The changes in Hong Kong students’ perceptions of the ‘good citizen’: Implications for implementing civic education curriculum

ABSTRACT

To advance the implementation of civic education curriculum, understanding what young people perceive as a “good citizen” is of great importance. The current study takes a quantitative approach to analyse the results of three civic education studies conducted by The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in 1999, 2009, and 2016, while combining the results of qualitative in-depth interviews with Hong Kong students, to explore the changes in Hong Kong students’ perceptions of the “good citizen” since the handover. The study found that the changes in Hong Kong students’ understanding of the “good citizen” have followed an “inverted-V” (rising in the beginning and then subsequently falling) trend. It is largely a reflection of debate between pro-democracy and pro-China camps under Hong Kong’ hybrid regime.

KEYWORDS:

• “Good citizen”
• civic education
• civil obligations
• patriotic obligations
• political obligations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The article is fully supported by The Project of 2017 Chinese Ministry of Education’s Humanities and Social Sciences Research: “A study on the integration of national education into Mandarin subject in Hong Kong” (Project No. 17YJC880052); The Project of 2017 Chinese Ministry of Education’s Humanities and Social Sciences Research: “A study on the integration of national education into Mandarin subject in Hong Kong” [Project No. 17YJC880052].

Notes on contributors

Hui Li

Hui Li got her Ph.D. from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The Education University of Hong Kong. She is now an assistant professor in the School of Education, Guangzhou University. Her research area is the comparison of civic education across Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China. Email: [email protected]

Xiaoxue Kuang

Xiaoxue Kuang, Ph.D of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The Education University of Hong Kong. She is now an assistant professor in the School of Education (Normal School), Dong Guan University of Technology. Her research areas are civic education, Educational statistics. Email: [email protected]

Mingyue Liang

Mingyue Liang, Ph.D of the Beijing Normal University. She is now an associate professor in the Teachers college of Ningbo University. Her research interesting is moral and national education.