Collective Memory Work: Localizing School-Based Curriculum Development in Diversified Hong Kong Schooling Contexts

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Living Curriculum in Global Context

Abstract

Responding to a recent call for a turn in curriculum studies to advance practices, this paper reports a collective memory work that disrupted academics’ hegemonic voices in SBCD studies and elicited teachers’ stories about their school-based curriculum development (SBCD) practices. With post-colonialism as the theoretical underpinning, we explored how the Western-centric construct of SBCD was recontextualized in various Hong Kong school contexts. Findings reveal teachers’ struggles with hegemonic discourses that constrained their autonomy in SBCD projects to benefit diverse learners, such as the accountability mechanism, linguistic imperialism, Western-centrism, and top-down curriculum decision-making. Situated in the local realities of Hong Kong schooling, teachers’ SBCD projects also illuminate productive, hybrid spaces where new forms of knowledge, identity, and culture come into being.

Authors

• Zheng Zhang, Western University

• Sally Wai-Yan Wan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Lai Ha Chan, The University of Auckland

• Pui-Ying Lorelei Kwan

• Lai-Ling Sandy Tam

• Eunice Wai-Po Wan