Transformation of students into active and participatory citizens: an exploratory study in Hong Kong

Abstract

Based on the data collected from focus groups and individual interviews with secondary school students and civic education teachers, this article explores how young people are transformed to become active and participatory citizens. The findings show that the roles and personal beliefs of civic education teachers are of critical significance at the very first stage whereas their teaching methods help enable students to construct the notion of active and participatory citizenship at the second stage. Eventually students gradually develop a strong sense of civic responsibility and competence through social inquiry and political action in the transformation process.

The impact of trust in government on pandemic management on the compliance with voluntary COVID-19 vaccination policy among adolescents after social unrest in Hong Kong

“…In the long run, if Hong Kong society continues to be strongly polarized in terms of politics, it would be difficult to garner support and compliance with emergency measures to overcome another unforeseen collective catastrophe ( 41 ) since a low level of political trust inevitably comes with damage in the legitimacy of health officials and the credibility of public health policies regardless of their intended goals and benefits ( 42 ). Given that adolescence is a critical period to develop political beliefs and hence the attitude toward government policies including public health measures ( 43 ), rebuilding the mutual trust between adolescents and the government is beneficial not only for compliance with COVID-19 vaccination but also for other government public policies in general. To this end, the five main policy dimensions (including responsiveness, reliability, integrity, openness, and fairness) proposed by the OECD Trust Framework ( 44 ) could be considered as guiding principles for decision-making to enhance trust and solidarity, and strengthen legitimacy and acceptability of pandemic-related measures and other public health policies in the future.…”

Examining the roles of mobile and social media in political participation: A cross-national analysis of three Asian societies using a communication mediation approach

“…In the case of Hong Kong, civics education has for historical reasons taken an "apolitical" character given its former status as a colony and current status as a special administrative region under China's sovereignty (Tse, 2004). Therefore, the transition to becoming a politically informed and efficacious citizen may require "richer" interactions through general discussions with teachers, peers, and family (Ng, 2009) rather than through mediated channels such as mobiles and social media. These contrasting results thus demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between mediated and general political discussions.…”

University student organizations in Ukraine: on-campus youth policy and social participation

“…However, the research does not show any definite conclusions. Young people in Ukraine are not often socially active, the same trend is shown by Golovchin and Leonidova (2014) on the example of part of Russian Federation (this problem is not only unique to Ukraine or Russia, see more: BEKKERS, 2005;KENNEDY, 2007;MARZĘCKI 2020;NG, 2009).…”