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.

This study explored the effects of the classroom learning environment of a Liberal Studies course on the critical thinking skills and disposition of 3,869 Grade 12 students in Hong Kong. Through combining both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, a two-level model of the classroom learning environment for critical thinking with seven dimensions (i.e., Student Negotiation, Challenging Task, Multiple Perspectives, Shared Control, Skeptical Voice, Uncertainty and Personal Relevance) at the first level and three broader aspects (i.e., Pedagogy, Relationship and Content) at the second was generated. The correlation and structural equation modelling analyses indicated that the classroom learning environment had a stronger relationship with critical thinking disposition than skills. Structural equation modelling analysis also indicated a mediation effect of critical thinking disposition between the classroom learning environment and critical thinking skills. It is suggested that different approaches be combined so as to achieve a balanced development of students’ critical thinking skills and disposition.
[Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V.]

Purpose: This paper aims to provide data on the self-perceived state of sustainability consciousness of first-year Hong Kong students. Design/methodology/approach: Within a mixed-method research design framework, the authors conducted 787 questionnaires and collected 989 reflective narratives of first-year students of a university in Hong Kong, who were enrolled in the General Education course. Findings: Attributed to students’ immersion in compulsory sustainability education modules within liberal studies programs in secondary through higher education (HE), the quantitative results revealed an increase in the self-perceived knowledge and behavioral aspects of sustainability consciousness of Hong Kong students and their low engagement in sustainability-related civic, campus or action groups. However, qualitative results revealed three aspects of the 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. Originality/value: The study provides insights into the challenge of implementation of the United Nations-based sustainable development model in the Hong Kong educational system through the formal liberal studies curriculum. It advances the field by constructing a momentum for conceptual changes in sustainability education research toward design of the non-linear and culturally sensitive frameworks for sustainability implementation in HE. This allows to utilize universities’ unique capacities for fostering students’ sustainability consciousness in a continuous and systemic way.
[Copyright © 2017 Tamara Savelyeva and William Douglas.]