Environmental education in the secondary schools of Hong Kong

Abstract

In Hong Kong, environmental education is not regarded as a compulsory learning subject in secondary schools and it is also not assessed as an independent subject in any public examination.

As there is no specific and formal role for environmental education in secondary schools, educators tend to make use of various subjects such as Geography, Social Studies, Physics, Chemistry and Liberal Studies etc. to deliver contents, themes and issues related to environmental education. Also, in some secondary schools, the organization of some extra-curricular activities through Geography Society and Environmental Education Clubs etc. supplement the work of subject departments in delivering environmental education. Beside these efforts other schools may have other inputs for environmental education, however, from a macro perspective, is such context of environmental education delivery represents a holistic and high-quality environmental education delivery in secondary schools of Hong Kong?

Because of the lack of formal position of environmental education in the education system, schools have great autonomy to decide on the ways in delivering environmental education. It is therefore worthwhile to understand in reality, how secondary schools in Hong Kong carry out environmental education in their own ways? Schools may have different practices of environmental education in their own context, but are there any similarities of their practices? The attempt to generalize several patterns of the selected school in practicing environmental education would be helpful to provide an angle for understanding environmental education in a more structural and holistic way.

More importantly, it is significant to understand to what extent are the current practices of the examined schools effective in delivering environmental education. After the evaluation of school’s effectiveness in environmental education, it is certainly a good news if any examined school is performing well and they should continue to strive for improvement, otherwise, for schools that are weaker in environmental education, educators should reflect upon and rethink more how can they do better in environmental education for cultivating more environmentally-literate citizens of Hong Kong in future.