Purpose: The author aims to give an overview of civic education in Hong Kong as well as of Liberal Studies, and to discern the reasons behind the reforms to the curriculum and assessment of Liberal Studies. Approach: The analysis is based on government documents related to the subject's curriculum and assessment, press releases and secondary…

In the last four decades, many Latin American governments have positioned English learning and teaching as a national priority and incorporated it into state-supported "políticas sobre lenguas extranjeras" (foreign language policies) that position the English language as a desirable characteristic of their citizenry. I argue that this…

The increase in nationalist tendencies around the world after 2001 signifies changes in the concept of citizenship as reflected in the discourses of the parties coming to power. How does this translate into changes in education? In this article, I analyse the case of Poland. The research is focused on finding an answer to the following question:…

This qualitative study problematizes the interplay between Pakistan's national curriculum textbooks and students' militaristic national identity constructions in six state-schools. Drawing on field-data collected employing interviews with twelve teachers and focus-groups and participatory tools with four-hundred and twenty-four students, it also…

The implementation of moral and national education (MNE) in Hong Kong came to a stand-still when in 2012 anti-MNE student protests triumphantly saw it being shelved. Many perceived MNE as indoctrination and politically motivated by the leadership. Five years have gone by since the demise of the MNE. Ostensibly, the struggle for hegemonic control…

This paper problematizes the interplay between curriculum textbooks and national identity constructions. Drawing on data from Bangladesh's school-textbooks, and students' and teachers' perspectives, the study identifies factors shaping Bangladesh's national identity in the textbook discourses and discusses students' experiences of these in an…

This article examines the current debate on the politics of history education reforms and the new history textbooks for secondary schools in the Russian Federation. Recent reforms in history education, standards and prescribed history textbooks by the Ministry of Education and Science demonstrate a pronounced ideological shift in the national…

This article examines the cultural construction of the school in Turkey in relation to the construction of Turkish nation-ness. By looking at how the modern school was fit together with a network of interrelated discourses available in early twentieth-century Turkey, the article investigates the ways in which the school became an object of thought…

The article examines the enduring popularity of a form of school history which is based predominantly on the idea that the transmission of a positive story about the national past will inculcate in young people a sense of loyalty to the state; a reassuring and positive sense of identity and belonging; and a sense of social solidarity with fellow…

This article uses curriculum-making frameworks to analyse and reconstruct the Chinese curriculum-making model and unpack the dynamics, complexity and constraints of China's curriculum reform since the early 1990s. It argues that curriculum reform is China's main human capital development strategy for coping with the challenges of the 21st century,…

This paper explores the politics of education in countries affected by conflict. Drawing particularly on the Palestinian experience, it looks at the power relations among internal and external actors that shape the curriculum-building process. In the increasingly politicised world of international aid, especially in the Middle East, it challenges…

Before 1997, no formal curriculum on Chinese cultural education for primary schools was developed in Hong Kong although the education authority had started to introduce some items of Chinese cultural learning into the Chinese language syllabus when the Target Oriented Curriculum was implemented in 1996. However, such items were incorporated into…

This article explores the possibilities of shifting ethnocentric bias in curricula and pupils' constructions of national and European identities using the concept of "Europe" as a tool. The European dimension was conceptualized as a subtle approach, within the deeply divided society of Cyprus, to alleviate the ethnocentrism of history…

The aim of this article is to explore, through the case of the official Israeli state curriculum, how the educational system is affected by social changes and how it responds to them, and to suggest curricular directions that go along with the new social reality that has emerged in Israel during the past decade. We offer a conceptual-theoretical…

This article discusses how the media and schools are used as disciplinary apparatuses to resist and work against globalisation in Singapore. Aihwa Ong calls the deployment of state ideological apparatuses, such as the media and schools, acts of "reassemblage", when technocrats resort to assemble institutions, diverse Government practice…