| Summary: | Neoliberal policy agendas have heavily influenced multiple aspects of education systems worldwide. Hong Kong is no exception. The education sector in Hong Kong guides teachers tightly to ensure that quantifiable assessments, accountability mechanisms, and teacher training are aligned with global standards. This neoliberal development tends to induce top-down curricula, syllabi, frameworks, performance indicators, and teacher training programs. Teachers have become increasingly aware of a lack of autonomy in their professional community. Thus, a pedagogy of listening is crucial for us to hear the voices of the affected teachers and their corresponding alternative narratives. We apply the concept of the commons as an alternative way of listening to teachers' voices and resisting the neoliberal tensions in dominant discourses. A group of teachers from Hong Kong collectively owns a digital platform for holding dialogues with teachers in different places, including the UK and South Africa, allowing them to discuss educational topics and issues globally. The dialogues have uncovered the misalignments, tensions, and contradictions between curriculum and practice. Such bottom-up dialogues have opened a shared space for teachers' alternative narratives to emerge, empowering teachers to actively participate in their school teaching. We argue that the educational commons is an alternative way of liberating the silenced narratives in the education system.
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