There is a strong need to understand, monitor, and enhance educational quality. This paper reports on a project that developed a framework of indicators for monitoring educational quality in Hong Kong primary schools. The framework was developed through various case studies and 2 large surveys of over 200 Hong Kong primary schools (involving over 650 classes, 3,800 teachers, and 20,000 students) during 1991-95. A preliminary framework, based on the research literature, included indicators at the student individual level, the classroom level, the teacher individual level, the teacher group level, and the organizational level. The framework was tested and developed through the 2 surveys (the first conducted in 1992 and the second in 1993-94) and a total of 12 case studies. Survey data was used to map the education profiles of Hong Kong primary schools by means on indicators; by percentage of schools in high, satisfactory, and low performance; by distribution of schools on each indicator; and by profiles of characteristics of effective and ineffective schools. Six tables and seven figures are included.

This paper will present why and what transformational leadership is needed to pursue school effectiveness and development in the rapidly changing education environment and in the coming new century. First, the challenges to school leadership and the need for new leadership will be discussed in the light of the pursuit of multiple school effectiveness and the worldwide educational reform trends. Based on the recent research on principals' leadership in Hong Kong schools, some important insights will be drawn for leadership development and school development particularly in both local context and international contexts. Then the paper will illustrate the shifts of leadership concepts and explain why transformational leadership is do critical to meeting educational challenges in the changing environment. The conception of transformational leadership and its relationship to school-based management, strategic management, and school effectiveness will be illustrated and explained. Finally, a number of implications will be proposed for school principals to practice transformational leadership and achieve long-term and multiple school effectiveness. Establishing a principal centre for leadership learning and development will be a major direction.

This paper reports on school-university collaboration during an action research project, which aimed to build a writing pedagogy for students with Learning Disabilities in the trilingual, biliterate educational context of Hong Kong. The project was established through interpersonal relationships built from the ground up between stakeholders from a university department and a secondary school. The informal social networks were the locus of innovation and creativity within the project. This paper examines four broad dimensions of collaboration: the relationships created, the resources shared, the action taken and the pedagogy created. We discuss these dimensions of collaboration from the perspectives of the stakeholders. We found that each stakeholder aligned their motivations and expectations with other stakeholders to achieve the common goals of the research and consequently we call such alignments of interests "research networks". Finally, we suggest that "research networks" constitute an important, yet overlooked component of action research.
[Copyright of English Teaching: Practice & Critique is the property of Universidad del Zulia.
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Schools in Hong Kong have been operating in a fast changing external environment in the last two decades; not only have they had to follow the international trend of implementing various educational reform initiatives but they also have had to adjust to the social changes brought about by the transfer of political governance. These changes have led to new expectations of the roles of school leaders and the ways potential leaders are prepared for these roles. This article reviews the development of leadership preparation in Hong Kong and explores future development opportunities, taking into consideration the unique nature of Chinese culture and the history of Hong Kong.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2011.560601]