Flora Kan

Education, Civic Participation and Identity: Continuity and change in Hong Kong

This paper firstly identifies the major legacies inherited by the post-colonial government in Hong Kong, with reference to the key features of access, control and curriculum. Subsequently we examine the states attempts to reconcile the tension between its quest for legitimacy and for stability. Two dimensions of education, namely the process of educational policy making and the nature of citizenship promoted through the school curriculum, are analysed in terms of the conceptions of civic participation and identity promoted and implemented by the state. In conclusion we point to the shift in the policy making process and the strengthening of policy actions designed to promote the states conception of civic identity.

Conceptions of assessment and teacher burnout

Teacher burnout is an important phenomenon that affects the education system and society as a whole. Assessment represents a form of stress for teachers, and this study explores the association between teachers’ assessment-related beliefs and their burnout level. To this end, the Teachers’ Conceptions of Assessment (TCoA) inventory along with the Maslach Burnout Inventory were administered to a sample of Iranian teachers of English language. Multiple correspondence analysis and multiple regression analysis were employed for data analysis. The results reveal a significant relationship between TCoA and the three dimensions of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment). It is similarly found that conceiving of assessment as irrelevant to the life and work of teachers and learners is the best predictor of Depersonalisation and Personal Accomplishment, whereas Student Accountability is the best predictor of Emotional Exhaustion. Finally, the results are discussed and implications are provided in the context of education.

The functions of Hong Kong’s Chinese history, from colonialism to decolonization

This paper examines the nature and socio‐political functions of Hong Kong’s ‘Chinese history curriculum’ during colonialism and since decolonization and argues that these functions have resulted in a curriculum characterized by rote‐learning and geared towards social control. Students are initiated into the traditional, orthodox view of Chinese history and prescribed moral judgements. Consequently, there is little chance for independent thinking on the part of students.

Keepers of the Sacred Flame: Patriotism, Politics and the Chinese History Subject Community in Hong Kong.

Chinese history (a subject entirely separate and distinct from ‘history’) has long been the most politically sensitive subject in Hong Kongs school curriculum. Previous studies have analysed the policies of the colonial and postcolonial Governments towards this subject. Here, we examine the role played by the Chinese history subject community (comprising teachers, academics and officials in the Governments educational bureaucracy), and look at the way in which this has operated as an autonomous interest group. We conclude that the influence of this subject community has been a key factor limiting the extent to which the local educational authorities have been able to develop a coherent policy in relation to history education in general, and the teaching of national history in particular. Specifically, advocates of the maintenance of Chinese history as a separate subject within the school curriculum have been able, by associating themselves with the post‐1997 agenda of ‘patriotic education’, to effectively hoist the local educational bureaucracy with its own petard.

The politics of national history in post-colonial Hong Kong

This article examines how interest groups in Hong Kong have politicised national history, an unpopular school subject, for their own political ends and allied themselves with the PRC against the SAR government and its policy of not making it a single, independent, compulsory core subject in the school curriculum. The article argues that this has been made possible by the ‘One country, two systems’ administrative structure.

Colonialism and secondary technical education in Hong Kong: 1945–1997

This study examines the influence of the colonial experience (1945–1997) on the planning of secondary technical education in Hong Kong. Specifically, the origins of secondary technical institutions and their positioning in secondary education are examined. Primary source materials are used as the basis of investigation and analysis, supplemented by secondary sources. The study finds that the origins and form of secondary technical education in Hong Kong mirrored those of secondary technical education in the British tripartite school system (grammar, technical, and modern). The breakdown of the tripartite school system in Britain might have led the colonial government not to adopt the full British model of secondary technical education. Nevertheless, the British tripartite school system had a long‐term impact on the development of secondary technical schools in Hong Kong. Following the end of colonial rule, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government initiated education reform, which brought an end to curriculum differentiation by school types (grammar, technical, and prevocational) and replaced it with comprehensive education.

The Re-education of Hong Kong: Identity, Politics and History Education in Colonial and Postcolonial Hong Kong

Visions of the past are crucual to the way that any community imagines itself and constructs its identity. This edited volume contains the first significant studies of the politics of history education in East Asian societies.