To explore the effectiveness of a participatory approach to citizenship education, the authors conducted an action learning programme that focused on service learning . The purpose was to observe how primary students in Hong Kong responded to the government’s proposed five priority values. Overall, they found that students involved in the programme showed improvement in the acquisition of the five citizenship values, particularly in developing care and concern for society. Moreover, action learning enhanced student’s collaborative and participatory skills. While this is an effective approach, unfortunately, in practice, most teachers tend to resist it, regarding it as a ‘time consuming’ teaching strategy. Moreover, even while seeing it as a good pedagogical strategy, the sample teachers did not feel confident that they had the knowledge and skills to implement action learning effectively.