Secondary school students' views of climate change in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Though there has been an increased focus on climate change in Hong Kong's educational policy and curriculum over the last decade, little is known about the impact of curricular implementation on young people's environmental and climate change-related views, attitudes, awareness, or behaviors. This paper examines the state of climate change education in Hong Kong based on findings from a multi-pronged investigation. The main research questions addressed are: (1) what are Hong Kong secondary students’ understandings of and attitudes towards climate change issues? and (2) is there any significant difference between students studying in local and international schools in Hong Kong? The paper provides a content analysis of climate change curriculum in local and international schools. It reports on a large-scale survey of international and local school students’ environmental attitudes, and on qualitative interviews of their awareness and behaviors related to climate change. We conclude with reflections on the implications of this study for climate change education in Hong Kong in the future and vital areas for further research.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change education
• Hong Kong
• secondary schooling
• environmental attitudes
• climate change

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Monica Soong for assistance with translation, as well as research assistants Sean Cain, Emma Brown, and Tim Cheng. This research was funded by the (grant number ), University of Hong Kong.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Seed Funding Programme for Basic Research [grant number 201410159031].