The author tested a model hypothesizing that students' self-perceived academic support (from parents, teachers, and peers) is related to their achievement directly and indirectly through their own perceived academic engagement. The participants were 270 adolescents (M age = 15.41 years, range = 14–20 years) from 3 grade levels (Forms 3–5, equivalent to Grades 9–11 in the United States) in a Hong Kong secondary school. The school principal and teachers helped to collect data based on these adolescents' responses to a self-report questionnaire, consisting of a demographic profile and 4 scales assessing their self-perceptions of the extent of parental, teacher, and peer support, and their own academic engagement. Academic achievement was measured by self-reported grades in math, English, and Chinese. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that adolescents' perceived parental, teacher, and peer support were all indirectly related to their academic achievement mediated by their own perceived academic engagement. The strength of the relationships, however, varied by support system, with perceived teacher support to achievement being the strongest, followed closely by perceived parental support, and then perceived peer support. In addition, both perceived parental support and perceived teacher support were directly related to academic achievement. However, perceived teacher support made the most total (direct and indirect) contribution to student achievement. Perceived peer support had the smallest, nonetheless significant, indirect relationship to academic achievement. However, the negative, direct influence of perceived peer support canceled out its positive, indirect influence on academic achievement.
[Copyright of Genetic Social and General Psychology Monographs is the property of Routledge . Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.3200/MONO.131.2.77-127 ]

Increasingly, there is advocacy for parents to be included in partnership roles with schools. Indeed, the term 'partnership' seems to have acquired the connotation of an ideal form of parent-school relationship. This paper argues that the notion of partnership, with its accompanying suggestion of equality as a framework for the complementary sharing of responsibilities, is problematical. Based on the findings from an in-depth study of teacher leadership in three Hong Kong schools that involved as participants parents, teachers, and students, it is proposed that a more reasonable understanding of this relationship is that of a professional and client association, where both parents and teachers are aware of their responsibilities and that these responsibilities are at once both demarcated and shared according to that understanding. At the same time there is also a need for teachers and parents to concentrate on building more concrete links for consistent and regular teacherVparent communication, as significant student learning now takes place informally at home, via the Internet.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10476210601151573]

Governments around the world have adopted school self-evaluation as an essential corollary to the local management of schools. Typically this has been accompanied by prescribed frameworks, indicators and scoring systems, tending to promote a form of ritual self-inspection rather than an ongoing and dynamic process of self-evaluation. It is argued that these have derived more from an accountability imperative than an improvement motive and as such have tended to disempower rather than empower schools. This article examines the inherent tensions between external accountability and internally driven school improvement. The example of Hong Kong's new relationship with schools is used to illustrate how those issues play out in the implementation of large-scale reform, drawing parallels and contrasts with Ofsted's New Relationship with Schools in England. The responsiveness of Hong Kong's Education Development Bureau to evidence from independent research carries lessons for other countries in which such evidence has been ignored or marginalised by policy-makers. It is, in many respects, an exemplary case study of change management.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632430802292332]