Civic education guidelines in Hong Kong 1985-2012: Striving for normative stability in turbulent social and political contexts

King Man Eric CHONG, Edda SANT, Ian DAVIES

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlespeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The dynamic of how civic education is framed during turbulent periods is illuminated through analysis of three Hong Kong official civic education curriculum guidelines (1985, 1996, 2012). Guidelines are publicly available, officially sanctioned statements of purpose that have particular relevance for education professionals and are used around the world to characterize educational initiatives. Our focus is on guidelines written during periods in which there was colonial hegemony by the United Kingdom (1985), an attempt to promote liberal democracy by the Hong Kongese (1996), and an assertion of Chinese nationalism (2012). We argue that guidelines about civic education are similar across these times of political turbulence. There are shifts in the content of the guidelines, but fundamental differences are not made explicit. The documents are not aligned with a theoretical framework of colonialism, liberal democracy, or Chinese nationalism, but rather, they are pragmatically oriented. The guidelines are signifiers of attempts to achieve normative stability. Copyright © 2019 College and University Faculty Assembly of National Council for the Social Studies.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)285-306
JournalTheory and Research in Social Education
Volume48
Issue number2
Early online date22 Oct 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Citation

Chong, E. K., Sant, E., & Davies, I. (2020). Civic education guidelines in Hong Kong 1985-2012: Striving for normative stability in turbulent social and political contexts. Theory & Research in Social Education, 48(2), 285-306. doi: 10.1080/00933104.2019.1676854

Keywords

  • Civic education
  • Hong Kong
  • Guidelines
  • Content analysis

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