the MNE debate to demonstrate how hegemonic work is carried out in South China Morning Post. Such a line of inquiry and analyses is significant as it offers the chance to deconstruct the differing interests and power relations around a high stake citizenship/civics education. It also throws light on the on-going tensions building up around the clash of liberal and illiberal ideologies that are embedded in the One Country, Two Systems political order in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Curriculum Inquiry is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2018.1435972]

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.]

This qualitative multiple-case study research attempts to shed light on controversies associated with National Education in Hong Kong by exploring the perceptions of National Education of secondary school teachers. Since the resumption of Hong Kong's sovereignty by China in 1997, national identification with Chinese has been a policy priority. There has been an increase of National Education which aims at cultivating a Chinese national identity. This study used convenient sampling method on 10 purposively chosen sample of experienced Hong Kong citizenship education teachers, with in-depth interviews as data collection method. The findings reveal that teachers perceive National Education with different aims and teaching methods, and knowledge transmission is highlighted in National Education. There are patriotic, affective, critical thinking approaches, experiential learning and reflective teaching in National Education. Apart from arguing for different pedagogies and assessments in teaching National Education, this paper also calls for recognizing global identity and global citizenship education.
[Copyright © Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong].

This article argues for reconstructing Hong Kong’s civic education in the post-national education era, and puts forward some rethinking on conceptual, curricular and pedagogical matters. This article starts with a brief critical review of the development of school civic education in Hong Kong to set the context. This is followed by a discussion of the MNE controversy. It points out that the shelving of the mandatory subject and reversion to depoliticized school-based civic education is inadequate to address the needs of civic education in Hong Kong. Finally, this article argues in favour of the type of civic education that aims at cultivating politically literate, critically thinking and actively participating citizens, with particular reference to the Civic Education Guidelines from Civil Society. This set of unofficial Guidelines proposes that Hong Kong’s civic education has to be reconstructed both in conceptual, curricular and pedagogical terms accordingly. Hopefully, this article will shed light on the development of civic education in societies that are facing similar challenges in the process of democratization and an upheaval of civic consciousness of the citizenry.
[Copyright © 2015 Intellect Ltd Article.]