In neoliberal contexts, schools are accountable for educational quality, and effectiveness is measured by objective indicators, such as examination scores. Schools tend to become committed to preparing students for examinations rather than all-round and complete personal development, making it difficult for students to identify the meaningful connections between themselves and learning activities, and, in turn, resulting in negative learning experiences. Marxist theorists refer to this condition as alienated learning, that is, the internal contradiction between the learner’s self and learning labour. In contrast, curricular reforms across the globe have promoted a progressive pedagogy that values engaging students in the full range of life experiences in education, enabling them to overcome alienated learning. Yet the effects of curricular reforms are still unclear. The present study sheds light on the extent to which reforms permit students to confront alienated learning. To achieve this aim, the study investigated 44 Hong Kong secondary and undergraduate students with photovoice methods. Its findings suggest that the effects of these curricular reforms are minimal, though they offer opportunities for students to explore their interests. Many students will still experience alienated learning; their interests continue to be subordinated to examinations and even devalued by their schools and teachers. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

This paper reports on a process of curriculum innovation for a pedagogy course with a focus on the perceptual gaps between teacher educators and student teachers. As a collaborative inquiry by teacher educators, it was a response to government-led education reform for a new subject at senior secondary level - Liberal Studies - which aimed to cultivate citizenship with humanitarian values. Observing critical discourse and community learning as desirable pedagogical principles to nurture a new generation of teachers for social awareness and commitment to citizenship, the curriculum innovation began with recognition of student teachers' lack of readiness to embrace such learning orientations due to the pre-university approach to learning for examination performance. The challenges were met with the design of assessment tasks that shaped independent thinking and collaborative inquiry, while building relationships in multiple human and conceptual dimensions. Through analysis of a flow of episodes, the paper captures the meaning of the processes of liberation to learn, and concludes with depiction of a growth model for transformation of relationships amidst a performance-related assessment culture.
[Copyright of Education as Change is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16823206.2014.882267]