This chapter aims to explore the novelty and utility of political economy discourse, termed “neo-statism,” as an analytical lens for comparative research in higher education. Analysis is framed within the context of Hong Kong’s transition from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region under China’s sovereignty, and its shifting academic paradigms from a more or less spontaneous philosophy rooted in liberal capitalist economy to embracing neo-statism, which involves market-conforming and state-sponsored approaches to economic and social restructuring whereby the state regulates higher education in support of national integration and global power projection. The statist regulation depends heavily on its deployment of discursive legitimacy, strategic distribution of resources, organizational synergy, and elite cohesion articulated through higher education policy, research projects, and cross-border academic exchange and cooperation. The Hong Kong case suggests that comparative research in higher education should advance from the methodological aspects of the comparative approach to exploring wider theoretical spectrum, for understanding emerging politico-economic factors shaping academic paradigm in comparative contexts. Copyright © 2024 The authors.

This study explores Chinese secondary students’ intentions for future political participation drawing on samples of students from Mainland China and Hong Kong. Political participation examined in this study includes both conventional participation (legal protest, electoral participation and informal participation) and unconventional participation (illegal protest). Previous studies of adoles-cents’ political participation intentions have mainly been concerned with democratic regimes while this study focuses on authoritarian and hybrid regimes, such as those in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Adopting a comparative and quantitative methodology, this study utilized secondary data analysis with large samples. This study found that students from both societies showed a weak endorsement of illegal protest but a strong endorsement of all three types of conventional participation. Mainland Chinese students demonstrated a stronger endorsement of conventional participation than their Hong Kong counterparts. To understand inner-group difference, students were clustered into four groups (Alienated-Radical Participators, Supportive-Active Participators, Loyal-Minimal Participators and Critical-Active Participators) based on their political attitudes (political trust and political efficacy) and intentions for future political participation. Results suggest that Hong Kong had more Alienated-Radical Participators while Mainland China had more Supportive-Active Participators. In general, Mainland Chinese students were more regime-supporting and Hong Kong students were more regime-challenging. Copyright © 2023 Intellect Ltd Article.

港澳兩地的公民教育事關“一國兩制”戰略方針，對增強學生的國家觀念與歸屬感有關鍵作用。分別將港澳地區的公民教育課程改革歷程劃分為5個階段，並從政策背景、主體、願景、內容與實施效果幾個層面進行探討。對比分析港澳公民教育課程改革，發現回歸前兩地均實行非政治公民教育；回歸前後兩地均開展公民政治教育；2002年後香港公民教育名實相悖，而澳門地區持續深化愛國主義教育。最後，發掘港澳公民教育存異的原因與課程領導權、學校落實、教師及教材相關。 Copyright © 2022 廣東省茂名市社會科學界聯合會.

In the face of the rising tension between Hong Kong and mainland China, Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam blamed the city's education system for its inability to develop a sense of 'I am Chinese' national identity and vowed to step up 'national education' from preschool. This article explores how 188 young preschool teachers perceived their national identity and viewed the applicability of national education in Hong Kong preschools. Data were collected using both quantitative and qualitative measures. The findings showed that even though the participants strongly resisted their Chinese identity, they agreed that national education could be introduced in preschools if it would be rendered rational and apolitical. Nevertheless, they suspected that the administration's motive behind national education was political indoctrination. They also noted several pedagogical difficulties. Finally, the implications are discussed against the changing socio-political context, serving as lessons for local and international readers. Copyright © 2022 Routledge.

Purpose: This article explores the roles and the expertise of Hong Kong in the internationalization of public administration education.Design/methodology/approach: The methodology is based on the data of 5 internationalization initiatives of one Hong Kong university with its internationalization partners in Macau, Korea, Australia, Russia and Finland. The data obtained lasted for a period of 18 months, from September 2019 to March 2021.Findings: The finding of this study revealed that (1) there are 5 “pubtropolis roles” (roles of a public administration metropolis) of Hong Kong in the internationalization of public administration education in China, Asia, Asia-Pacific, Belt-and-Road and Europe. The findings also revealed that (2) Hong Kong served as a pubtropolis with its “5C” expertise in curriculum innovation, customized training, competence framework, competence assessment and comparative policy.Research limitations/implications: As the methodology of this article is based on the data of 5 internationalization initiatives of one Hong Kong university by one academia only, further studies can be conducted at department, faculty or university level for multiple academia.Practical implications: There are two practical implications: (1) The more the roles of a city, the broader the view in its internationalization of public administration initiatives; (2) Hong Kong could further tap on its expertise in “5C” in public administration: curriculum innovation, customized training, competence framework, competence assessment and comparative policy to exert its “geo-management” power.Social implications: This article argues that public services can be improved by the setting up of “Sabbatical Leave Scheme for Internationalization of Public Administration” by respective governments to sustain the impacts observed.Originality/valueIt is from the author's original work. Copyright © 2022 Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

This study, adopting the Foucauldian lenses of citizenship, investigates how a group of students understand the prevailing social discourses and how such understanding and perceptions influence students’ sense of citizenship and coping strategies. Drawing on in-depth individual interviews with 28 participants from six universities in Hong Kong, the findings suggest that multiple factors have impacts on the university students’ sense of citizenship, including the media as technologies to shape citizenship, the essentialized ideological differences as an apparatus of intervention to shape and act upon individuals, and the legitimacy and discordance of opinions among individuals within both physical and virtual communities. The participants were found to gradually develop an awareness of the discursive construction of the social. They were found to search for their sense of citizenship through (a) opting for one ideological stance and/or keeping silent to avoid being othered within the social discourses existing at the social, community, and family levels; (b) adopting different coping strategies when dealing with their confusion towards conflicting comments; or (c) developing news reading literacy and coming to the realization of the role media plays in discursively constructing new citizens and exercising influence over existing and potential members of communities. The implications of the findings for curriculum design and policy making to develop support measures to facilitate students’ positive learning and whole-person development are discussed. Copyright © 2022 Springer.

This article investigates types of citizenship education in selected schools in Hong Kong with different overarching affiliations (pro-China vs. pro-democracy). After examining schools’ policies (e.g., sister school of China school), we selected four pro-China and two pro-democracy schools. As a highly diverse society, citizenship education in Hong Kong is key to the formation of a ‘good citizen’. To better understand what a ‘good citizen’ means in this context, we interviewed ten teachers, four principals and four vice-principals at six secondary schools. We focused our interviews on key themes around citizenship, schools influence and media influence. These interviews showed that laissez-faire school staff reported acting as facilitators who emphasized knowledge, social concerns and norms of ‘good citizens’ to their students. Mediate diversity staff reported helping students integrate different perspectives. School mission staff reported supporting student engagement via citizen responsibilities and political processes; while pro-China schools emphasized a national China identity, pro-democracy schools emphasized an international view. Staff from all of these schools reported that media negatively influenced students’ values and perspectives. To reduce students’ confirmation bias (only seeking evidence to support the pre-existing views), teachers in all schools taught critical thinking skills and media literacy. The data showed that understanding how schools can nurture student-citizens amid teachers’ concerns around negative media influence can help inform instruction and policies in schools regardless of their affiliation. Copyright © 2022 Intellect Ltd.

Experiential learning can take many forms, but in all cases, teachers play a necessary role in the process. Consequently, nurturing teachers to be critically minded reflective professionals is paramount. This study uses two case studies to identify both the difficulties encountered when offering experiential learning to learners and the advantages to be gained from the process. One case study involves a teacher guiding Hong Kong students in experiential learning which took place at a national level in Mainland China. His approaches aligned with Justice Oriented and Charity Oriented. The second case study concerns a teacher who herself undertook experiential learning at a global level in Africa. Her approaches aligned with Personal Development Oriented and Justice Oriented. Their journeys are described in order to add to the fairly recent knowledge field regarding experiential learning and to help teachers become more skilled at managing experiential learning, particularly outside the local context. We suggest to add facilitating and hindering factors into the two dimensional typologies of experiential learning for civic education. The new three dimensional typologies of experiential learning would provide a more comprehensive conceptual framework to guide teachers and researchers in organizing and conducting experiential learning activities and studies. Copyright © 2021 Association for Moral Education.

This presentation aims at sharing the quantitative and qualitative findings of a pilot project on promoting the perspectives of teaching digital citizenship education in Hong Kong secondary schools. This pilot project also aims at supporting in-service teachers in professional development on curriculum development and teaching methods. Twenty teachers from seven Hong Kong secondary schools joined this pilot project and attended professional development training workshops in the school year of 2019/20. The training workshops delivered several digital citizenship related concepts to the teachers, such as the meanings of digital citizenship, media literacy, digital commerce, digital footprint, digital etiquette, and cyberbullying. Our professional team supported teachers to design their school-based digital citizenship curriculum for trial teaching and to discuss feasible teaching methods after the training workshops. By conducting pre-and-post quantitative tests after the training workshops, there is a significant statistical difference in preference of teaching digital citizenship in terms of digital law, digital commerce, and digital security and safety. Teachers are more convinced and willing to teach digital citizenship education topics after received teacher training, especially on digital commerce and digital law. Next, the qualitative interviews conducted after observing their classroom teaching revealed there is an urgent need to equip students with media literacy, e-commerce, and digital security in a social situation affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially since there are fake stories on social and political issues. In fact, people are increasingly used to buy daily necessities, obtain social and political information, and make judgements through the internet and social media, and they could be exposed to risks of personal data, fake information and stories, and online fraud unconsciously. Suggestions are made on reviewing the secondary school curriculum