Reinstating Global Citizenship Education: Conceptual, Curricular, and Pedagogical Considerations on Teaching Global Issues in Hong Kong’s Curriculum and School Teaching

This chapter argues that there is an imperative need to reinvigorate global citizenship education (GCE) in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s (SAR) curriculum and teaching methods on global issues, especially given the nationalistic trends that are increasingly found in official sanctioned school curriculum since the resumption of its sovereignty by China in 1997. Lee (2008) indicates the tensions between nationalistic imperatives and global citizenship, while Ho (2018) argues that “different historical, cultural, religious, political, and economic contexts both frame and define global citizenship, and determine whether particular discourses of GCE found in the curriculum are strong or marginalized” (p. 84). Situated in a global context of nationalism, authoritarianism and global citizenship, this paper discusses the two trends of national identity and global citizenship in Hong Kong’s educational system and puts forward some conceptual, curricular, and pedagogical consideration on teaching GCE.