This paper critically reviews the thesis of managing globalization, which demonstrates how East Asian states have successfully selectively blended elements of transnational academic capitalism with their pre-existing models of political economy, thereby effectively responding to neoliberal globalization. This paper argues that the thesis overlooks the significance of local politics in understanding the global–local dynamics in higher education policy, thus insufficiently acknowledging the indeterminacy that arises in the transformation of the state. To address this argument, this paper examines the transnational higher education development in Singapore and Hong Kong and explains how political resistance and corresponding policy changes that emerged in these two societies help understand a zerosum opposition between global and local perspectives. This zero-summism shows that the conceptual contestation over globalization versus anti-globalization remains relevant.

Recent research has shown that schools and their leaders can exert a direct effect on students’ civic learning (Kennedy, Li & Chan, 2014; Li & Kennedy, 2015). These results are context bound so that any prescriptions for actions by schools need to take account of local issues confronting schools and their leaders. This is particularly important in Hong Kong where protest mobilization among Hong Kong young adults has become widespread (Ortman, 2014). The issue for schools is to have a clear understanding of students’ potential for future civic engagement and to develop programmes to enable future citizens to make wise choices about how they exercise their civic engagement options. To provide an evidence based approach to this issue, Hong Kong young adolescents’ civic beliefs and aspirations for civic engagement over ten years from 1999 to 2009 were examined using secondary data from two successive IEA studies. Conscious of the problems of variable-centred analysis, this study used person-centred analysis to maximize the identification of the full range of diverse views among students in two cohorts. This methodology allowed for vertical analyses at the two separate time points and horizontal analysis across time. The outcome was the identification of students’ civic values and aspirations as young adolescents. This provided the basis for articulating ways that school leaders can support the civic development of young people as they progress through adolescence and prepare for adulthood.

Successive UK governments have pursued policies to diversify school provision across England nested in neo-liberal ideologies. Reforms has focused both on generating autonomy and distinctiveness with the state system of schools and the creation of new "types" of schools outside local democratic accountability. There are now approximately 70 "types" of schools, characterised through parental choice, provisions of private interests, and a trends toward private funding with subsidies from taxpayers. In short, public schools are increasingly privatised, owned and run by private individuals and consortia which profit from services rendered to and through the school. Business models dominate the training and performance of school principals as leaders. Consideration of school leadership in Asia suggests that research frameworks are bound by a range of factors that differentiate leadership and leadership research across the region. These include the following: socio-economic developments connected to the allocation of resources for research and the development of researchers’ capacities; a tendency for societies with emergent research capacity to communicate understanding of school leadership—sometimes empirical—through prescriptive or descriptive writing; the degree of boundedness to political realities and policy objectives shapes the principalship from being relatively autonomous to agents of the state, and the borrowing of policies which influences how the work of principals are prioritised and contextualised across the respective Asia societal cultures.

This paper will examine the interplay of equity and excellence in Singapore’s secondary schools. It uses Fraser’s (2008) three forms of justice: redistributive, recognitive and representational. It explores Singapore’s ‘bridges and ladders’ model of differentiated schooling. Case studies of a madrasah, a specialised school, and an elite school demonstrate the tensions between equity and excellence in the system. We argue that the ‘bridges and ladders’ model, through its differentiated schooling experiences, paradoxically increases equity and excellence while simultaneously exacerbating inequity. Finally, we reflect on the implications of this research on the pursuit of equity in Hong Kong’s education system.

Hong Kong is an international city, with people of different races. In recent years, the number of people from South Asia, especially from Nepal, Pakistan, and India, is rising rapidly. Increasingly more of them are choosing to study in public schools, where learning the Chinese language is compulsory. However, the Chinese language is too difficult for them to learn, and their failure in the public examination usually presents an obstacle to further study in universities as well as to their career prospects in Hong Kong. Moreover, many non-Chinese-speaking (NCS) students have experienced racial discrimination in daily life in public transport, public places, and schools in Hong Kong. They find it difficult to make friends with the local people because they do not know Cantonese or use inaccurate pronunciations. Since 2006, the mission to provide formal education to NCS students was buttressed by ‘designated schools’ which were nominated by the Education Bureau (EDB) to admit more NCS students. However, recent complaints regarding the allocation of NCS children in multiethnic schools as a form of cultural segregation and discrimination has resulted in an increasing demand for spaces in mainstream schools where Chinese is the main medium of instruction. Hence, NCS students have to face more difficulties in learning and in managing interactions with local students. In this research, a case study of a multiethnic school was performed to examine the major challenges faced by the non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students when learning Chinese and how the school helped these students overcome their challenges. How the multiethnic school developed a suitable environment for promoting multicultural integration and harmony in the school was also studied. Through investigations of school documents, observation of lessons and activities, and discussion with teachers and students, the school was determined to have applied a suitable range of strategies to provide pleasurable and

Music listening occupies a central part of music studies at all levels of education. However, according to the relevant research, teachers have been emphasizing students’ cognitive responses with limited connection to the affective domain during. Undergraduate music majors have little interest in those teaching materials chosen by their teachers. This study is based on motivation theory, which emphasizes cognitive and affective responses during the learning process as well as requiring teachers to understand students’ behaviors, thoughts and feelings. The aim of this study is to investigate and explore teachers’ beliefs and pedagogies toward students’ affective responses during music listening in higher education under the context of mainland China and Hong Kong. The following two research questions guide the whole study: a) what are university music teachers’ beliefs and pedagogies toward affective response during music listening and learning in higher education? (b) How do their teaching pedagogy represent their belief? This study uses a mixed-method approach and includes two phases. Phase I aims to investigate the current situation regarding teachers’ belief and pedagogy towards affective responses while listening and learning to music. A questionnaire surveyed the views of 185 university music teachers recruited from 17 universities in mainland China, together with ten university music teachers from two universities in Hong Kong. From the questionnaire survey findings, three major issues were identified by teachers and considered critical to informing their beliefs and pedagogies when teaching music: (1) the correlation between teachers’ beliefs and pedagogy, (2) perspectives and pedagogic strategies toward affective response in music listening and learning, and (3) the factors influence teachers’ beliefs and pedagogies. Phase II aims to explore what the teachers’ actually teaching and the influences upon teachers’ belief and pedagogy towards affective responses

School participation rates in Hong Kong are acknowledged to be high but not always for the city’s ethnic minority students. Case study was used to portray the ‘out of school’ phenomenon for ethnic minority students at a secondary school in Hong Kong through the experiences of one such ethnic minority student. Morshed, a Pakistani student, participated with the researchers in an unstructured in-depth interview. In addition, interviews were also conducted with the principal, two teachers, and one support staff from the school. The study showed the complex interaction of school contexts and personal life issues that influenced Morshed’s dropping out of school. Implications are drawn for providing better school support that can facilitate more positive schooling experiences for Hong Kong’s ethnic minority students.
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