Collective Teacher-Researcher Inquiry: Localizing School-Based Curriculum Development in Diversified Hong Kong Schooling Contexts

Abstract

Responding to a recent call for turning a focus on advancing practices in curriculum studies, this paper reports collective memory work that disrupted academics’ hegemonic voices in School-Based Curriculum Development (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 revealed 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.