The roles of principal leadership in change management have long been documented. The key concern to examine in this study was the dilemmas and measures confronting principals’ when they led changes to instigate inclusive education in Hong Kong. Thus, this paper aims to report sources of dilemmas and how principals tackled them in the change process. Ten principals of schools recognized for effective inclusive education practices were interviewed in a qualitative study. Findings suggested that the process of leading change was very complex. Two dilemmas were identified: (a) principals’ struggles between benefits and issues of participating in inclusive education and (b) autocratic initial decisions versus need for staff involvement. The second dilemma stemmed from not involving key staff while the implementation required their active participation. Thus, the existing organizational culture and personnel capacities became obstacles required for the success of inclusive education. The leadership measures to tackle the obstacles began by building a shared vision which in turn required both transactional and transformational leadership activities in order to increase teacher commitment to reforms. This study has contributed to change leadership theories in affirming the need to include socio-political contexts in examining leadership decisions toward school reforms.
[Copyright © 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.]

Career planning plays a salient role in determining the individuals’ goal setting, work engagement, and outcomes. In school settings, helping students to establish good career planning would contribute not only to maximize their potential to learn and achieve based on their personal strengths, but also to suit their career development needs. However, to students with special educational needs (SEN), they are usually the group facing greater challenges in career planning and development compared to regular students. In the Hong Kong context, the present study took the initiativeto examine the aspirations, expectations, and challenges of post-secondary school transition among SEN students and their parents. A qualitative approach through a series of focus group interviews was adopted. Over 70 SEN students from both mainstream schools (n =38) and special schools (n =34) and 37 parents of SEN student participated in this study. The results were categorized into career aspirations, difficulties and challenges, expectations and recommendations of SEN students and their parents. The results draw educators’ attention of the found inadequacy of positive attitude to career planning and low confidence levels to achieve desirable post-school transition outcomes among SEN students. Implications are discussed in relation to SEN students’ needs of career planning training and career development.

Teachers sometimes limit the opportunities for students to learn because they perceive that their students have limited ability or potential for learning. In this paper, through a case study, we show how teachers taking part in a learning study learnt to cater for students’ individual differences and at the same time, opened up opportunities for students to reach their potential. The learning study took place in special school settings in Hong Kong. Instead of following their former practice which was considered to be tailoring the curriculum to the students’ perceived ability, the group of teachers tried to find a powerful object of learning, such that further learning can be built, leading to a level of learning that they had never dared to try to reach before. The outcome was encouraging and had great impact on the teachers involved.

This study was to evaluate the impact of an early literacy intervention program for preschoolers at risk for SpLD. One hundred ten children were identified as at risk for SpLD. They were divided into 2 groups, the at-risk group (AR) and the control-risk group (CR). The at-risk group received a centre-based intervention program which contained 15 training sessions on the four domains: oral language, orthographic knowledge, morphological awareness and word recognition tailored for children poor in literacy skills. The control-risk group received some self-learning materials related to their school curriculum and finished the materials at home. A further group of 50 children (NAR) who were not at risk were selected to act as controls and were assigned equally to the two groups. Nine language and reading related-cognitive tests were administered. Results from the 9 tests before the intervention showed that both AR and CR had similar literacy achievement. Both groups performed worse than NAR particularly in the oral language, word recognition, orthographic awareness and phonological awareness. After the intervention, though AR and CR did not catch up with NAR, AR showed greater improvement in most tests than CR. The differences in improvement were found significantly in orthographic awareness and morphological awareness. This showed that children at risk for SpLD in the preschool years could achieve higher in literacy ability by receiving special intervention program. The results highlighted the important role that early literacy intervention played in the development of language and reading skills in preschoolers at risk for SpLD.

With the increasing diversity and complexity of schools, it continuously demands innovative, responsibility and flexible approaches to teaching and learning. Society places a significant value on the attainment of literacy and the main goal of early education is to establish and acquire reading and writing skills. For students with specific learning difficulties (SpLD), literacy is a right and it continues to receive much concern and attention from professionals and educational policy makers. Over the past two decades, Hong Kong has been increasing research in understanding of SpLD and moving toward the development of services for students with SpLD. These students have specific educational needs which must be addressed to ensure that educational outcomes are achieved and special learning needs are taken into consideration in educational planning and curriculum design. However, educational assessments, learning support and resources to identify and support such children are still being developed in individual schools and research into this problem is limited. This paper will be discussed the characteristics of SpLD and its manifestations will be discussed. The special learning needs of these students will be discussed including assessments, modifications to pedagogy and use of IT equipments will be outlined and details of the expanded curriculum and how it can be taught in classroom will be addressed.

After the introduction of the nine-year compulsory education in 1978, educators are not satisfied with just a quantitative growth in education but request for a better guarantee in the quality of education. The demands for improving the mixed-ability teaching and meeting the diversified needs of students are well known. Services provided for children with special educational needs (SEN) have been reviewed in the Education Commission Report (ECR) No.2 while additional learning support for students in mainstream secondary school with a large intake of the bottom 10% students has been also will discussed in the ECR No.4. Suggestions on providing extra learning support have been highlighted in the ECR No.4. For example, the introduction of a school-based remedial support programme in secondary schools with a large intake of Band 5 students, the design of the core curriculum for academically low achievers and the establishment of more Practical Schools and Skills Opportunities Schools for students of low learning motivating arc well noted. In the report, it spotlights that approximately 14% of school population in Hong Kong experience difficulties in learning or adjusting to their school life. However, only 2% of them are provided with special educational service and support in special education classes or special schools. Considering the limited special education provisions and the policy of integration, Winter (1993), a local educator, predicted that it is likely that the above ratio of SEN children in mainstream schools and in special schools (6:10 will persist or even increase rather than decrease in future years). As most SEN children in mainstream schools find difficulties in school learning and adjustment, a great proportion of them are described as the academically low achievers or children with learning and behavioral problems. The notion of the behavioral problem and developmental issue in mainstream schools has attracted the public attention in both the ECR No

The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of using computer and flash cards to present the reading stimulus materials to children with learning disabilities. Twenty children from Years 4 and 5 (at the ages of 10 and 11) were selected by their teachers with the criterion being that they were judged as having difficulties in reading. These children were enrolled in the Intensive Remedial Teaching Programme for Children with Learning Difficulties (IRTP), Integrated Classes or Remedial Programmes of the New Funding Mode. A total of 20 studetns from two Hong Kong primary schools were recruited for the study. The students in each school were randomly divided into two groups. One group of the students learned to read under the computer-based programme and that of the other group under the flash card programme. The stimulus materials of this study were three lists of Chinese characters. Each list consisted of 30 characters with similar orthographic features. This training programme lasted for six weeks. Comparison of the test results showed that the students in the computer-based programme outperformed those in the flash card programme.