ABSTRACT
This chapter takes readers to the study’s first research site in Hong Kong, where the author conducted one year of ethnographic fieldwork, and taught junior secondary Liberal Studies (LS) classes. Data analysis identifies students’ aspirations for future careers and endeavors that existed alongside conflicts related to family, romantic love, and education. The author describes how students’ hopes, alongside the pain and alienation they expressed, became generative themes that would later be introduced into curriculum. Analysis also sheds light on how inequities for ethnic minority students were produced and reproduced through actions of well-meaning educators struggling with demands for public examination performance, which constrained their ability to imagine and enact pedagogical alternatives. The chapter concludes by discussing how curriculum and practices the author introduced in one junior secondary LS class created opportunities for students to explore their identities and display academic investment. However, these changes did not necessarily move students to empowerment based on transformative resistance.
