學校文化，簡而言之，是指學校的信念、價值觀、辦事的方式和同事間相處的形態。校長作為領導，自然有需要掌握或營造有利於教學素質提升的學校文化。學校文化的塑造，除關乎學校本身之外，外在的環境和教育政策對學校文化的建立也很重要，本文藉介紹香港學校文化與校長角色的互動和轉變，希望加深翁源縣校長對領導和學校文化的掌握和了解。
[Copyright © 2009 翁源縣科技教育局.]

本文寫作的背景，源於對香港鄉村學校發展的研究。2003 年，教統局為了改善小學的成本效益，規定學校取錄小一新生必須滿23 人才可開辦一班，政策導致多間鄉村小學被迫停辦，單以2005-2006 年計算，被迫停辦的村校達36 間，佔村校總數的三分之二，香港鄉村學校有從此在歷史上湮沒的趨勢。有見及此，香港歷史博物館、香港文化博物館及香港教育學院合作進行了一項「香港鄉村學校」的研究，這個研究計劃的時間從2006-2008 年，目的在搜集和撰寫學校資料，又透過口述歷史的形式，為香港的鄉村教育保留一些剪影。計劃的組長是羅慧燕博士，研究小組成員包括了教育政策與行政系的余惠冰、李展華、謝慶生及筆者，另有學生助理鄭漢癸和鄭悅。這個研究最終成就了54 所鄉村學校的檔案和18 份口述歷史，在研究的過程中，筆者「耳聞目染」，增加了對鄉村學校校長的了解：有些是透過直接訪談校長的；有些是透過其他受訪者轉述的，同時也引發出對鄉村學校校長的教育理念、領導和風格的體會和興趣。這些資料，除了反映香港社會一定時空的教育發展之外，對豐富香港校長領導的文獻也很有幫助。於是，研究小組將這部分的專題交由筆者整理，並代表研究小組就着香港村校的校長領導，作一些報道。
[Copyright © 2011 香港教育圖書公司.]

In Hong Kong, the move towards quality education has stirred up waves of changes in the education setting in the late 90s. Drastic changes have been implemented in terms of curriculum, methodology and forms of school management. Borrowed heavily from the Western democracies, the contemporary educational policy and practice in Hong Kong are increasingly directed by the market model of educational provision valuing consumer choice; accountability; quality assurance; devolution of authority and participative management process. In the face of these changes, three issues are pertinent to school leadership - Firstly, the approaches towards School-based Management stress the importance of school heads to work closely with the various stakeholders who may have different and often conflicting role expectations on their school heads. Role incumbents may find themselves confused when determining framework of defined outcomes and accountability. Secondly, the injection of consumer control into school operation and the marketisation of educational provision denote the need of school heads to have a deeper understanding of the needs, expectations and aspirations of the various stakeholders directly or indirectly involved in school management. Thirdly, increasing demands for school heads to seek professional development opportunities that will broaden their existing knowledge and increase their array of management skills to cope with the current changes. While research literature is enormous on the studies of role expectations and job aspirations of school heads especially from the perspective of teachers, parents and even heads themselves, however, there is a lack of robust research locally and abroad on the perspective of the neglected and yet the most directly involved stakeholder - the students. The present study attempts to develop understanding of the role expectations of primary school heads as viewed from the students' perspective and to identify the effects of such expectations

In Hong Kong, there is an acute need to provide newly appointed principals with opportunities for continuous professional development so that they could face the impact of reforms and globalization on school development. The Education Bureau has commissioned the tertiary institutions to provide structured professional development courses to cater for the needs of aspiring, newly appointed and serving principals for leadership development. This paper aims to report on an exploratory qualitative study regarding the perception of 32 newly appointed principals from secondary schools on (a) their role as a new principal and (b) their needs and expectations on the school leadership development programme so that contents of existing development programmes could be improved to meet their needs. Findings demonstrated that the newly appointed principals expected to be equipped with the administrative skills of human resources management such as empowering middle leaders and handing underperforming staff; the practical technique of financial management; the skills of dealing with legal matters regarding school management and the capacities of curriculum and instructional leadership. In addition, they attributed networking with peers and working with mentors as invaluable experience and support for their early years’ principalship.
[Copyright © 2015 The Author(s).]

This study attempted to identify effects of trust between principal leadership and teacher professional learning in Hong Kong primary schools. To verify the potential mediating effects of trust as a component of school capacity, survey data with a sample of 970 teachers from 32 local primary schools was used. Two questionnaires were combined to investigate principal leadership and school capacity in the schools. Baron and Kenny’s four-step causal process for mediation analysis was employed to have a preliminary inquiry. To compensate weaknesses of the orthodox regression based approach, significance of the mediating effects of trust were tested using the Sobel’s test and bootstrapping method. Next, the seven core sets of principal leadership practices were used as multiple predictors, and mediating effects of trust between them and teacher professional learning were also examined. The findings affirmed the role of faculty trust as a mediator between principal leadership and teacher professional learning in Hong Kong primary schools.
[Copyright © 2015 The Author(s).]