A recent study of scholarship on educational leadership and management in East Asia identified a rapidly growing corpus of published studies focusing on educational leadership and management in Hong Kong. This article undertakes a "topographical analysis" of this literature with the aim of describing the nature of topics and research methods employed over the past decade. The authors analyze the body of articles published in a "core" set of eight educational leadership and management journals between 1995 and 2012. The descriptive study offers insights into the nature of this emergent literature from a single non-Western society.
[Copyright of Leadership & Policy in Schools is the property of Taylor & Francis. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2013.826809]

This note examines the likely impact of increased government expenditure on education in Indonesia resulting from new policy initiatives since the year 2000. These initiatives were consolidated in 2003 following the enactment of a new 'Law on National Education System'. The effectiveness of this policy is questioned by comparing the expenditure and enrolment rates between Indonesia and other High Performing Asian Economies (HPAEs) - Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia from 2000 to 2007. Privatisation of educational institutions, not greater government involvement, has been the norm across most of the other HPAEs during the 2000s. Privatisation leads to improvements in the quality and cost of education. Enrolment rates indicate that the quality of education has not improved in Indonesia as compared to other HPAEs. Improvements in quality will become a particularly important issue for Indonesia as it continues to cope with the challenges brought about by China and India's unprecedented growth as labour-intensive manufacturing powerhouses.
[Copyright of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13547860.2011.564751]

This article looks historically at the 'Regionalisation' of higher education in the United States and East Asia. First, it recounts the proliferation of regional networks in American higher education in the 1950s and 1960s, with a focus on the international dimensions of these networks. Then, it revisits a major conference on 'University Cooperation and Asian Development', hosted by the University of Hong Kong in 1966. Noting that domestic university collaborations often paved the way for subsequent international networks, the article situates both American and Asian networks in their broader geopolitical context to show the relationship between higher education, regional development and the pursuit of soft power.
[Copyright of Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2013.786858]

The purpose of this study is to provide a better understanding of how instructional leadership responsibilities are distributed in International Baccalaureate (IB) schools in East Asia. Case studies were conducted in five international schools located in Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and China. These schools were selected on the basis of location in East Asia, the offering of the full continuum of the IB's three programs, and evidence of prior academic success. In total, 68 teachers and administrators and 25 students were interviewed. Qualitative analysis of the interview data was conducted using pattern coding. Three broad instructional leadership practices were identified: curriculum articulation, cross-program activities, and strategic staffing. These appeared to enhance curriculum consistency and coherence across the three IB programs, a problem that had been identified in full-continuum IB schools. The qualitative data suggested that distributed instructional leadership forged and sustained professional interactions among staff across programs and organizational units. IB schools globally are often structurally separated into two or three organizational units (e.g., primary, middle, high school). These units operate IB programs that, despite their common origin and international philosophy, employ distinct pedagogical and curricular approaches. The findings reinforce the importance of acting intentionally to distribute responsibilities for instructional leadership widely throughout the school. They also support the assertion that international schools offer a unique and fruitful context for studying distributed instructional leadership.
[Copyright of Educational Administration Quarterly is the property of Corwin Press, Inc. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0013161X11436271]

The aims of this study were to examine the factor structure of the attitudinal questionnaire items from Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2003 and to investigate low- and high-performing students' mathematics self-concept in East Asian societies and in the USA. The participants were 24,119 eighth-graders, 4856 from Japan, 4972 from Hong Kong, 5379 from Taiwan and 8912 from the USA. Exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) were conducted revealing a same factor structure across the four societies. The MANOVA results showed that (1) the US students reported a statistically significant higher mathematics self-concept than students in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Japan; (2) across the four societies, high-performing students had statistically significant higher self-concept than low-performing students; and (3) the US low-performing students' self-concept was higher than Japanese high-performing students' self-concept. The implications of these findings are discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2010.501102]