The Use of Popular Culture in the Teaching of Ethics/Religious Education: A Hong Kong Case

Abstract

Nearly every school in Hong Kong claims to provide ethics/religious education as part of the curriculum, but teachers find it difficult to teach values and attitudes without having students find ethics/religious lessons boring. While much has been said about how students learn, it remains that it is the teacher's task to provide the relevant experience and conditions for learning so that learning takes place. Thus such questions arise as, What is relevant experience? and What do students experience? Since most students are exposed to popular culture, the use of it as examples in teaching ethics/religious education may be a solution. This research finds that teachers and students in general enjoy the use of popular culture in the teaching and learning of ethics/religious education. The problems lie with the lack of resources and the already too heavy workload of teachers.

Lego religion in the classroom. The potential use of children’s popular culture in the teaching of religion in kindergarten and primary school

“…I am fully aware that, as I speak, Lego Chima and Lego Ninjago may already be completely outdated. Keeping up to date is a constant challenge (Cheung, 2003). However, teachers who are interested in their students will also be able to pick up such trends easily and stay at least somewhat in tune with whatever is "hot" at any time.…”

“…When it comes to religious education for younger students, some studies have explored the potential and actual use of popular culture in more confessional contexts (cf. Cheung, 2003;Hess, 2004;Berglund, 2008;Johnsen, 2014), and various educational pop-cultural resources have been developed for this particular purpose (Cheung, 2003;Warren, 2005). This article, in contrast, will look at popular culture as a potential resource in integrative religious education (RE) for the younger students in kindergarten and primary school.…”

The preconditions of interreligious education in Hong Kong: religious heterogeneity, freedom of religion, and secularity

“…Hong Kong has a long history of religious education [1]. Aside from prolific publications describing the infrastructural role of religious communities in schooling, there are increasingly common studies of the Hong Kong religious curriculum (Cheung, 2003(Cheung, , 2006Churk and Chen, 2014;Ho, 2020;Jackson, 2015Jackson, , 2018aLam, 2018Lam, , 2019Tse, 2019Tse, , 2021Wang, 2017;Wong, 2018aWong, , 2018b.…”