Liz Jackson

South Asian ethnic minorities (SAEMs) represent a growing population in Hong Kong public education. However, schools struggle to offer them fair and equitable education. One frequently mentioned, but rarely studied component in their performance is teachers’ lower expectations. This article reports on a qualitative case study to examine ethnically Chinese teachers’ expectations of South Asian students in a public primary school in Hong Kong. Five Chinese teachers were interviewed, with observations in three of these teachers’ classrooms. Results indicate teachers have lower expectations. Several influencing factors were identified, including perceptions of cultural differences between Chinese teachers and South Asian ethnic minorities’ families and inadequate training of teachers in Chinese as a second language and incorporating diversified learning strategies into the curriculum. This is one of the first studies specifically focused on exploring in greater details primary teachers’ expectations about South Asian students in Hong Kong.

In this chapter, we investigate two aspects of post-truth in education. The first derives from the philosophical work of Jacques Rancière, and the second derives from an analysis of meritocratic ideology in contemporary education. In both cases, we find that education has been producing a certain ‘truth’ about truth. Rancière’s work contrasts the hidden explanatory function of education, which presupposes a collective or shared sense of truth, with the arbitrariness of language as the social mechanism for understanding or determining such truth. This understanding is useful when applied to the case of meritocracy, as we discuss in the second part of this essay, as meritocratic ideology lays a framework in schools for the production of truth. Schooling bolsters, explains and emulates a meritocratic view of the world. In doing so, truth itself gets linked to meritocracy. We conclude this chapter by reflecting on an example of Donald Trump’s notion of the level playing field, briefly commenting on how the persistence and strength of meritocratic ideology in education are tied to a post-truth order.

Schools and other forms of education and have significant impacts on people's views about emotions and emotional experiences. It shows how we often take it for granted that certain emotions, such as happiness, are 'positive', while others are 'negative' and how personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, and race, can make an unfair difference when it comes to what emotions are expected or accepted. Written in an accessible format, the book encourages broad reflection on what emotions are and why they matter, in relation to the aims of education, what it means to be a good person, and equality and social justice.

This special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory considers the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement as an educational event, which has impacted attitudes and outlooks and conceptions of young people’s role, of education, and of society. This essay serves as an introduction to the more substantive pieces that follow. It describes two alternative perspectives on youth civic engagement in Hong Kong historically; and in so doing, it addresses some of the challenges related to free academic expression that hinder scholarly research and publishing on the area of Hong Kong-China relations looking into the future. It concludes with a brief glimpse of the contributions that follow.

This chapter explores the major debate over care and justice historically and today in philosophy of education. The debate is situated in Western ethics first, particularly examining major historical approaches from the fields of ethics and epistemology. Then it explores care theories and related views that give a more significant role to care, emotion, and relationality. The chapter then briefly considers non-western approaches, particularly within Eastern traditions, as they intersect and contrast with Western views. This chapter emphasizes historical continuity in the debate over care and justice in philosophy and philosophy of education, and its ongoing contestation, in relation to recent psychological approaches to moral education, and other promotions of education for intercultural ‘living together’. Rather than indicating a preference for one perspective over another in relation to these ethical and educational debates, this chapter aims primarily to lay groundwork for further examinations about the places of care and justice in educational theory.