Dance education has not played a significant role in Hong Kong schools. Teacher education may be at a crossroads in determining its future directions in relation to dance as art rather than physical activity. Taking Marcel Mauss's characterizations of the techniques of the body as the ways in which, from society to society, people learn how to use their bodies, this paper looks back at the context in which forms of dance education were introduced into the physical education curriculum of Hong Kong schools and examines social, cultural and political constraints upon their directions and development in a colonial and post-colonial society. Viewing dance education as forms of socially mediated practices, we show how bodies that are subjected to formal and informal programmes of dance education can be both inscribed and inscribing. Developments in dance education inevitably involve statements about the body, attempts to capture it, impose disciplines upon it, or mitigate their force. To reflect upon Hong Kong's changing destiny is to ask how the history of colonialism's disciplining of the body can be shaken loose from the domination of categories and ideas it produced and incorporated into the educational system, and what potency might dance education practices have in the future for troubling and negotiating meanings around identity and "Chinese-ness".
[Copyright of Sport, Education and Society is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573320601081575 ]

Relatively little is known about how and by whom curriculum leadership and management occur inside secondary schools, especially in Asian contexts. This article aims to analyse curriculum decision-making in two academically effective secondary schools in Hong Kong. It employs qualitative methods to capture the contributions made by various school personnel, and in particular the principals, to curriculum leadership and management. Data for the two schools show that whilst neither of the principals plays a significant role in curriculum monitoring and innovation, the vice-principal (male), the senior teachers and teachers in one school were perceived to place more emphasis on curriculum monitoring and innovation than their counterparts in the other school. Whilst teachers in both schools shared high expectations for students' academic achievement, one subtle difference between them related to the pursuit of academic excellence. In one school, students did not exert much pressure on their teachers whereas in the other school, teachers felt they had to fulfil students' demands for good lesson preparation and take account of students' opinions of their teaching.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632439968970]

This paper presents a comparative study of extra-musical learning in the music classes of the schools of Hong Kong and Taiwan, where education is geared towards democracy and citizenship at a time of unstable national identity for both communities. Taiwan has been undergoing a process of indigenisation since 1945, whilst Hong Kong's sovereignty was returned to the People's Republic of China after 1 July 1997. This paper argues that the transmission of extra-musical learning is essentially a response to the particular needs of these two Chinese historical-social contexts, which require their music curricula to be securely grounded in the ideology of a culturally based education for 'citizenship'. Despite different approaches to western-based musical knowledge in schools, Hong Kong and Taiwan attempt to promote a sense of national identity and an essentially Confucian set of moral values as a central goal of school music education. The promotion of ethno-cultural nationalism in Taiwan's music education is regarded as a democratic goal for the Taiwanese state, though in practice, the educational systems of both Taiwan and Hong Kong are coloured by the global context.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305792032000070066]

Many schools in Hong Kong are concerned with the growing number of enrolments of students from Mainland China. This article examines the immigrant students' constructs of their cross-cultural identities. It reveals how these students experience a journey of transformation in language, culture and identity. Qualitative data were collected from unstructured interviews with 12 immigrant students from Mainland China from six secondary schools. Two cases which are representative of the sample are reported. The study showed the transformation of the cross-cultural identities of these students, in the process of which they adopted the new culture into their lives and made it their reality while they still strongly connected part of their identity to their Mainland Chinese background. Despite some negative experiences of adaptation, they adopted a meritocratic approach to making sense of their cross-cultural experience. It was used as a form of agency to overcome, or at least ameliorate, feelings of discrimination, loss of cultural support and being immigrants in the 'new' society of Hong Kong. Lastly, two implications for the promotion of education for immigrant students will be discussed at school and legal levels.
[Copyright of Ethnography and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17457820802305469]

This study considered curricular and instructional influences on early Chinese literacy attainment in Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore. The participants included 198 pre‐school children, their teachers and parents. Children were administered the Pre‐school and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale at the age of either two or three years, and again one year later. Teachers were asked to report on their beliefs and practices related to literacy education, and classroom observations were conducted to determine the extent to which directives issued by the Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore governments were implemented. Investigation showed that there were marked differences across the societies in curriculum guidelines and approaches to literacy teaching. Results indicated that by the age of four, pre‐schoolers in Hong Kong and Singapore had significantly better Chinese literacy attainment than those in Beijing. Although age was the best predictor of attainment, location, teachers' qualifications and classroom experience also significantly contributed to children’s literacy attainment.
[Copyright of International Journal of Early Years Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669760500295870]

Cross-cultural analysis of the effects of transformational leadership on organizational learning in elementary and secondary schools in Hong Kong, Western Australia, Canada (Manitoba), and Taiwan.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1363243022000053448]

Two-hundred-and-ninety-nine Chinese secondary school teachers in Hong Kong were assessed on their endorsement of counselling values using a 19-item self-report checklist, and on their perceived self-efficacy towards helping using the 10-item Schwarzer-Wegner scale. These teachers were found to share the same counselling values as counselling psychologists. They prized most highly the humanistic counsellor qualities, followed by counselling practice with a preventive, developmental and holistic perspective. Their relative endorsement of scientific values suggested that they were not resistant to the promotion of empirically supported and evidence-based treatment approaches. Teachers' self-efficacy towards helping was also predictable from endorsing values related to interpersonal relationships and diversity in counselling practice. Implications of the findings for improved counselling training for teachers are discussed.
[Copyright of Counselling Psychology Quarterly is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09515070500304474]