Vouchers and school choice discourses have been translated, reassembled, and made intelligible in different localities, such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, as tactics in education reforms to ensure equality and quality. This paper presents the findings of a comparative research study that aims to investigate the effects of preschool vouchers in Taiwan and Hong Kong. I argue that laced within global and local circulations of educational choice and voucher discourses are notions of marketization and privatization. In that, I seek to understand how preschool voucher systems in Taiwan and Hong Kong work to create a normative socio-cultural administration to (re)-shape, regulate, and construct reasonable/desirable modes of thinking and acting.

Since the publication of the Education Commission Report No. 5 in 1992, the Hong Kong community like other international communities, put increasing emphasis on creating a quality professional teacher work force in schools. This is culminated at the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in July 1997 when the Chief Executive, Mr. Tung Che Hwa, announced in his Inauguration Speech that all new primary and secondary teachers should be degree holders with formal professional training. Among the many needs and initiatives to upgrade the teaching force, the situation in primary school sector draws great attentions of the education community. At present, over 80% of the primary school teachers are non-graduates but professionally trained. At the same time, the primary school sector also attracts quite a number of the fresh university graduates without professional training to take up teaching posts. This phenomenon is not encouraging to the healthy development of a strong graduate teaching force in the primary school. In order to improve the situation, two areas of work need to be carried out. First the Hong Kong community needs to create opportunities for non-graduate teachers to upgrade themselves to become graduates. Second, postgraduate training program should be developed urgently for untrained graduate teachers in the primary school. Responding to the above, this paper examine the issues related to the development of a Postgraduate Diploma in Education program (PGDE) for in-service primary school teachers with special reference to the expectation of the school principals who are the key actors in the primary school sector. Data of the present study are drawn from a large market study for PGDE program development. Two types of data are available for analysis, namely the quantitative data from survey to a random sample of 392 primary schools (return rate was 80.6%), and qualitative data from interviews with 21 primary school principals. The expectations

The paper introduces a research study which is encapsulated within a broader understanding of knowledge and action, theory and practice as well as policy and research. The inquiry of teacher curriculum decision-making is represented by the introduction of the Target-Oriented Curriculum (TOC) within a context of curriculum change in Hong Kong. The research question is framed by the problem emerging from a new challenge resulting from a curriculum change. The implementation of the TOC may be perceived as a platform for ongoing critique and reconstruction of a dynamic mix of curriculum theory, policy, research and practice. A collaborative journey of reflection and empowerment is ongoing in the research study. This collaborative journey which is an Action Research study (Koo, 1999) is navigated by a researcher from a teacher education institute to work with the participants, who are a selection of primary school teachers and principals. The Action Research has four Action Steps which have separate main activities and strategies. The initial action steps established a platform for ongoing thinking and reconstructive action. Action Step One was collaborative and a generating phase. The overarching theme was to “think about the context of my own curriculum practice”. It linked the conceptual framework with the initial and ongoing conversations. It was the beginning for the researcher of keeping detailed records of the narratives, conversations as well as her reflections as a researcher. All of the researcher’s strategies are linked with ethical considerations and trustworthiness. Action Step Two was a continuing process of engaging the research participants in a critical community for ongoing critique and improvement in curriculum practice. It comprised three individual semi-focused interviews which were spread out over three to five months. The individual in-depth interviews were different from the sharing meetings of Action Steps 1, 3 and 4 in which teachers told personal

Recently, the professional development and training of principals has become a hot issue in Hong Kong. The idea of enhancing the professional quality of principals is officially raised by the Education Commission in its Report no. 7, followed by a government consultation paper on a proposed principals training programme. It is mentioned in the consultation paper that the draft programme is proposed after some visits to Australia, the USA, the UK and Singapore and a study of their prinicpals development programmes. The impact of the introduction of a principals training programme is great. It affects more than 1,200 primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong and twice or thrice the number in terms of serving and potential principals, not to mention the other stakeholders namely teachers, parents and students. There are also related controversial issues ranging from educational theory to practice. The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it is to introduce in greater details the various principals training programmes of the countries mentioned in the consultation paper. On top of them, training programmes in China and some other countries are also included to give an overall picture of representative principal training programmes. It is hope that this will widen our scope in the philosophy and practice behind a principals' training programme. Secondly, the paper also reports the findings of a survey conducted after the publication of the consultation paper. The survey was conducted in terms of questionnaires and the subjects of the survey were more than 750 serving and aspiring principals in over 230 local primary and secondary schools. Results of the survey will be discussed and recommendations will be made.