Collaborating with universities in Hong Kong, Finland, the United Kingdom and Australia the research project outlined in this paper takes up one of the key initial findings related to the importance of children's online spaces away from school. The project brings together complementary strengths from each partner nation to assist our mutual need to understand the worlds of our young "netizens" - the new public citizens of cyberspace. Differing in social and cultural context, each setting is recognised as a strong contributor to understanding the competencies of young people's digital expertise. We work from the shared view that the arrival of Web 2.0 and 3.0 social networking tools is educationally challenging and demands futuristic thinking for sustainable education and social connectivity globally. Our research aim is to use a common research design to discover how young people are behaving in the new online spaces; what guides their decision-making; and what, if any, common values appear to emerge when results between countries are compared. Locally derived knowledge gained from samples of 12-year-olds will be subjected to cross-cultural comparisons and validation. In doing so, we make some assumptions about the homogenising process that shared global networks may be fostering. Bringing together these contributions will strengthen the decision-making process and provide new knowledge about meaning making, agency and citizenship for the twenty-first-century e-democracy. This paper reports on the conceptual process underlying the research and the research design.
[Copyright of International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10382040903251158]

Surprisingly little is known about the micro-leadership and management of the curriculum within schools. This study first applies a purpose-designed set of research instruments to penetrate the micro-workings of school decision-making in curriculum, teaching and learning. Second, it reports the findings from an application of the instruments in six Hong Kong primary schools. In regard to the principal's influence on curriculum, teaching and learning, in four of the six case-study primary schools, the principal's influence was deemed to be direct. This finding stands in contradistinction to the existing body of evidence - gathered mainly from secondary schools - that emphasises the indirect effect of principal leadership. In regard to the second question, concerning the general patterns of within-school curriculum decision-making, leadership and management, there appears to be a high degree of conformity across the six case-study primary schools.
[Copyright of Curriculum Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585170902763973]

This paper presents the contextual background of a doctoral study that investigates the process of assessment of teacher competence based on supervisors' judgment of the pre-service teachers' classroom performance. The study approaches classroom observation as a process conducted under time constraint. As such it is regarded as a process that reflects only restricted aspects of the teacher's competence. The variables in this study are identified and linked by a model of the decision-making process following models of cognitive process in performance appraisal. The variables are within the scope of competence, criteria for assessment, the supervisors' perceptions of the teacher appraisal, supervisor's observation of classroom performance and the determinants of the judgment process. The subjects in this study are supervisors of pre-service teachers in an institute of education in Hong Kong. The organizational and contextual aspects are considered as important determinants in the process of supervisors' judgment of the pre-service teachers' classroom performance. The paper presents a brief introduction to the institution, a discussion on its demands on teacher practicum, practice and procedure in classroom observation and a report on the preliminary findings of supervisor's views on classroom observation.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]