Implementing "Care for Others" in the Hong Kong arts education curriculum guide (Primary 1 - Secondary 6): Prospects and directions

Two innovative perspectives are proposed as responses to a new values-education initiative in the updated curriculum guide for Hong Kong schools. The first innovation extends Nel Noddings' theory of care ethics to arts education, while recognizing the social value of exploring affective domains and proposing that arts education can facilitate “care for others”. The second innovation taps into the collaborative intelligence of Hong Kong-based photographers. Building upon Arthur Efland’s views on the advantages of using artworks in education, the paper proposes that documentary photography can help students connect knowledge at personal, community, national and global levels. The paper highlights two photojournalists, Lam Yik Fei and Vincent Yu, whose work addresses issues central to the survival and development of humanity, and discusses how their photographs offer valuable ways of seeing human conditions. The paper is the first of its kind to recognize the potential of putting care ethics into practice through arts education, and it suggests that arts teachers can facilitate values education using documentary photography to expand understanding of interdependencies and deepen the integration of cognition, affection and action. In its most hopeful form, arts education can play a significant role in fostering love, care and solidarity in society. © 2018 Asia-Pacific Journal for Arts Education.