Organic initiatives for holistic education in the Chinese school context

Members

Mr CHONG Yiu Kwong

Yiu Kwong is a dedicated activist in raising educational awareness on the rule of law. He is also a familiar face in supporting local stakeholders to develop a participatory citizenship. Yiu Kwong is a community role model, advancing volunteerism by active engagement in pro bono legal and community service.

In the domain of education, his work encourages teachers to employ a rights-based approach to make professional decisions at school. He understands the importance of basic legal knowledge, and adopts a problem-based approach to support teachers in making legal risk-assessments.

To cultivate social inclusion, Yiu Kong champions for anti-discrimination and anti-harassment awareness on the campus and in the public domain.

Students and the public are enthused by the approach Yiu Kwong adopts to share his expertise, which includes  walking tours to enhance the experience of learning about citizenship and civil awareness, the legal system, and civic mindedness.

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Dr LEE Tai Hoi Theodore

Theodore used to be a secondary school teacher for 10 years before leaving for New Zealand to complete his higher degree in education. He obtained his Master of Educational Leadership (First Honours) and his PhD qualifications from the University of Waikato, New Zealand.

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Dr LEE Tsz Lok Trevor

Dr. Lee Trevor Tsz Lok is a sociologist who has been working on educational inequality and social mobility, youth’s civic and political participation, and youth’s career development in Hong Kong.

Trevor has not just been in ivory towers, but also put in the effort and hard work into the education field as well as the larger community. For instance, he worked in university-school partnership projects in 2006; he ran his own art studio in 2010-2013 where he taught oil painting. In 2015-2016, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Faculty of Education at CUHK, in which he was involved in the territory-wide career intervention project for the youth of Hong Kong. Previously, Trevor was also actively engaged in collective efforts against social injustice. For instance, he spent more than three years working with the international human rights group, where he was once assigned to work at the headquarter in New York.

In addition, Trevor has been an active contributor to public policy discussions in Hong Kong, especially about education issues, through the local news media such as Ming Pao, Hong Kong Economic Journal, Apple Daily, and South China Morning Post.

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Dr WONG Koon Lin Linnie

One of Linnie Wong’s research interests is school leadership for civic learning. The ultimate goal is to identify kinds of citizenship education that help nurture students to understand different perspectives and build a mutually respectful society.  Citizenship education is a highly contested topic, even more so in Hong Kong context.  Hong Kong is a flawed democratic society (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2013), emphasising critical patriotic and participatory citizens, while the China is an authoritarian regime, stressing patriotism and loyalty to the nation-state. Under “One Country, Two Systems”, “good citizens” as advocated by the Chinese government and “good citizens” as embraced by groups within Hong Kong society are seem contradicted to each other.

Furthermore, the political context has come to influence civic education in Hong Kong. Principals and teachers have been under the influence of conflicting views and social pressure, which have affected their perceptions of citizenship education and confidence in its implementation (Wong, 2015). If teachers do not feel empowered to promote civic learning, little can be expected in terms of student learning outcomes. A Two-level Conceptual Model of the Effects of School Leadership on Civic Teaching is used to understand how principals negotiate the political context surrounding civic education and how these practices influence the civic teaching environment in schools.

 

Mr WONG Wai Hung Stephen

Stephen Wong dedicates his work to life education. To achieve this, he delivered over 40 emotional health talks to students, teachers and parents in the recent few years. He also made guest appearances to promote psychological well-being in web radio programmes on daily life skills. By organising different theme talks, interviews, forums, visits and tours for students, Stephen wants to help students to deeply explore life and death issues, and to search for meaningful lives of their own.

Stephen is in charge of a service learning course – Walking with the Elderly and Disabled. Stephen aims to nurture social management skills of students, and acquire a more meaningful understanding of our society.

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