Re-examining teaching and learning in citizenship education: a tale of two Chinese cities

ABSTRACT

This article compares and re-examines citizenship education (CE) teaching and learning in Hong Kong (HK) and Guangzhou (GZ), China. It questions two stereotypical perceptions—that China schools indoctrinate students, and that CE lessons in HK are more open than those in mainland China. Data are drawn from some 30 lesson observations, 1,200 questionnaires, and 80 teacher/student interviews from six sampled HK and GZ schools. The study used NVivo to examine qualitative data, and employed hierarchical linear modelling with the help of SPSS and AMOS to analyse quantitative data. The findings suggest both cities are similar in terms of teaching/learning CE, due to globalization and domestic changes, and have similar CE conditions more conducive to open pedagogies (e.g., inquiry-based approaches) than indoctrination. HK’s greater socioeconomic openness does not ensure its CE is more open than GZ’s, for pedagogical and non-pedagogical reasons.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship education
• pedagogies
• indoctrination
• inquiry-based approach
• China

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank their research assistants, the study participants, and The University of Hong Kong’s Research Output Prize and Centre for Educational Leadership, without whom this study would have been impossible. We also thank the journal editor and reviewers for their comments and suggestions, which have bolstered this article. Part of the Guangzhou data in this article was previously reported in Law and Xu (2017).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. While space limitations prevent the inclusion of several statistical tables, readers can contact the authors for more information.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The University of Hong Kong [Research Output Prize and Centre for Educational Leadership’s research fund].

Notes on contributors

Wing-Wah Law

Wing-Wah Law is professor in the Faculty of Education at The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China; e-mail: [email protected]. His main research areas include education and development, globalization and citizenship education, education policy and legislation, education reform and Chinese societies, music education and social change, and culture and school leadership.

Shuqin Xu

Shuqin Xu is a lecturer in the School of Government at Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China; email: [email protected]. Her main research areas include school leadership and citizenship education, curriculum of citizenship education, education and social change in China.