The impact of parental involvement on school management has been recognized by many education professionals and policy-makers. Thus parental involvement in school education becomes one of the prime focuses in the current education reform movement in Hong Kong. Particularly, specific guidelines and policies for involving parents at various levels of children's education have been spelled out in many governmental policy documents. This article reports on an interpretive study that explores the micro-politics of parental involvement in school education in two primary schools in Hong Kong. By analyzing the interviews with 14 parents, eight teachers and two principals, together with the field-notes of participant observations in two case study schools, three propositions of power relations between parents and teaching professionals emerge. The findings indicate that in the process of encouraging parents' participation in school education, teaching professionals demonstrated ethnocentric attitudes towards parents; the notion of "parents as resources" were for pragmatic purposes; and the conception of "parents-as-school-governors" was of policy rhetoric in the process of implementation of home-school cooperation.
[Copyright of Educational Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2013.868786]

This article adopts the critical theory approach to reflect and analyse the impacts of globalization on the internationalization process of higher education in the Asia-Pacific region. It argues that globalization forces many of the higher education institutions in the region to follow global practices and ideologies of the Anglo-American paradigm without developing their own unique systems and honouring the rich cultures of their own countries. While higher education institutions are indulging in internationalization in terms of marketization and economic pragmatism, they have to ask themselves, 'What is missing in the process of internationalization?' This article argues that internationalization of higher education contributes to building more than economically competitive and politically powerful states. It represents a commitment to the development of an internationalized curriculum where the pursuit of global citizenship, human harmony and a climate of global peace is of paramount importance.
[Copyright of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2011.652815]

Promoting home-school relations is one of the aims of education reforms in Hong Kong. This paper contains research data collected through qualitative methods aiming at capturing the thoughts and perceptions of twelve parents in three primary schools in Hong Kong so as to explore whether they are psychologically prepared for being involved in their children's education. Findings indicate that parents demonstrated low degree of cognitive and affective readiness for participating in school. To promote parent-school collaboration, it is important to consider the influence of Chinese culture on parent involvement. The paper also serves to provide scholars with academic insights for further investigation and policy makers with practical knowledge in developing appropriate strategies to promote homeschool relations.
促進家庭與學校的關係是香港教育改革的其中一項目的，鼓勵家長參與學校教育更可提升家校合作。本文引用定質研究方法去探討家長十二位家長是否有心理準備去參與他們子女的教育；研究結果顯示家長在認知和情感上有不足的準備。在建立策略去促進家校關係的同時，我們須考慮中國文化對家長參與的影響。
[Copyright of New Horizons: The Journal of Education, Hong Kong Teachers' Associationl is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Association at http://www.hkta1934.org.hk/]

This article presents the finding of an interim evaluation survey commissioned by the Education Bureau of Hong Kong on the effectiveness of the curriculum reform initiated in 2001. Drawing upon change theories for analysis of the study, the article examines the perceptions of both principals and teachers on the effectiveness of short-term curriculum development in schools from 2001 to 2006 through self-administered questionnaire survey as well as focus group interviews. The quantitative survey shows that evaluations from principals were more positive than those of frontline teachers in many aspects of the reform. Data collected from focus group interviews help explain the discrepancy in attitudes of these two stakeholder groups towards the reform. Insufficient knowledge, lack of support and consensus, and top-down initiation of the reform are the reasons accounting for the different responses to the reform. Strengthening professional development programs and developing a culture of collegiality and collaboration are the strategies recommended to improve the implementation of the curriculum reform in the medium-term phase (2007-2011).
[Copyright of Teacher Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13664530903335558]