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1. Introduction
This paper examines the state of global citizenship education (GCE) in Hong Kong within social changes and the growing prevalence of conservative nationalism, especially because of the enactment of the National Security Law in 2020. It utilizes interview findings with frontline teachers on their values and beliefs, key essential knowledge, teaching methods and assessment of GCE. These aspects are crucial for developing students' global perspectives and the necessary skills to compete and solve problems on a global scale. UNESCO (2024) believes that only an education that provides a global outlook with a deep appreciation of local perspectives can address the cross-cutting challenges of today and tomorrow. However, developing an effective set of pedagogies for teaching GCE has been limited, likely due to the lack of theorization of GCE as understood by frontline teachers. The authors explore several pedagogies associated with teaching GCE and present data gathered from interviews with 22 experienced teachers. The analysis offers insightful views on what, why and how these teachers teach GCE. The authors also construct a framework of teachers' values and teaching beliefs that cultivate global citizens based on the research findings. This framework can inform school leaders, curriculum planners and teacher trainers in developing a more substantial pedagogical framework for GCE.
2. Background
Globalization first appeared in the civic education curriculum in Hong Kong in 1998 (author, 2015) after China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997. Though some Hong Kong schools adopted GCE since the early 2000s, the overall school curriculum has had limited content related to it. It was only until the 2017 curriculum guide for the key learning area of Personal, Social and Humanities Education that included keywords such as global citizenship identity, quality and awareness of one’s global citizenship identity (CDC, 2017). Instead, Hong Kong schools have been facing a nationalistic education project focused on building a Chinese national identity. Previous studies have highlighted and problematized the role of curriculum and schools in constructing national identities (Antal, 2008; Tormey, 2006), and similar challenges exist in Hong Kong. Despite Hong Kong teachers using collaborative, inquiry-based and creative teaching methods since the early 2000s education reforms and interdisciplinary school curricula addressing global topics (author), there is a perception that students' awareness of global issues is...