Though many East Asian educational systems are well positioned at the dawn of the twenty-first century, no society is free from the need to continue to develop and reform its education, in light of urgent challenges related to increased globalization. Key among such challenges are the emergence of new ethnic/racial and national minority groups in light of transnational immigration, and widening gulfs between wealthy and poor, newcomers and mainstream, and/or rural and urban. These dynamically evolving puzzles require reconsideration and reconstruction of issues of national and local cultural values and identities, as societies change, while global attitudes of democratic pluralism spread, particularly in the top-performing systems in the East Asian region.

This paper examines the development of multicultural curriculum in Hong Kong and Taiwan over the last few decades. It argues that although both societies are broadly Chinese cultural contexts, differences in their political histories, cultures, and demographics nonetheless frame disparate understandings of, and thus approaches to, increasing multicultural content in school curriculum. These disparate constructions of multiculturalism in Hong Kong and Taiwan trace specific tensions the societies face today related to competing priorities in cultivating local, national, and global senses of identity and civic participation. The paper concludes with recommendations for the further unfolding of multicultural curriculum in these societies in light of their local diversity issues, and with brief reflection on the potential of these findings to enrich traditional framings of multicultural education coming from western societies.

Examining Multiculturalism in Curriculum

Multiculturalism has historically been understood as a social policy to enhance inclusion of all people in a society (Jackson 2014a). The term has been traditionally associated with modern western democracies, of Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, where diverse and unequal social groups have been thrown together by historical forces of colonialism and imperialism, and by the ongoing movement of people around the globe today. Recently there has been much talk in Europe about the “death of multiculturalism,” as universalistic strategies for enabling the peaceful coexistence of diverse groups across various domains have been seen as mixed in success, in light of new demographic challenges, the rise of xenophobia and nativism in some countries, and the threat of terrorism in the last few decades (see Emerson 2011; Besley & Peters 2012). Yet as continued coexistence of diverse groups is inescapable ways of understanding and applying multiculturalism remain under continual reconstruction, while others argue for “interculturalism” as more pragmatic strategies to enhance intergroup communication and decision making across diverse groups in societies (Besley & Peters 2012; Jackson 2014a).

Multiculturalism in education is not one standard practice or approach across these and other diverse societies, but reflects myriad policies, attitudes, practices, pedagogies and curricula, which have evolved in particular ways within and across systems in response to diversity issues communities face. Multicultural education as a field can be understood as enhancement of: policies, for access and equity across social groups; pedagogy, for including diverse students in classrooms; and curriculum—what is taught and learned, as facts, attitudes and/or skills, related to diversity (Banks 2009). Though these areas can be seen as distinct domains of multicultural education, attitudes of inclusiveness and concern with increasing social justice fuel all three, such that developments in one domain can often be seen to interact with or reshape values and practices applied in the other domains. Hence, Banks (2009) gives five “dimensions” of multicultural education today from an international perspective, which can each be seen to relate to curriculum, pedagogy, and/or policies: (1) Content reflects (societal or global) diversity; (2) Knowledge construction: awareness of historical and/or cultural biases in academic fields; (3) Prejudice reduction; (4) Empowering all students; and (5) Pedagogy reflects diverse student needs and interests (p. 15). Such multicultural education is seen to benefit both minorities and the majority in society within Banks’s approach, which understands diversity as an inherent social good. Multicultural education has also been framed more exclusively in terms of cultural preservation and positive recognition of minority groups in society by Taylor (1992), in his analysis of the situation of the French-speaking Quebecois in Canada. These aims can also be recognized as having policy, pedagogy, and curriculum implications, related to medium of instruction and representation of diversity in educational content.

This essay focuses primarily on Banks’s first dimension of multicultural education, multicultural content or curriculum. Multicultural curriculum is understood first and foremost as content that sufficiently reflects diversity. It should not only portray and engage with mainstream culture, values, or interests, but also fairly recognize those of all members of society, including minority groups. People concerned with this theme may compare the representation of minorities in a textbook or curriculum with their proportion within society. If a science textbook portrays only white scientists, for instance, this representation is inadequately reflective of those involved in science today. In this case, inaccurate or imbalanced messages would be said to form part of a “hidden curriculum”—sending a problematic message to ethnic/racial minority students that it may not be normal for them to become scientists (Jackson 2014a).

This was the original aim of multicultural education at its start in the United States. The 1954 landmark Supreme Court case Brown versus Board of Education warranted an “Ethnic Additive” approach to curriculum reform, observing that racial minority youth suffered negative self-esteem due to their unequal, negative, segregated representation within all domains of society, including education (Jackson 2014a). Schools had a duty to reflect that people of color belonged in society equally, through integration of schools and inclusion of more diverse content.

However, curriculum is not only limited to classroom resources, but also to the values or ideologies invoked by educators, which also help form the hidden curriculum that can impact student understanding. As Adamson and Morris (2014, p. 311) note, knowledge construction (Banks’s second dimension) is intrinsically tied to curriculum, as a preference for classical heritage and canonical texts can imply, for example, that “essential knowledge [is] narrow, culture-bound, conservative and inflexible.” Educator aims also impact curricular choices, as educators whose goal is prejudice reduction (Banks’s third dimension) will, for instance, focus on social issues, ideals, and community change, rather than a culturally homogenous past in curriculum choices (Adamson and Morris 2014). Formally, the curriculum might hold that prejudice is wrong; informally, teachers can also model open-mindedness and respect for difference, rather than ignorance or discriminatory attitudes. Jointly, Banks’s fourth and fifth dimensions, empowering all students and pedagogy for all, thus reflect further curricular aims toward greater equity through education, as teachers model through their practices pluralist or assimilationist attitudes. This essay understands curriculum in this broad sense, as attitudes and understandings reflected in educational goals, experiences, practices, and resources, comparing the expressed curriculum of policy frameworks and textbooks with data on teachers’ values and perspectives.

Multiculturalism in education has come under fire recently. As in the larger field of multicultural social policy, critics of multicultural education argue that it is simplistic, treating educational representation, changing attitudes, or “political correctness” as ends in themselves (Parekh 2000), while their benefits are clear neither for minorities in a school, nor for society. Just using the right words (Mayo 2004) or changing textbook images does not make society more inclusive, safe, or fair. Some argue in this context that education cannot be viewed as a vehicle, but only a reflection, of social values, denying the possibility of education for “social reconstructionism” rather than conservative “ideological transfer” (Morris and Adamson 2010). Others charge that multicultural educators’ focus on difference is stigmatizing and divisive (Ravitch 1990) and further entrenches problematic social and cultural dichotomies (Appiah 1994; McCarthy 1997). Thus, as in the broader field of multiculturalism, in education some prefer the term “interculturalism,” which is seen as more cognizant of diversity not just as a symptom of the colonial/imperial past, but in relation to continuous movement of people worldwide and the dynamism of minority and mainstream identities today, precluding the use of generalizable methods for managing diversity in education (Besley and Peters 2012; Waddington, et al. 2012; Jackson 2014a).

In this essay, I retain the use of the term multiculturalism, while embracing the dually inward and outward looking face toward diversity that some identify rather as interculturalism. Internal, historical diversity of societies remains important for educators to grapple with, while crucial new issues are also arising, given increased mobility of people (and ideas and values and so on) worldwide. Indeed, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where national self-understanding and local cultural identity have been more fluid in the last century than in most western countries, multicultural education that employs an intercultural lens to conceptualize triad local/national/global identities has perhaps always been more appropriate than a western-based, internally-focused, static-state conception of identity in society (Jackson 2014b).

Comparing Hong Kong and Taiwan

As Manzon (2014) notes, the comparison of society-type units is often problematic, given diverse political histories and internal cultural dynamics, and unequal power relations between societies globally, which impacts internal decision-making in disparate ways. Hong Kong and Taiwan as units for comparison illustrate these points well, as both challenge the notion of political autonomy of societies and have markedly different cultural histories which can be seen to impact self-understandings today. Though both were part of the Chinese Qing Empire in the early nineteenth century, Hong Kong was a British colony (with a brief period of Japanese occupation) from 1841 to 1997. Today Hong Kong is not an autonomous decision-making entity, but a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Culturally, there is thus an historic and demographic East-meets-West backdrop to Hong Kong and Hongkonger identity, which partly fuels ambivalence about belonging in the PRC nation-state today (Jackson 2014b).

On the other hand, Taiwan was part of the Qing Empire until 1895, and then a Japanese colony until 1945. Since the end of World War II it has identified as the Republic of China, autonomous from the PRC. Thus, unlike Hong Kong, there is no strong western orientation to national identity, but a more culturally Asian self-understanding, as nearly all members of society are from East Asia. As in Hong Kong, there is ambivalence regarding the relationship with the PRC, connected in Taiwan’s case to contention regarding unification versus independence (Kaeding 2011). However as Kaeding (2011, p. 15) notes, this “extra option of de-jure independence is significantly different from the Hong Kong situation,” as Hong Kong has never been identified as an autonomous society.

Yet despite their cultural differences in modern history, Hong Kong and Taiwan share generally similar socioeconomic histories, authoritarian pasts, (demographically) majority Chinese cultures, and relative educational autonomy in the last few decades (Kaeding 2011). The next sections trace and elucidate the development and unfolding of multicultural elements in Hong Kong and Taiwan school curriculum in the past few decades in relation to other social and cultural changes, examining how the societies have responded to diversity issues they have faced in the twenty-first century through curriculum.

Multicultural Curriculum in Hong Kong

Context

Hong Kong does not have a history of multicultural social or educational policy. Throughout much of its history it has been viewed as cosmopolitan, composed of different international groups. As Sweeting (1992, p. 39) has illustrated, its historical “‘transitization’ (or the process-effects of migration which, for a long time, transformed Hong Kong into a transit area),” led to a delay in local Hong Kong identity development, alongside colonial British laissez-faire administration of local education, wherein pluralism, not integration or assimilation, reigned. That sociopolitical minorities in Hong Kong suffer from misrepresentation or inequity in education was not a major public concern under British rule. Politically, as a former colony and now as a special administrative region, Hong Kong is a bordered legal system, but has never been a nation-state from within which citizenship has been substantially constructed (Jackson 2014b). The society has been outward-facing rather than internally focused, a world city but not a locally united community, as transitization and depoliticization of education precluded a historical curricular focus or intentionality related to multiculturalism (Sweeting 1992; Jackson 2014b).

Yet educational inequities in Hong Kong are substantial today. Newly arrived students from mainland China (NAS) face problems related to prejudice and medium of instruction. Political tensions fueling prejudice are visible in controversies over border crossings, including recent proposals to decrease tourism (Lam 2014a), and in noticeable pride expressed over the 2014 addition of “Hongkonger” to the Oxford English Dictionary (Lam 2014b). NAS encounter linguistic exclusion, as schools tend to use Cantonese rather than Putonghua (Yuen 2002). Ethnic minorities, mostly from South Asia, face similar issues. Though nearly 10 % of the population today (and rising), they remain publically invisible, as Hong Kong identity is now commonly presumed to rely on Chinese ethnicity and language (Chan and Yuen 2011). Loper (2004) and Sharma (2012) depict a hidden curriculum that invites prejudice, as ethnic minority students and their mainstream counterparts are treated differently in schooling, against the larger social backdrop of inequality and hierarchy. Socioeconomic background plays a role for ethnic minorities and NAS (McInerny 2010), as ethnicity, language, and class intertwine to decrease opportunities. Thus, disadvantaged “non-local” youth can face difficulties with medium of instruction, while lacking parental, tutorial, and educational resources accessed by wealthier peers (McInerny 2010).

The pressing nature of these complex identity issues was visible in debates in 2012 over a proposed Moral and National Education (MNE). Some fear that mainland identity is misrepresented in curriculum without national education, disabling students in understanding China and sustaining prejudice (Appiah 2013). However, for ethnic minorities MNE is a missed opportunity to provide more diverse representations, as it framed Hong Kong as essentially Chinese (Appiah 2013; Jackson 2014b). Prejudice at large also lingers on in Hong Kong. The 2013 World Values Survey indicated that 27 % of Hongkongers did not wish to live next to someone of a different race, while a local study the same year found that less than half of Hongkongers “accepted” Africans, Nepalis, Pakistanis, and Filipinos in their lives (Chow 2013). A related study by the Equal Opportunities Commission found that young children (between three and six) hold negative attitudes about people with darker skin color (Chui 2011), indicating an urgent need to decrease prejudice through education. Intentions of the local Hong Kong educational authorities continue to be questioned with regard to the inclusion and treatment of diverse members of society.

Curriculum

Hong Kong education since the colonial era has embraced multiculturalism in curriculum as an abstract celebration of cultural diversity, pluralism, liberalism, and democracy. Most reforms of the last few decades have identified respect for diversity as a crucial educational value in curriculum documents. Learning to Learn—The Way Forward (CDC 2001) highlights virtues and attitudes to incorporate into curriculum including liberty, human dignity, and individuality; openness, equality, plurality, and tolerance; and respect for different ways of life, beliefs, and opinions (p. 11–2). Subsequent General Studies curriculum guides (CDC 2002) specify that students should learn “to know that there are differences among people and to accept the need to respect the rights of others in groups”; “to identify diverse customs, practices and traditions in society”; “to understand that our community is make up of people of different cultures”; “to know the characteristics of people of different cultures” and interact with them; and “to appreciate the respect the cultural differences that affect the lives of different people,” including “traditions, religions, customs, values and ways of life,” and “the wide range of human experiences and perspectives.”

The subject Liberal Studies, introduced in 2009, offers the most ambitious, systematic curriculum with regard to student multicultural engagement, aiming to:

  • enhance students’ understanding of…their society…the human world….

  • appreciate and respect diversity in cultures and views in a pluralistic society and handle conflicting values….

  • demonstrate respect for evidence, open-mindedness and tolerance towards the views and values held by other people….

  • demonstrate an appreciation for the values of their own and other cultures … (CDC 2007, p. 5–6).

However, teaching tools for facilitating such understanding, appreciation, and respect for diversity are less fully developed. Most references to ethnic or religious diversity in curriculum resources frame these as categories of difference in an abstract way. Liberal Studies textbooks, where one finds the most substantial references to cultural diversity in Hong Kong curriculum, also fail to discuss ethnic, religious, racial, and cultural diversity substantively or systematically. Most references to racial, ethnic, and/or religious diversity concern basic rights, listing categories of difference as characteristics with regard to which discrimination ought not to occur. Culture is addressed even more abstractly in textbooks, in relation to food, drink, fashion, and other non-human entities (see, for instance, Hui 2009a, p. 77).

The most substantial references to multicultural people are to disadvantaged, “grassroots” ethnic and racial minorities, NAS, indigenous inhabitants of the New Territories, and Islam. Most discussions consider how ethnic minorities face challenges in society: “95 % of Hong Kong’s population is Chinese…Hong Kong is also the home of people of other ethnicities, but they receive less social support than local Chinese because of their different languages and lifestyles, so their sociopolitical participation rate is lower” (Hui 2009b, p. 13). References to religion dwell on Islam in a negative, stereotypical fashion, repetitiously representing violent Muslim terrorists and other angry Muslims; claiming that Islam conflicts with women’s, and therefore human, rights; and focusing on a “clash of civilizations” view of the world (Jackson and Shao 2013).

As Hue and Kennedy (2013, p. 2) note, schools at this time are asking for direction regarding multiculturalism, while educational leaders seem uncertain about the needs of diverse students. Interviews with ethnic minority teachers suggest that ethnic minorities in Hong Kong education continue to face “minor acts of racism,” in a climate where Chinese homogeneity and assimilation seems assumed rather than critically investigated at administrative and policy levels (Hue and Kennedy 2013, 2012; Yuen 2002). These educators describe the model for cultural integration within Hong Kong as “too Chinese,” failing to acknowledge diversity within Chinese culture, or commonalities it shares with others. Such a mindset has been reported to have implications for student achievement, as mainstream teachers have low expectations for non-Chinese students and view educational equity as less important than basic educational “sufficiency,” within a Confucian rather than cosmopolitan, intercultural mindset (Hue and Kennedy 2013, 2012). Thus, given the over-representation of Chinese and/or Hongkonger educators in the schools (Hue and Kennedy 2012), multicultural values are not likely well-reflected in most students’ experiences in Hong Kong.

Multicultural Curriculum in Taiwan

Context

Multiculturalism as a framework in education and elsewhere has been historically popular and systematically implemented in Taiwan, in contrast to Hong Kong. The 1992 Democratic Progressive Party “Ethnicity and Cultural Policy” proposal emphasized Taiwanese citizenship as unaligned with any single ethnic group, culture, nation, or people, and listed four major “ethnic” groups, to be seen as equal in society (Wang 2004), given as Mainlanders, Taiwanese, Hakka, and Aborigines (the first three of these groups have Han ethnicity, but are distinguishable by geographic origin and history in Taiwan, and/or language). In 1997—the same time as the handover of Hong Kong—Taiwan recognized multiple cultures and multiculturalism in a constitutional amendment promoting cultural development and empowerment of minority groups. Though some see these acts as partly symbolic gestures of nonalignment with mainland China and its assimilationist rhetoric and policies (Wang 2002, 2004; Damm 2012), these motions have nonetheless paved the way for multicultural agendas across various domains of Taiwan society.

Taiwan’s multiculturalism tends to be more localized and internally-oriented than in places such as Japan, the United States, and European countries, where its emergence is often correlated with recognition of globalization and increased immigration creating new internal diversity and challenging local status quos (Mason 2009; Wang 2004). For some, this is a problem, as Taiwan’s multiculturalism is seen to respond to the PRC at a foundational level (Cabestan 2005; Schubert 2004), while a “new international localism,” perhaps more akin to Hong Kong’s “world city” self-conception, could promote more globally oriented views of multiculturalism in Taiwan (Chen 1996).

As in Hong Kong, Taiwan faces educational equity issues today related to the interrelated factors of ethnicity, class, and language. Hung and Cheng (2008) found that the interrelated variables of family income, father’s educational background, ethnicity, and locale were strongly correlated with enrollment in a top university for Taiwanese students. As Mandarin remains the lingua franca despite rhetoric promoting linguistic diversity, others charge that multicultural education in Taiwan remains a distant possibility (Wang 2002). However, in comparing the treatment of the Hakka in Taiwan and Hong Kong, it seems Taiwanese policy has promoted multiculturalism far more effectively. In Hong Kong the Hakka have significantly lost their language and their sense of unique identity (Wang 2007). Though in Taiwan the Hakka face these possibilities today, they have thus far been much more enabled by social and political institutions to engage in self-led organization to facilitate their cultural preservation and distinct identity. Indeed, comparing the situation of the Hakka in Taiwan to their situation elsewhere in Southeast Asia, it seems the Hakka have been far more successful in Taiwan in preserving and promoting their cultural heritage than elsewhere, which has been attributed at least in part to Taiwan’s explicit and functional multicultural education (Wang 2004).

Curriculum

Taiwan had a (Chinese) nationalistic curriculum following the Japanese colonial period. At the same time that multiculturalism was embraced at the national policy level in Taiwan (in the 1990s), civic education became less assimilationist and more Taiwan-centered and multicultural, however. Curriculum revision in 1993 and 1994 systematically decreased nationalistic elements, such as removing terms like “Chinese superior nationality,” and “recovering Mainland China” (Doong 2008, p. 49). In 1998, the Twelve Education Reform Mandates led to a more integrated curriculum for social studies with goals including “understand…humanity, diversity and issues of local and other communities,” “respect and protect different individuals, groups and cultures, and…prevent prejudice and discrimination,” and “discussing controversial issues from multiple perspectives” (Doong 2008; Liu 2004). A course on “Understanding Taiwan” was introduced for grade 7, which included “people and language…festivals and customs, historical sites and cultural crafts, economics, politics, leisure, religion, and social issues” (Liu 2004). “Native Place Teaching Activities” was introduced in grades 3–6, which was to be locally designed, in order to focus on local diversity (Liu 2004).

As in Hong Kong, research shows the need for greater positive representation of ethnic minorities in the curriculum, including indigenous groups and newly immigrated members of society, who are often viewed as not properly part of society. While textbooks in line with the new curriculum give more attention to ethnic minorities and diversity issues than they had in the past (Yao et al. 2009), coverage tends to be cursory, and focus on overly vague, positive aspects of diversity, as in Hong Kong (Su 2006). Though in K-12 and undergraduate settings women fare well in Taiwan today, gender has also been identified as a critical issue for Taiwan’s multicultural education. Historically, textbooks in Taiwan have been highly problematic from the standpoint of gender representation (Su 2007); today’s texts, though much-improved, continue to treat as unproblematic the presentation of gender stereotypes about women, and the assumption that women should or naturally bear the full burden for household and childcare responsibilities in society (Su 2006). In Taiwan (and in Hong Kong), private companies develop textbooks today, so the market is vulnerable to private interests in education by implication. Peng and Huang (2012) found among Taiwanese textbook editors and reviewers that “all interviewees said it is inevitable that the contents of textbooks have intentionally, or unintentionally hidden ideology” in support of traditional, stereotypical gender roles (p. 4). Additionally the editors feared providing more liberal conceptions due to the idea that greater inclusivity “presents a bit overkill…The textbook looks right, but untrue” (p. 4–5). Interestingly, recent reviews of textbook representations of gender in Hong Kong have found them relatively unproblematic and comparable to those of any other liberal society (Lee and Collins 2010; Yang 2010), and much improved from the past, raising questions about gender as a multicultural issue for Taiwan versus Hong Kong.

However, in positive contrast with Hong Kong, both minority and mainstream educators appear to hold multicultural education as a priority for curriculum. In (Wang 2002) research, though minority teachers feel that in Taipei, “four ethnic groups” sometimes conflates too easily with “world citizens,” generally in education, cultural preservation of minorities in Taiwan’s society is observed to be highly valued by mainstream and minority educators. Teachers in Taiwan see it as their role to educate students to understand in a substantial way cultural diversity, not just giving a superficial, positive gloss to diversity issues in society. Research with both minority and mainstream teachers reflects prioritization of multiculturalism in education. In a survey of mainstream Taiwanese educators, nearly three-quarters described their curricula as multicultural and as discussing “cultural diversity,” though prejudice reduction and equity appeared to be lesser priorities (Mason 2009).

As mentioned previously, not all educators feel Taiwan’s multicultural education is sufficiently realized. For some, multicultural curriculum remains an ideal rather than a reality, as a degree of cultural hierarchy is experienced across the four groups, with the Han and/or Taiwanese being seen as having an unfair top position in society at large. Relatedly, Wu (2012) found that many Taiwanese instructors are ignorant about newly immigrated minority cultures and identities, and argues for cross-cultural training in order for them to work in an informed manner with minority students (p. 6). However, recognition of diversity issues and aspirations towards developing a more multicultural and just society and curriculum clearly distinguish Taiwan’s from Hong Kong’s more ambivalent, less culturally concerned educators.

Discussion

Taiwan and Hong Kong’s different sociopolitical and historical contexts fuel contrasting conceptions of and approaches to multiculturalism in education, specifically in curriculum. Though both societies appear to be facing mild identity crises today, Taiwan’s historical autonomy has paved the way to a substantive government outlook, if in response to the PRC, which is emphatically multicultural, envisioning Taiwan as inherently ethnically diverse. This outlook can be seen to have significant implications for multicultural curriculum. Multiculturalism was strongly emphasized in reforms and key subjects in the 1990s, and today textbooks and educators are generally mindful and dedicated, if still far from perfect, regarding the need to recognize and support a specifically multicultural society.

More can no doubt be done in Taiwan to enable mainstream and minority intercultural understanding, ensuring all educators can competently teach about Taiwan’s multi-cultures, beyond an abstract rhetorical level. Some feel on the other hand that the curriculum lacks a critical, global emphasis (Chen 1996; Wu 2012), needed today within a three-tiered approach to civic education (considering local, global, and national levels). The issue of women’s representation in curriculum also remains a crucial area where improvements can easily be made, possibly symptomatic of a neglect to include women conceptually as part of the multicultural society in both the sociopolitical and public spheres. Such interventions can help further bridge gaps between rhetoric and reality, to ensure educators implement through curriculum reflectively, rather than selectively and reactively, broad public policies and perspectives in line with revisions of the society’s values in the last few decades.

In contrast with Taiwan, Hong Kong lacks a multicultural self-image at the sociopolitical level, apart from its global sense of self, as “Asia’s world city.” This lack of multicultural intentionality at the societal level is no doubt related to Hong Kong’s history, including its transitization, British laissez-faire pluralist education, and depoliticized system before the last few decades, and its ambiguous position as a global place lacking a local identity during the colonial era, to today. Though today Hongkongers are proudly multicultural in the abstract, their echoes of ambivalence toward the PRC have not led as they have in Taiwan, to a pluralistic local agenda of multicultural identity reformulation. Though “four groups” are discussed in curriculum (Hongkongers, New Arrivals, ethnic minorities, and indigenous inhabitants of the New Territories), as in Taiwan they are hardly understood as equal in sociopolitical power. Furthermore, and in contrast with Taiwan, lost is recognition of the diversity of “local” Hongkongers themselves (Jackson 2014b). Thus, while in Taiwan teachers may feel a tension and hierarchy of values among the four groups, in Hong Kong, educators feel a tension between only Chinese and non-Chinese local identities, betraying the reality of historical and present-day diversity between and within these two overbroad groups. Perhaps Hong Kong can look to Taiwan in moving toward a more multicultural standpoint on society and identity, which can help to improve the experiences of the invisible, “non-local,” non-Chinese Hongkongers and NAS in society.

Conclusion

Comparing the historical contexts and contemporary curricula, broadly understood, of Hong Kong and Taiwan reveals differences between the two societies’ self-images and understandings of the nature and significance of multiculturalism. Despite roughly similar demographics, development and modernization experiences, and related ambiguities related to autonomy and relation with the PRC, critical differences between the two societies’ social contexts nonetheless shape different meanings and functions of multicultural curriculum in their educational systems today. In Hong Kong, a lack of meaningful educational space for internal reflection on local identity and culture historically has led to distrust or ambivalence about political education (Jackson 2014b), and an assumed local versus nonlocal (Chinese Hongkonger) hierarchy, in education and society. Yet this status quo ignores the needs of non-mainstream students, including NAS and ethnic minorities, and the possibility for a more pluralistic view of internal diversity which can be more fully reflected in today’s Liberal Studies textbooks.

In contrast, Taiwan’s greater autonomy has given greater space for self-reflection, and for the construction of a pluralistic conception of local identity at the broad policy level. This has in turn given rise to political and educational constructions of multiculturalism, and a history of multicultural curriculum at a more than a purely rhetorical level. Though more can no doubt be done in Taiwan to increase cultural understanding of difference, globalization’s impact, and diverse lifestyles of women in society, Taiwan can serve as a model for Hong Kong in aiming to go beyond the most superficial level of abstract rhetoric, to portraying diverse members of local society in a more even-handed and inclusive way in curriculum, and facilitating the development of mainstream educators’ pluralistic attitudes toward diverse students as members of society. The experience of Taiwan also indicates that perhaps more broad changes in social awareness and political intentionality with regard to including all members of society might be needed for Hong Kong to actualize its abstract goals and increase multicultural elements in curriculum.

More broadly, the comparison of the development of multicultural curriculum in Taiwan and Hong Kong suggests, with regard to any model of multicultural education, eastern or western, that broader social intention and concern is essential for multicultural elements to be effectively incorporated in curriculum and implemented in school teaching. Thus, the findings from Taiwan and Hong Kong can shed light on and reframe understandings of multicultural educational development beyond East Asia, tracing the successful unfolding of multicultural curriculum within a society to educators’ abilities to capitalize on, interact with, and echo in myriad ways understandings stemming from larger-scale social movements toward inclusivity, pluralism, and social justice for all members of society. Though such an image may be less attractive to those who envision multicultural education as leading social reconstruction, this contextually based framing nonetheless reminds that multicultural curriculum cannot operate independently of its larger social setting. If educators wish to change curriculum, they must also change the society.