Not long after the political transition in 1997, Hong Kong witnessed a spate of top-down education reforms that had been conceived within the neoliberal ideology of economic globalisation. Neoliberalism is particularly pervasive here, because of the underdevelopment of representative politics and of critical, social democratic discourse in society. This article examines how education has been shortchanged by these reforms that dovetail with various processes arising from neoliberalism. These processes include privatisation, managerialism and performativity within the schools, as well as standardisation and surveillance in the curriculum. While teachers experience subjection to a new form of governmental discipline, society as a whole suffers from increasing polarisation in education provision. The reinvention of a humanist education agenda is urgently called for but, unfortunately, this is fraught with great difficulties.
[Copyright of International Studies in Sociology of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09620210500200142]

Following initiations in educational reform that began in the 1990s, Hong Kong continues to experience considerable pressure for educational reform. On the surface many of these initiatives parallel reform policies/movements in Asia and indeed, globally. The success of any reform is dependent on how it is contextualised prior to and at implementation. In this article, an exploration is made into how reforms in four particular sareas, namely: professional development of principals, higher education, English language standards, and inclusion of students with learning difficulties have been conceived, contextualised and managed in Hong Kong, as it moves gradually toward increased adoption of education reforms. These areas are linked in that each describes and critiques contextualization with reference to areas such as accountability, co-operation and professional control.
[Copyright of Education Policy Analysis Archives is the property of College of Education, Arizona State University.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/]

This article investigates the use of metaphors for education in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's (SAR) educational reform proposals by analysis of the government's Review of Education System Reform Proposals-Consultation Document (hereafter referred to as the Consultation Document; May 2000). It discovers six or seven major metaphorical schemata for education: commodity acquisition, mechanism, building construction, a path or journey of exploration, growth and nurture, with a subschema of catering. The reforms are intended to encourage internal motivation in students that will lead to their creating knowledge and to their all-round development, and the metaphorical schemata are evaluated in terms of whether they tend to reinforce or undermine these goals. Growth/nurture and journey of exploration tend to reinforce the goals of the reforms, building construction and paths seem to be neutral or ambiguous, whereas commodity acquisition, mechanism, and catering would appear to undermine them. The article also considers the ways in which metaphorical interactions such as multivalency and literalization can lead to confused thinking and argument.
[Copyright of Metaphor & Symbol is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15327868MS1704_2 ]

Hong Kong has put forward a package of education reform proposals in 2000. The education reform is to set the blueprint for Hong Kong's development of education for the 21st century. An analysis of the values orientation of the reform proposals shows that the impact of globalization and the economic restructuring are the guiding forces. The main concern of the education reform is human investment - to produce the manpower demanded by a new economy of the era of information technology. At the same time, the proposals also promote democratization and equal opportunities and this implies a paradigm shift.
[Copyright of School Effectiveness and School Improvement is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/sesi.15.2.201.30431]