This paper examines the perceptions of 250 first year student teachers in HKIEd regarding how their educational ideologies affect the effectiveness of the newly designed and implemented Lifeskills Program. Focused on the rationale and premises of Liberal Ideologies, the program witnesses an emergence of a robust sense of 'Liberalism' in a period of political change in Hong Kong. The Lifeskills Program represents a shift from a traditional approach and entails putting liberal learning and teaching theories into practice. The perceptions of the student teachers who have been identified as having distinct educational ideologies toward these changes are to be cautiously investigated to explore the program effectiveness. Equally crucial is to study and draw conclusions from the major findings, particularly concerning the explicit perceptions and beliefs revealed by those student teachers preoccupied with educational ideologies different from the Liberal one, and to place greater emphasis on helping them make the transition to a more liberal orientation.

The paper reports a study on the political socialisation of a patriotic (left wing /pro-Beijing) school in Hong Kong. Well before the lowering of the Union Jack on 1 July 1997, there had been a number of leftist secondary schools, which maintained very close relationship with mainland China and rendered habitual support to Beijing government. These patriotic schools have been relatively very political in nature, as compared with the political tone that featured other schools. The researcher has been allowed to conduct a qualitative research study in one of the patriotic schools. Beside consulting the written documents and archives of the school, detailed interviews have been conducted with the following parties, namely teachers, students, the principal, the supervisor, past students and parents, so as to know the kind of political socialisation the students received in the school. The paper aims at exploring how students in the school will learn their political knowledge particularly the understanding of political affairs in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the People's Republic of China.

With the return of its sovereignty to the People's Republic of China (PRC) on 1 July 1997, Hong Kong attained a new political status as a Special Administrative Region. Hong Kong students, under British rule, had long been received de-politicised education, and a sense of belonging to China was limited to the cognitive domain of Chinese history. The ideal of promoting national identity, underpinned in the current civic education curriculum, is proving to be a difficult task. While much literature has documented how curriculum-based educational practices fail to instil students with such an identity, little study has been undertaken to suggest effective alternatives and to examine how they work. This paper reports a study investigating the impact of study trips on developing students' national identity. Through observation and interviews, it takes an in-depth look into students' experience, into how they identify with a Chinese identity. Results indicate that though the study trips help to nurture the cognitive and affective dimensions of national identity, there are limits and possibilities involved. This paper concludes with reminders which teachers should have taken into account when thinking of using co-curricular activities to address the legitimate need of fostering nationalistic education.
[Copyright © Nanyang Technological University & National Institute of Education.]

Evidence obtained from focus group interviews supports a conception of political socialization as an active process where individuals interact and negotiate with socialization agents in different contexts to construct their political realities. The citizenship understandings of socially or politically active students in this study were basically eclectic, including conservative views about doing the best in their diverse roles as well as more radical orientations, such as participating in demonstrations and protests in opposition to unreasonable laws. Issues based teaching, experiential learning, and teachers with credibility have been identified as significant political socializing factors for active democratic citizenship. Such a finding has significant implications for teacher education.
[Copyright © 2006 citizED.]

In Hong Kong, the Guidelines on Civic Education for Schools (1996) recommended nationalistic education as one of the five aspects of civic educatioin. As an aspect of civic education, nationalistic education should serve both a cognitive mission of "preparing critical thinking, responsible, participating, multidimensional citizens" and an affective mission of "instilling the sense of national identity, love and loyalty to the nation state and patriotism". These two missions are in potential conflict. In order to achieve both missions, an appropriate balance between cognitive and affective teaching approaches is necessary. Two commonly adopted affective approaches used for the affective function are positive and negative approaches. This paper is an exploratory report of case studies on the use and misuse of affective approaches in nationalistic edcuation by some civic educators in Hong Kong secondary schools. It was found that in-depth and systematic reflection was needed to balance the two potential conflicting missions. Moreover, it was also found that if handled inappropriately, a positive approach might lead to bias and indoctrination while the extreme manifestation of a negative approach might even lead to 'education for hatred'. Both are contradictory to the cognitive function of preparing critical thinking citizens.
[Copyright © 2003 Pacific Circle Consortium for Education.]

This article argues that the development of civic education in Hong Kong can be divided into three phases chronologically: (1) before 1984: “depoliticization” by the state and the school; (2) 1984-1997: “politicization” of the intended curriculum; and (3) 1997 onwards: “re-depoliticization” of civic education and official confirmation of nationalistic education. In general, for phases one and two, the development is described as moving from de-politicization to politicization, in response to the political development of Hong Kong from a British colony towards the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of People's Republic of China. The article continues by exploring the third phase in detail with reference to the official document: Learning to Learn: Life-long Learning and Whole-person Development and the official speeches of the Chief Executive, Tung Chee Hwa. A phenomenon of re-depoliticization of civic education is identified, together with a strong upheaval of nationalistic education. This leads civic education “back to square one"—"re-depoliticized”. The article concludes by highlighting that the development of civic education in Hong Kong is a typical example of how civic education reflects the political context of the society.
[Copyright © Nanyang Technological University & National Institute of Education.]