Multicultural education in many industrialized, diverse societies aims to positively represent and include minority groups in the curriculum. Though there is some discussion of this aim in Hong Kong curriculum, the positive inclusion of minorities in subjects dealing with social life remains minimal. This paper aims to defend the need for multicultural education in Hong Kong by comparing the sociological and representational challenges there with those of other societies with traditions of multicultural education. Using comparative methods this project provides sociological and historical context to multicultural education programs in diverse societies including Canada, the United States, France, Japan, and South Africa. The historical backdrop of these countries will be considered as well as the nature of their multicultural education. Hong Kong faces unique dilemmas in developing multicultural education, including the problem of prejudice toward mainland Chinese people, and the common notion that to be a Hong Konger one must be both (a) of Chinese (Han) ethnicity, and (b) Chinese (Cantonese and/or Mandarin) speaking. This paper will examine these and related issues in the context of the broader comparative discussion, also considering other essential challenges to the concept of multicultural education. Copyright © 2013 The CESHK Annual Conference.

1. Objectives or purposes of the paper.The primary purpose of this paper is to analyze how religion is portrayed and explored within the Liberal Studies curriculum in Hong Kong schools. Liberal Studies is the main place for social studies and moral and civic education in Hong Kong today, as one of four required subjects (alongside math, English, and Chinese). Liberal Studies aims in part “to help students appreciate and respect diversity in cultures and views in a pluralistic society.” However, it is also a new part of curriculum which teachers can find hard to implement. This paper specifically analyzes how religion is discussed and described in Liberal Studies curriculum materials including major textbooks used, as textbooks are thus far often directing the course of classroom teaching in Liberal Studies.2. Main perspective or theoretical/conceptual framework used.A comparative multicultural framework undergirds this project. The researcher’s past experience in multicultural religious education in the United States informs the choice of topic. Though both the United States and Hong Kong are proudly diverse places with strong traditions of religious freedom, Hong Kong lacks the tradition of common schooling of many Western societies and its aim to help students understand and assimilate with one another. As a result, the multicultural content may not be as celebratory about diversity there. Additionally, in Hong Kong it is understood that individuals can participate in various religious traditions at the same time, while in Western societies people tend to be more exclusive in their religious belief or unbelief. Though comparisons of multiculturalism in education are a backdrop to this project, its ultimate aim remains to consider whether students are learning what they should learn to understand religiously diverse others from the Liberal Studies curriculum, from an intercultural-multicultural stance which values dialogue and initial respect and good faith in the midst

Many are concerned with education’s role in preparing societies to meet challenges related to globalization. Among various educational aims related to globalization is that of developing in young people a critical awareness of the lives of disadvantaged people, in their communities and across the world, to become compassionate, or socially responsible, ‘global citizens’. This general interest is shared by policy makers envisioning global or twenty-first century citizenship education, as well as by philosophers of education and social justice-oriented teachers. However, the aim of such education or its most appropriate pedagogy or schooling context is not always spelled out, owing to the controversial nature of various interpretations and recommendations related to poverty and injustice today (i.e., economic redistribution versus austerity; privatisation versus socialism).In this essay, I ask whether altruism can be usefully elaborated as an educational aim for global citizenship and social responsibility. First, I examine philosophical treatments of altruism such as by Thomas Nagel and Lawrence Blum, and consider the educational implications of significant features of a useful definition of the concept. Next, I juxtapose these views with those of Confucian and Buddhist scholars, to consider whether a universal value of altruism for contexts of west and east is plausible. Finally, I apply my conceptualization of altruism to Hong Kong curriculum, providing a concrete context for considering altruism as a useful educational aim. I end by highlighting the tension of teaching for altruism in settings (unlike Hong Kong) where moral education is contentious, while citizenship education is not. Copyright © 2013 PESA CONFERENCE.

This paper examines the gender components in the Hong Kong New Senior Secondary Liberal Studies (NSSLS) and evaluates whether the various discursive construction of gender converge to education of gender equity. Using Reisigl and Wodak (2009)'s discourse-historical approach to critical discourse analysis, the study analyzes the gender discourses in the Liberal Studies Curriculum and Assessment Guide (secondary 4-6) (2007). It is found that inconsistent and contradictory conceptions of gender are existent in the curriculum document. I therefore call upon policy makers to warn against the nuanced ways in which gender inequality can be implicitly embedded in curriculum documents. The study is the first empirical study that examines gender politics in secondary general education in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2016 American Educational Research Association.

This paper investigates the application of Sydney School genre-based approach (Rose and Martin, 2012) for developing critical literacies in L2 settings. Genre-based pedagogy was originally developed in Australia to provide disadvantaged learners with more accessible instruction of academic literacy and its potential to improve students' critical thinking skills remains considerably under-investigated. With comparative case studies of one Secondary 6 class in a Thai bilingual secondary school, one Secondary 4 class in an EMI school in Hong Kong, and one Secondary 6 class in a Content and Language Integrated Learning program (CLIL) in Sweden, where English is not the medium of everyday communication, the paper explores the affordances of the genre-based pedagogy to improve secondary students’ critical literacies in L2 English regarding gender issues in the EMI Social/Liberal Studies curricula. Results indicate that a) the Sydney School genre-based pedagogy is effective for enhancing students' ability to express critical thoughts in L2 English in the three cases and b) it is important to adapt Sydney School genre-based pedagogy to the specificity of the L2 settings. The paper therefore proposes that more lexical and grammatical support should be offered to ESL secondary students for development of critical thinking in the social science classrooms. Copyright © 2015 The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. All Rights Reserved.

In line with Cameron (2005)’s notion of postmodern feminism, the paper explores the ways in which senior secondary boys and girls and teachers construct and position gender through actions, texts, talk and gestures in Hong Kong Senior Secondary Liberal Studies, a core school subject aiming to develop students' analytic capacity on social issues including gender. The paper draws upon discourse analysis to show that when everyday classroom practices are viewed in relation to multiple fields of actions, i.e. the societal, the institutional, and in the micro dynamics of classroom interaction, gender comes into view in a variety of ways. The study was guided by the following research question:What gendered discourses are co-constructed, negotiated or/and resisted by the Liberal Studies curriculum, school teachers and students?To this end, school ethnography was conducted in the Liberal Studies subject in two Hong Kong schools for two years. The study had three stages and triangulated data from official curriculum documents, semi-structured interviews, classroom observation, and students' writing assignments.In the first stage, interviews were conducted with teachers and students and student writing was collected in both schools. In the second stage, gender education lessons in Liberal Studies were video-taped in both schools. In the third stage, interview data and writing samples were collected from the same research participants. It is found that mainstream prototypes of femininity and masculinity are still perpetuated in the Liberal Studies classrooms, such as gender duality and traditional gender norms, which appears to defeat the subject's purpose to encourage diversity of gender subject positions and critical reflection on traditional gender values. The paper highlights how classroom language and literary events may subtly reproduce gender inequality in schooling contexts and suggests how teachers can create heteroglossic discursive space to nurture gender equity among