Following the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region developed wide-ranging curriculum reforms, including project learning. A recent survey has indicated that over 80% of Hong Kong primary and secondary schools have adopted project learning as a curriculum task. Such an outcome is hard to reconcile both with the culture of Hong Kong schools and the generally bleak picture that pervades the literature on educational change.In seeking an explanation for this apparent success we focus attention on the policy instruments that were used by government agencies to facilitate the process of implementation. Our analysis revealed that teachers were caught in a pincer movement that involved voluntary activities promoting project learning and coercive measures that monitored and evaluated successful implementation. Teachers' views of these policy instruments differed markedly from those of policymakers. This confluence of mixed approaches, while apparently successful, is also shown to be problematic. Finally, the paper is located in a theoretical framework with its origins in recent policy theory that to date has not been applied to educational contexts.
[Copyright of International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership is the property of Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://journals.sfu.ca/ijepl/index.php/ijepl]

Despite its popularity in other countries, like America and Canada, peer editing is considered quite 'avant-garde' in the Hong Kong academic community and has never been a common practice in local secondary schools' classrooms. This paper will try to unveil the reasons why a number of Hong Kong English teachers are reluctant to use peer-editing. It is hypothesized that any positive experience of peer editing among teachers themselves is an impetus to use peer editing in class. Based on this hypothesis, a brief survey was carried out to examine a group of fifteen student-teachers' attitudes who had taken a second language writing course in a graduate school's setting, in which peer-editing activities of each other's work over six weeks, in six one-hour blocks, were conducted. Reservations concerning adopting peer-editing were observed among the student-teachers' future classes. All forms of resistance and reservations, according to the participants, were claimed to derive from external constraints. A closer look, however, suggests that none of these given constraints were purely external. Rather, I believe these teachers might have either been prejudiced or neglected 'locus of control', which refers to the possible control and power a teacher possess over their classes. This paper looks at both the teachers' personalities, characterized by skeptical beliefs in peer-editing, and the external constraints from the local social situations that contribute to the resistance and reluctance of teachers implementing peer editing in Hong Kong's education institutions.
[Copyright of English Language Teaching is the property of Canadian Center of Science and Education.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/elt/index]

This paper reports research that evaluated the efficacy of training for education assistants and its impact upon changing practices in a group of private international schools in Hong Kong, China. Two cohorts of education assistants received training through an education institute. The focus was on supporting and fostering inclusive practices in schools. The expectations and perceptions of the education assistants regarding the training was recorded through survey and focus group interviews and discussed alongside international literature in the area of classroom support and inclusive schooling. The paper concludes that the provision of training was successful in meeting education assistants' expectations and in increasing personal confidence and raising self-esteem, but that they face many challenges if their learning is to be applied. The research further reveals that education assistants within Hong Kong schools lack clarity in their role and a narrow understanding of how they may be most appropriately utilised within schools has led to a limiting of their deployment. Implications for training providers and the teaching profession are discussed.
[Copyright of International Journal of Inclusive Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603110802504895]

Practicing teachers often engage in continuous professional learning with certain career considerations. Based on achievement goal theory, this study explored the effects of career goals on teacher's learning using a sample of practicing teachers in Hong Kong. Two forms of career goals were assessed using a questionnaire. Professional learning goals orient teachers to learn for improving professional competence by acquiring professional knowledge and understanding, and extrinsic career goals focus teachers on learning for tangible benefits such as career promotion and higher professional qualification. Results derived from regression analyses confirmed that professional learning goals were the most significant goals in predicting adaptive use of learning strategies, regulatory strategies, and positive attitudes towards learning. Extrinsic career goals predicted the use of surface strategies. This study also found that self-efficacy mediated the effects of different goals on learning. Cluster analyses provided additional findings confirming the importance of professional learning goals in teachers' goal profiles.
[Copyright of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540601003754806]