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.]

Integration or inclusive education is a hot issue and a global trend. Different countries value the policy of integration or inclusive education through whole school approach but may be with different progress on the track. This essay intends to compare the education system of Finland and Hong Kong as any change in the general education system shapes the mechanism of and the provisions to the special education. The scholarly study of other education system will help us to get deeper understanding of our own system and so can work for its improvement (Bray, 2004). The approach of comparison will be adapted from Bereday’s Model for Undertaking Comparative Studies.
[Copyright © 2007 Canadian Center of Science and Education.]

The purpose of this study was to determine whether physical activity, percent body fat, and eating habits differ in subjects from two different regions, with different social cultural and racial background, but similar in education level. 257 Hong Kong college students (87 males and 170 females; all Chinese), and 213 Malaysian college students (101 males and 112 females; 210 Malays), aged between 18 to 25 year-old participated in this study. Physical activity and eating habits were evaluated by a self-completed questionnaire. Subjects' percent body fat was determined by a body fat monitor (Omron). It was found that Hong Kong subjects had significant (p<0.01) higher overall mean percent body fat (22.02 ± 5.23% versus 19.78 ± 6.83%, Mean ± SD), and were less active physically when compared to Malaysian students. However, Hong Kong subjects were more particular with breakfast, lunch and dinner compared to Malaysian subjects. Interestingly, Hong Kong students snacked frequently and indulged in fast food compared to Malaysian students. The data obtained suggest that both physical activity and eating habits have some influence on the percent body fat in subjects from these two different regions.
[Copyright © 2003 Verlag Karl Hofmann.]

This paper reports the implementation of a project designed to involve in service teachers in peer support for the learning of the core values of personal and social education so as to raise self-esteem, to enhance co-operation, to promote rationality and empathy. Project participants were 27 in-service teachers attending an undergraduate program of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Project evaluation reveals that the project succeeded in generating for the teacher participants emotional, academic, social, technical, and extended supports, and that the benefits of the project also spilled over to their relationships with their primary school pupils and daily lives. Research and practical implications are discussed.
[Copyright © 2003 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

Teacher efficacy has been shown to be an important variable predicting teachers' capacity to contribute to reform efforts. Given the role that future teachers are expected to play in educational reform, this research aimed to measure the teacher efficacy of samples of pre-service teachers in Hong Kong and Macao using the Chinese version of the 12-item Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (C-TSE). A cross-cultural perspective was important because it provided that opportunity to test the robustness of the instrument and to look at broader socio-cultural issues of teacher efficacy in two locations through the use of C-TSE. Sixty-six Hong Kong pre-service teachers and 66 Macao pre-service teachers participated in the study. In general, Hong Kong pre-service teachers were found to be more efficacious than the Macao cohort. However, the factor structures of the scale were not the same for the sub-samples. It is suggested that, on the one hand, programme characteristics and/or local cultures need to be considered when interpreting these results. On the other hand, the full 24-item scale, with more items that envisage and reflect particular classroom tasks and situations, could be useful to explore the dimensionality of pre-service teachers' sense of efficacy. This work contributes to an understanding of issues and problems relating to the measure of Chinese pre-service teachers' efficacy beliefs.
[Copyright © 2006 De La Salle University, Philippines.]

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.]