Engaging School Teachers with Common Law Concepts and Values Through Experiential Learning - The Hong Kong Experience

Abstract

In 2017, the authors of this paper, together with other local academics, undertook a knowledge exchange project in Hong Kong to engage local school teachers with a deeper understanding of general common law concepts. It aimed at impacting them with a greater appreciation of specific common law values like justice and equality in the attainment of social inclusion in the school setting. In the project, a total of 249 local school teachers in six schools attended 3-hour workshops on common law concepts and values relating to discrimination. Law videos, lecture by lawyer and group discussion on scenarios were included in the workshops to facilitate deeper understanding general common law concepts and values. This paper reports the findings of a research project undertaken with the participant teachers during the workshops. The findings suggest teachers from ethnically diverse schools did not have more legal knowledge in discrimination than their counterparts from ethnically homogeneous schools. In fact, the results of t-test showed that they had less. In addition, they did not have higher self-evaluation in legal knowledge than their counterparts from ethnically homogeneous schools. The results did not show significant difference between the two groups of teachers in self-evaluation. However, teachers from ethnically diverse schools were found to have higher self-efficacy in dealing with discrimination issues than their counterparts form ethnically homogeneous schools