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Liberal Studies (LS), as a compulsory subject for senior secondary students (S4-6) who sit for the Diploma of Secondary Education, was introduced in 2007. There has been increased discussion about merits of the subject. This paper was written based on a study the researchers conducted with LS teachers and students to probe the role LS may play in relation to civic education. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The study employed a qualitative methodology and a series of in-depth interviews were carried out with real LS teachers and students to tap their views about LS from their lived experience.

Findings suggest that LS, if conducted appropriately, can be one of vehicles of civic education particularly in such matters related to enhancing social awareness and the ability to partake in public affair debates. It can also be of potential use to nurturing civic virtues in support of democratic discussion. On the other hand, its relationship with real social and political participation by students was not confirmed.

This paper represents one of the first to explore about LS’s possible role in civic education with real grounded data. The paper will be of reference value to readers interested in civic education and teachers, students and policy planners of the subject.

Civic education in Hong Kong is quite confusing nowadays. To understand the policy, it should be placed into the reality of its historical context. In addition, to read through the documentary presentation of policy, the policy’s proposal and its initiation should be understood with an understanding of contextual progress and historical change following the handover of sovereignty to China. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The genealogical knowledge of policy history is applied for the purpose of understanding civic education. The concepts of genealogy put forward present an anti-essentialist position and are opposed to focusing on a singular or dominant ideology.

As the government-dominated power, any knowledge of civic education was bound to be nationally identified and patriotic for the purposes of strengthening nation-state awareness. Another approach of moral education was adopted that emphasized traditional Chinese cultures and values in order to cultivate a recognition of a harmonious society in students.

The paper helps to analyse the government-dominated process of knowledge formation in a value setting.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the major development of global citizenship education (GCE) as part of Hong Kong’s secondary school curriculum guidelines, which reveals how it has developed from, first, asking students to understand their responsibilities as citizens to now challenging injustice and inequality in the world. Hong Kong’s curriculum guidelines started to teach GCE as a result of the last civic education guideline issued just before the return of sovereignty to China in 1997. Through documentary analysis, this paper examines how GCE has developed against the backdrop of globalization in Hong Kong’s various secondary school curriculum guidelines.

This study used documentary analysis to examine the developments in the teaching of GCE via Hong Kong’s official secondary school curriculum guidelines. It has studied the aims, knowledge and concepts that are related to GCE by coding the GCE literature and categorizing the findings from the curriculum guidelines.

From the coding and categorizing processes employed, it has been found that GCE in Hong Kong’s official curriculum guidelines has evolved from learning about rights and responsibilities in the 1990s to challenging injustice, discrimination, exclusion and inequality since the late 1990s. Indeed, understanding the world and especially globalization, in terms of comprehending the processes and phenomena through which people around the globe become more connected, has presented challenges for the teaching of civic education. For example, categories of GCE have developed from the simpler expression of concerns about the world to encompass moral obligations and taking action. Similarly, the concerns for the maintenance of peace that were studied initially have since grown and now include work about challenging inequalities and taking action on human rights violations.

This study would have implications for the understanding of GCE in Hong Kong as well as other fast-changing societies in this age of globalization, as civic education curricula need to respond to the impacts of globalization. GCE is an under-researched area, but topics concerning world/international/global affairs have been covered in Hong Kong secondary school curriculum guidelines for several decades.

The study seeks to understand the experiences and perceptions of the university youth regarding the democratic atmosphere of a public university located in Turkey. To this end, the objective of this research is twofold: (1) to investigate university students’ level of civic engagement regarding student activism, exercising rights, and interest in politics; and (2) to explore students’ perception of their university environment regarding the promotion of tolerance, respect for ideas, and participation in decision-making. This study was carried out at a public university located in the middle of Turkey. A mixed-method approach was employed, including both qualitative and quantitative data. A total of 332 undergraduate students participated in the quantitative part while 14 undergraduate students were interviewed in the qualitative part of the study. In quantitative data collection, two self-developed scales were used: Civic Engagement Scale and Perceptions of Democratic University Environment Scale. The results of the data analysis indicated that students’ overall civic engagement level was below the average level. In particular, the level of students’ activism was significantly lower than that of students’ interest in politics and exercising rights, respectively. In addition, the level of students’ interest in politics was significantly lower than that of students’ exercising rights. With respect to the students’ perception of democratic university environment, the data revealed that students’ overall perception of the university environment was slightly above average level. Specifically, the students’ perception of university environment regarding respect for ideas was significantly higher than that of university environment regarding participation in decision-making.

Integrative leadership theories are thriving in the literature, yet very few studies have explored individual characteristics of integrative leadership and conditions that may promote individuals’ integrative leadership orientation. In particular, little is known about the factors that may promote undergraduate college students’ development of an orientation toward integrative leadership, although many colleges and universities are charged with developing future leaders to tackle grand societal challenges. The purpose of this study was to examine higher education institutions’ contributions to college students’ civic engagement and multicultural competence as well as the relationships between these contributions and students’ development of an integrative leadership orientation. Using a multi-institutional survey of college seniors (n = 5,922), the results of this study suggest institutional efforts to develop students’ multicultural competence and civic engagement are positively associated with undergraduate students’ development of an integrative leadership orientation.

In the wake of the 2016 US presidential election and the political turmoil that has ensued since, the need to prepare youth as active, well-informed citizens is self-evident. Middle and high school students have the potential to shape public and political opinion and encourage others to engage in collective, grassroots civic efforts to enact positive change in their communities through social media and face-to-face communication (CIRCLE Staff, 2018). Action civics has emerged as a promising civic education practice for preparing young people for active and informed civic participation. By providing students with the opportunity to “engage in a cycle of research, action, and reflection about problems they care about personally while learning about deeper principles of effective civic and especially political action” (Levinson, 2012, p. 224). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This interpretive qualitative case study utilized Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) citizen typology to examine 30 fifth through ninth graders’ conceptions of citizenship, civic action and advocacy as a result of their participation in an action civics inquiry project that took place during summer civics camps.

Findings show that overall, students’ conceptions of citizenship remained relatively unchanged after participating in the summer civics camps; however, students did develop increased understanding of advocacy and were more readily able to identify the “root causes” of community issues.

Implications of this study add to a small but growing body of literature on the outcomes of action civics programs and may inform the design and implementation of these kinds of programs.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and analyse the role and implementation of nationalistic education in Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions (SARs) since their respective handover of sovereignty to China in the late 1990s. Both SARs face the educational need to cultivate a Chinese national identification among the students after the sovereignty changes. While Macau SAR has enjoyed a relatively smooth implementation of nationalistic education towards which Macau’s schools and students are largely receptive to nationalistic programmes since its handover in 1999, Hong Kong SAR Government’s nationalistic education was met by reservation from some parents, students and civil society’s groups under allegations of “political indoctrination” and “brain-washing”. The Hong Kong civil society’s resistance to National Education culminated in the anti-Moral and National Education protest in Summer 2012 and then Hong Kong schools and society. This paper attempts to provide an overview and analysis on the development of nationalistic education in both Hong Kong and Macao SARs, and to give some possible explanations on the factors that lead to differences of perceiving and responding to the nationalistic education between both places.

After conducting a literature review, this study utilises different sources of data such as curriculum guidelines, previous studies and other scholarly findings in examining the development of civic education and national education policy in both SAR societies, as well as in discussing the possible developments of nationalistic education in both SARs by making references to previous studies of citizenship and nationalistic education.

This study found out that different relationships between the two SAR Governments and their respective civil society, the extent of established socio-political linkages with China, as well as the introduction of a core subject of Liberal Studies in Hong Kong secondary schools, which emphasises on multiple perspectives and critical thinking skills, are some plausible factors that explain different stories and developments of implementing nationalistic education in Hong Kong and Macao SARs.

For giving suggestions for a nationalistic education in both Chinese SARs, first, there should be an exploration of multiple citizenship identities. This will allow people to choose their identities and thus facilitate their belongingness in terms of local, national and global dimensions. In addition, there should be an exploration of a Chinese national identification with different emphases such as knowledge orientation and critical thinking so as to cater for youth values. Promoting the idea of an informed and reasonable-in-thinking patriot could also be a way to ease the concern that building a national identity negates a person’s freedom of thinking.

This paper attempts to compare and analyse the different responses to the same policy of enhancing nationalistic education development in both Hong Kong and Macao SARs of China. Some plausible explanations were given based on political, social and educational factors, as well as youth value oritentations. This paper would be an attempt to show that a top-down single-minded orientated nationalistic education may not work well a society such as Hong Kong, where civil society and youth values are quite different than that can be found in China.

Civics, as a topic of study, prompts the adoption of research techniques that can be used on any range of topics. However, the techniques chosen also have to take into account the fact that civics, as a curricular subject, and unlike mathematics or even science, is hard to define. It was this consideration that pushed the Civic Education Study steering committee into adopting research methods and perspectives more commonly found within the broad and amorphous area of “qualitative research.” In doing so, they organized a type of study that offers a model for future studies of international achievement.In this regard, the results of the TIMSS case study and video project point to the likelihood that future such studies will require more complex research approaches than previously used. Even though the presence of “authoritative intended” curricula for subjects like mathematics and science seemingly “serve as reasonable starting points” for research in these fields, a growing number of studies suggests that cultural considerations also need to be taken into account (see, for example, Lee, Graham & Stevenson, 1996; Tsuchida & Lewis, 1996; Stigler, Fernandez & Yoshida, 1996). As international studies of achievement grow more complex, and the methods used to collect and analyze data more refined, the impact of various cultural domains (school culture, regional cultural and/or national culture) will play an increasingly important role in the entire research process. To fully understand how achievement is contextualized in a given nation requires not only sets of complex data but also a range of analytical methods that draw out conflicting views, contested areas and shared beliefs.The last decade has seen the continued call for more culturally sensitive (appropriate) analysis and interpretation of international educational data, particularly achievement data. There has been a growing expectation that researchers who use such data sets will be either experts in or have access to expert advice in the nations selected for comparison. However, this trend alone will not affect the basic collection of the data. If there is to be a significant change in the type of data collected — a change that will allow far more sophisticated qualitative analysis to be conducted — then qualitative data collection and analysis cannot be simply relegated to the “descriptive” mode. Both the Civic Education Study and TIMSS have demonstrated that rich qualitative data, analyzed using methods derived from current qualitative educational research, can have dramatic effects on the orientation of the research process.The use to which data gathered by TIMSS have been put also offers insights for future projects. One alarming trend has been the tendency for media and policy groups to use TIMSS's qualitative data as evidence of the “real” conditions in a given country. This is particularly true of the video study conducted by Stigler. Demonstration clips of the videos have been widely shown on the implicit assumption that educators and policy-makers can directly use this type of “data” even when it has not been “interpreted” by scholars. While the aim of creating straightforward data free of disciplinary jargon is a good one, qualitative data are perhaps more easily misinterpreted than quantitative data. The impact of a five-minute video clip or an evocative quote from an interview transcript cannot be denied, but this impact may be misleading. All data, qualitative or quantitative, are representations of reality. Experienced ethnographers know that five minutes after the camera or tape-recorder is turned off, drastically different events may occur or conflicting statements may be made. The presentation of qualitative data, then, must be carefully framed within an explicit outline of the methods used to collect and analyze it.The greatest danger lies in assuming that all that can be done with qualitative data is to provide the cultural “context” for quantitative analyses. Unfortunately, this did occur with TIMSS. In contrast, the Civic Education Study researchers used the hypothesis-generating function of the qualitative work to challenge original hypotheses and to dramatically re-cast the project. This continued use of reflective analysis changed the Civic Education Study from a more traditional “input-output” study to one that was indeed truly process oriented. Moreover, because the Civic Education case studies were conducted well in advance of the survey and testing aspects, the Civic Education Study researchers were able to capitalize on the qualitative data in a way that the TIMSS researchers could not.Comparative education scholars have long been aware of the different cultural values attached to school, learning and teaching in different nations or among different groups within a given nation. However, recent international achievement studies have rarely attempted to analyze systematically the cultural components of achievement. Over 30 years ago, Jones (1971) hailed the first International Mathematics Study (FIMS), but nevertheless stressed that “because comparative education is concerned with cross-national or cross-cultural variability, one of its tasks ought to be the advancing of hypotheses which can be tested in either established or novel ways” (p. 153). The ethnographic case studies of the Civic Education Study offer established ways to use qualitative data to generate and test hypotheses. These approaches have been used for at least two decades in some areas of qualitative studies, but they present, for the field of comparative education, novel ways to think about the problems of comparison.The politically contested nature of civic education prompted the Civic Education Study's NPRs and steering committee to alter significantly the research process that has traditionally been applied to cross-national studies of achievement. Topics like democracy and citizenship evoke very different associations in different countries, and even between various groups within a given nation, a fact that fortunately clarifies rather than obscures the impact of culture on curriculum, teaching and expectations for competence. The experience of the civic education researchers suggests that the use of qualitative data for hypothesis generation and the use of a reflective research process that links qualitative and quantitative data have significant promise for the study of achievement in any subject. In addition, continued recourse to highly integrated studies that utilize a range of research methodologies promises to bring comparative studies of achievement to a new and higher level of usefulness.The Civic Education researchers incorporated a range of qualitative techniques, innovative uses of technology, and extensive literature reviews, and were highly sensitive to the impact of methodological decisions on the kinds of data collected and the interpretations arrived at. Despite the tremendous amount of material reviewed and summarized, as well as the incredible cultural, social and political diversity represented by the participating nations, the work of these researchers not only is providing crucial insights into the actualization of qualitative methods on a large scale but also is offering “comparativists” and “qualitative researchers” alike a wealth of information.

This paper deals with two types of educational reform related to teaching and learning the traditional school subject of social studies. First, we consider the importance of teaching about controversial issues by examining the impact of Hurricane Katrina, the record-setting, natural disaster, which struck the Gulf Coast of the United States in late August 2005. Using this episode as their foundation, the authors demonstrate how the common practice of avoiding controversy within the social studies arena can be addressed. Since Katrina represents a topic for which no warrant exists within state standards for teaching the subject, it can be considered a true “teachable moment”. Second, we analyze a case study involving the use of technology to spark discussion relative to the issues of race and class tied to Katrina, primarily for the two-year period after the hurricane struck. While the use of digital technology has been slow to gain popularity in the field of social studies, the authors use the case study to demonstrate how it can be utilized to generate democratic dialogue and civic engagement.