The representations of youth in liberal studies student works in Hong Kong

The study explored whether the deficit approach to understanding youth, which has been widely critiqued in contemporary youth studies, could still be a dominant paradigm in the student works of an emerging curriculum emphasizing multiple-perspective thinking. The study analyzed the student works in the Enquiry Study Award Scheme organized by Hong Kong Education City (HKEdCity), which was a region-wide competition awarding Liberal Studies (LS) student projects. The findings indicated that although there were diverse theoretical labels presented by the student works, a deficit approach to understanding youth was still a dominant paradigm. This also implied that negative representations of youth were not merely enforced by authoritative institutional discourses, but were partly supported and endorsed by the students themselves. Copyright © 2011 Common Ground, Chitat Chan, Danping Wang, Kathy Wong.