Critical gender awareness of Hong Kong Chinese students in EMI and CMI liberal studies

Abstract

This thesis is a qualitative ethnographic inquiry that explores how to apprentice senior secondary school students into critical awareness of gender issues within the Hong Kong New Senior Secondary Liberal Studies (hereafter NSSLS) curriculum context. The project attempts to engage students in thinking about gender issues from different levels of criticality or critical thinking. It was guided by the following research questions: (a) What Discourses of gender are co-constructed, negotiated or/and resisted by the NSSLS curriculum and teachers and students? (b) What Discourses about critical thinking are co-constructed by the NSSLS curriculum and teachers and students? (c) Is it possible to enhance these students’ critical thinking regarding gender issues in the NSSLS subject? To this end, an intervention unit on gender stereotyping designed with genre-based pedagogy was taught and co-taught by the researcher in one traditionally Chinese as the medium-of-instruction (TCMI) and one traditionally English as the medium-of-instruction (TEMI) secondary schools. The study had three stages and adopted multiple research methods, triangulating ethnographic data from interviews, classroom observation, and students’ writing assignments. In the first stage, the pre-intervention stage, the intervention unit was designed by the researcher and the LS teachers in the two schools. Interviews were conducted with focal students to gain insights of their perceptions of gender stereotypes. Pre-measure writing assignments were also given to the students to investigate their cognitive academic language proficiency and gender identities. In the second stage, the intervention unit was respectively taught and co-taught by the researcher and lessons were video- and audio-taped in both schools. In the third stage, the post-measure writing assignments were given to the same groups of students to interpret the potential effectiveness of the unit. Additionally the focal student informants from both schools were interviewed again. Data analysis drew upon theoretical perspectives from poststructuralism, social constructivism and critical theories. Specifically Reisigl and Wodak (2009)’s discourse-historical (DHA) approach to CDA, positioning theory, and other discourse analysis tools were used to examine the Discourses of gender and criticality embedded in the teaching and learning of NSSLS in the two schools. It is found that the Discourses of gender equity, essentializing gender differences, resistance and submission to traditional gender norms, together with the Discourses of criticality such as multiple perspective thinking and writing logical and substantiated arguments are constructed and re-constructed across different fields of action of the NSSLS subject. It is also revealed that some students embody higher critical gender awareness after the intervention unit. Taken as a whole, the study shows that it is a difficult and yet still possible task to raise students’ critical gender awareness in the NSSLS subject. It is hoped that the study will serve as a springboard for future research on critical literacy/pedagogy in NSSLS and longitudinal studies on the itinerary of transformation of secondary school students’ gender identity in a time of change for the Asian societies.