Citizenship education has become a much emphasized area in the curriculum in many countries at the turn of the century. There was the experimentation of different modes of citizenship education. This study compared the perception of two groups of student teachers who had experienced different modes of citizenship education since childhood. There were interviews from 1997 to 2000 of two groups of student teachers each numbered about 45. One was from a teacher education institute in Hong Kong and the other was from a teacher education institute in South China. In the Hong Kong case, the qualitative data was triangulated with quantitative survey data collected annually from 1997 to 1999 of samples numbered about 270. Findings revealed that in spite of the different modes of citizenship education , student teachers agreed that the school was an important agent in influencing their conception of citizenship. However, the relative impact of the school depended on a number of random factors like the type of ethos of the school and the type of teachers students happened to be exposed to. Moreover, there existed other socializing agents that either played more important or equal important roles in shaping conception of citizenship. Implication on curriculum development and modes of citizenship education were discussed.

In this paper, I have inquired into the issue of identity in civic education in Hong Kong in the face of the 1997 political handover through an incident of my personal experience. This is a narrative self study in which the perceptions of civic educators of the issue of identity education for 1997 were revealed. The story of preparing a Catholic civic education project has helped show the complexity of the issue of identity education in Hong Kong. Three major observations were made in the inquiry. First, there was a general acceptance among civic educators of the pluralistic identities of Hong Kong Chinese. Second, the contention aroused over the issue of identity in Hong Kong during the transitional period did not lie in its plurality, but in the relative importance to be assigned to each of the identities, in particular to the national identity of Hong Kong Chinese. Third, a major concern over nationalistic education was focused on the approaches to be adopted in inculcating national identity.

The objective of this paper is to discuss the results of two case studies conducted in two Hong Kong primary schools where there are a large number of Newly Arrived Children (NAC) from China. In the last twenty years or so researchers in many countries have paid more attention to multicultural education as the number of immigrant children in schools in these countries has risen. Though in Hong Kong the NAC are also Chinese, their background and culture is quite different from that of local children. Focusing on the aspect of citizenship education, the researcher will undertake qualitative studies to examine the strategies adopted by these schools and the problems encountered. It is hoped that the research will help to foster the understanding of various aspects of citizenship education in these schools.

Researchers in comparative education have suggested different ways in which their field of study can be enhanced by considering units of analysis at different levels rather than focusing on a single level such as the nation-state (Bray and Thomas, 1995; Torney-Purta and Barber, 2011). The study reported here seeks to contribute to this area of interest to comparative researchers. It does so by identifying groups for comparison that are not predefined in advance of any analysis but which emerge during the analytic process itself. Drawing on data from ICCS 2009 (Schulz et al., 2010), the intentions of 14-year-old students in five Asian societies to participate in future civic related activities are analyzed with a focus on the students’ responses to specific questions. The results show that there is considerable variation within each of these societies when it comes to type of future civic engagement. At one end of the spectrum are groups of students who are classified as “Radical Participators” while at the other there are the “Minimal Participators” and there are other clusters of students in between. Groups such as these exist in each society, although not in the same proportions. The implications of these results are discussed, especially with reference to how comparative research can be enhanced by identifying groups through person-centered analytic techniques.
[Copyright © 2015 The Author(s).]

There have been discussions on what is and whether we have 'global citizenship', since the focus of citizenship education has always been on the nation-state's political sovereignty and on citizens' rights and responsibilities. Nevertheless, globalization has challenged the notion of citizenship and citizenship education. Schools and NGOs in Hong Kong have engaged themselves in global citizenship education after the education reform in early 2000. This paper attempts to characterize global citizenship education in Hong Kong, which shows learning themes such as moral obligation to the world, "learning to live together" through understanding and respect for other peoples and cultures, and concerns for peace and human rights. Hence, as a dynamic process, the school-based curriculum such as project learning and civic education has continually revised their goals.