The paper reviews the issues and challenges presented by a new emphasis on civic education in the wake of Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereighty after 155 years of British colonial rule. After providing a historical overview of the development of civic education in Hong Kong, the paper focuses on the implementation of the new Guidelines for Civic Education in Schools and the introduction of a new subject of civic education for junior secondary schools in 1998. It then examines the implications of the proposed changes in curriculum for the preparation of competent of civic education teachers at Hong Kong Institute of Education, the major provider of teachers in Hong Kong.
[Copyright © 1998 Pacific Circle Consortium for Education.]

This paper starts with a broad historical overview of educational reforms and then focuses on those specific to civic education. Lastly we look at the implementation of policy, and examine the effect of the current political climate in the Special Administrative Region (SAR) on civic education.
[Copyright © 2002 Pacific Circle Consortium for Education.]

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.]