The purpose of the study is to examine Hong Kong teachers' perceptions of distributed leadership. Data were collected from six primary schools with a total of 155 teachers responding to a self-developed survey. Descriptive, reliability, and MANOVA data analyses were done with the application of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) programme. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), 14 components were identified, including: (1) "school organisation," (2) "school vision," (3) "school culture," (4) "instructional planning," (5) "improvement of learning and teaching," (6) "teacher leadership," (7) "principal leadership," (8) "output effectiveness," (9) "quality effectiveness," (10) "change effectiveness," (11) "organisation and planning effectiveness," (12) "interpersonal relationship effectiveness," (13) "value effectiveness," and (14) "overall effectiveness." Inter-correlations were found among the identified components. Significant differences were found between teachers with different roles with the highest involvement and dimensions of school organisation, teacher leadership and interpersonal relationship effectiveness. Meanwhile, significant differences were revealed between teachers' roles in the highest positions and dimensions of improvement of learning and teaching, as well as principal leadership. Such findings suggest that teachers' perceptions of distributed leadership were related to teachers' roles, including delegated responsibilities and degree of role participation in the schools. Implications for practice and research are discussed at the end of the paper.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge.]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on an exploratory study regarding the present situation of middle managers in schools; their professional development needs; and requirements of middle leaders for quality school management so that contents of existing professional development programmes could be improved to meet the needs of middle leaders of primary school education. Design/methodology/approach: Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper reports on a study of the training needs of middle leaders in primary schools in which their present situation, their needs for professional development and requirements for quality school management and leadership are explored. The study adopted survey questionnaires as the main method of data collection. To supplement quantitative data with regard to the professional development needs, six middle managers were purposefully selected for semi-structured interviews. Findings: The findings suggest that there are insufficient training opportunities for middle leaders in primary schools and that there is a strong demand for including the notions of interpersonal skills, crisis management, resources management and understanding of education ordinances in the professional development curriculum for middle leaders. The study recommends that training programmes should exert focus on meeting the specific needs of middle leaders and the content and approach be multi-dimensional. Originality/value: In spite of the small scale of the survey study, the data collected from individual in-depth interviews can provide the investigators with supplementary information on their professional development needs which also serves the purpose of triangulation. The finding can also be a very constructive reference for course providers who wish to re-engineer and improve the quality of professional development programmes for middle leaders. This may help arouse their interests and enhance their learning motivation.
[Copyright

Hong Kong is linguistically complex and diverse with three principal languages: Cantonese, English and Putonghua. A substantial debate on the language policies governing the three principal languages has continued for more than two decades among policy-makers and educators. The political transition in 1997 has greatly affected Hong Kong society, including language education. Since then, the HKSAR government has made a series of language policy reforms trying to create a reasonable balance among the three languages in Hong Kong. The policies of ‘biliteracy and trilingualism’ and ‘mother-tongue teaching’ are two of the most significant in terms of controversy and impact. They are now guiding the curriculum design in Hong Kong language education. The goal of the former policy is to train Hong Kong people to be truly biliterate (written English and Chinese) and trilingual (spoken English, Cantonese and Putonghua). However, Hong Kong primary schools presently do not have an agreed method for the implementation of trilingual education. After a comprehensive historical review of the development of language education in Hong Kong schools, this study aims to find out how the ‘biliterate’ and ‘trilingual’ language policy is currently implemented in Hong Kong primary schools. 155 Hong Kong primary schools participated in a questionnaire survey on how trilingual education is implemented in the schools. The findings suggest that the implementation of trilingual education varied significantly from school to school, and the effectiveness of the trilingual education models varied as well. It is hoped that the findings will help us to gain a better understanding of trilingual education in Hong Kong, and the study could lead to some insightful and theoretical contributions to multilingual education in general.
[Copyright © 2015 Wang and Kirkpatrick; licensee Springer.]

In response to the perceived ‘feminisation’ of primary school teaching, educational authorities in many countries have implemented policies designed to encourage more men to take up teaching positions in primary schools. While challenges to the efficacy of such policies have emerged in the literature, limited attention has been given to the voice of male primary school teachers themselves. Using a qualitative multiple case study approach, this study addresses this imbalance by examining how five male primary school teachers construct professional identities within Hong Kong primary schools. In-depth interviews give voice to these male primary school teachers, revealing the dominant discourses that make available certain identity positions to all primary school teachers in Hong Kong. The study explores how these five teachers exercise individual agency as they struggle to be recognised as competent members of a community of primary school teachers. The case studies also describe the limits to such personal agency, suggesting the need for policy initiatives that support the identity work of all primary school teachers by going beyond calls for the recruitment of greater numbers of male primary teachers. Some of the ways in which educational policy and practice could provide such support are considered and implications for future research are discussed.
[Copyright © 2014 Taylor & Francis.]

This paper examines the factors shaping teacher-student power relations, based on observations, interviews and document analysis from a Hong Kong study. It identifies and examines six factors: China's traditional culture of respect, examination-oriented teaching and religious culture were found to encourage imbalanced teacher-student power relations, whereas curriculum reform, values education and some school cultures facilitated relatively balanced teacher-student power relations. The paper depicts teacher-student power relations in Hong Kong as a reflection of multileveled intertwined interactions, and as affected by the interplay of various factors. It provides empirical evidence to supplement existing understandings of the nature of teacher-student power relations, especially in a non-western context with varied socio-cultural, educational, school and classroom levels.
[Copyright of British Journal of Sociology of Education is the property of Routledge . Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2014.916600]

Since 1997, the 'biliterate and trilingual' policy has been adopted by the Hong Kong government, and is now guiding the curriculum design in Hong Kong primary schools. This language policy aims to ensure that Hong Kong students become biliterate (written English and Chinese) and trilingual (spoken English, Cantonese and Putonghua). However, Hong Kong primary schools currently do not have an agreed method for the implementation of trilingual education. As a preliminary step in the investigation of methods of the implementation of trilingual education in Hong Kong primary schools, we carried out a detailed case study of the trilingual education model adopted in a primary school. Views of key stakeholders (the principal, teachers, students and parents), on how successful the model is, were collected, and a number of lessons taught using English, Cantonese or Putonghua as the medium of instruction were recorded and analysed. On the basis of the research findings, a possible model for implementing trilingual education in Hong Kong primary schools has been suggested.
[Copyright of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2012.689479]

To enhance the cost effectiveness of primary schools, the government of Hong Kong imposed a regulation for operating primary one classes up to a minimum enrolment rate in 2003. This policy has forced a number of village schools to cease operation. During 2005–2006, 36 of them were involved in this enforcement, accounting for two-thirds of the total number of such schools, causing a possible extinction of them. This paper is part of a research project with the purpose of tracing the history and development of village schools in Hong Kong since the 1930s and 1940s. Adapting Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and field, this paper examined the village school context of Hong Kong from a socio-historical perspective and examined how the context was related to leadership characteristics of village school principals. Related issues were also discussed. It is hoped that the study has suggested a direction for understanding principal leadership within different school contexts.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2011.587410]

Language-in-education planning in the form of materials planning has an important role to play in achieving a society's social goals. Gender stereotyping has been found in previous language textbook studies. Although gender bias has declined, some recent studies suggest that it still exists. This study analysed the content and language of a recently published Hong Kong English language textbook series for grade one students to explore its gender representation. The results of the study showed that males and females were almost equally represented and were portrayed in a similar range of activities. Females were also more visible in both illustrations and texts. The phenomena of females being underrepresented and male dominance that occurred in the previous textbook studies did not exist in the textbook series examined, though males were still mentioned first when two nouns were paired for gender. One implication that can be drawn from the results is that gender stereotyping or how gender is represented in textbooks should be an important factor to be considered when school teachers select textbooks for their students, and this aspect should be highly emphasized in the government's policy manual for selection of textbooks for use in schools, given the fact that textbooks may have strong influence on children's development of values and attitudes.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2011.541390]