This paper views seeking the optimal balance between state strengths and the scope of state functions for 'good governance' as the formation of a homogenization-heterogenization matrix of policy initiatives in different social settings. Homogenization refers to a global tendency for institutional changes and governance framework to change state capacity, while heterogenization refers to the local adaptation of these global transformations. The paper attempts to take educational decentralization as an example of policy initiatives to assess and analyse the significance of the two opposite poses in four East Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs) (Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan). The paper's position is that it may be useful to see these four NIEs as making up two clusters. It sees political democratic transitions in Korea and Taiwan as important local factors affecting the developments of educational decentralization in the two societies, while reforms in Hong Kong and Singapore seem to be more consequences of managerial and market values. However, the NIEs face the question of how to maintain sufficient 'stateness' in the decentralization process. To conclude, the paper considers that achieving the balance of 'stateness' is the key to success in state-building.
[Copyright of Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057920903156888]

Hong Kong's official language policy of 'biliteracy' (Chinese and English) and 'trilingualism' (Cantonese, Putonghua, English), announced after the reversion to China in 1997, claims to address actualities of language use in the territory, remove inequities between English and Chinese, and consolidate the linguistic platform to launch Hong Kong as 'Asia's World City'. Public discussion of and controversy over this policy immediately followed, and have continued in the past decade. But they have tended to focus on the implementation of the policy in education, specifically the medium of instruction in schools, to the exclusion of most other areas of language use. Drawing on recent examples of translingual practice in literary writing, this essay argues first that such actually existing practices are far more verbally nuanced, self-knowing and self-reflexive than the official policy would allow, and second, that they instantiate Hong Kong's identity as 'Asian', which challenges both the official and public focus on Chinese and English. The 'world' and 'world city' that emerge from such writing are historically located in the transition before and after 1997, when the writers acquired their languages in schools. They are also provisional, generated by a poeisis of experimentation that attends to cultural change as language change in - and as - everyday life.
[Copyright of Interventions: The International Journal of Postcolonial Studies is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2010.516100]

This article aims to identify leadership roles for quality in early childhood programmes in the local settings of a sample of Hong Kong preschools. Two schools were selected for the study, both of which were rated as excellent in the quality assurance inspections of a local education authority. Effective leadership was explored from the multiple perspectives of various school stakeholders, including school governors, principals, teachers, members of support staff and parents. The qualitative interviews were used for data collection. The interview data indicated that the teachers, members of support staff and parents quite often viewed themselves as followers and were dependent on a single leader, the head. As perceived by the school stakeholders, the principals tended to take up three major roles: role model, school manager and mentor for curriculum and pedagogy. Characteristics of the associated patterns of the three leadership roles were similar to those of moral, managerial and instructional leadership documented in the Western literature. The implications of the study for promoting moral leadership and developing teacher leadership are discussed.
[Copyright of International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603120903387561]

Following the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region developed wide-ranging curriculum reforms, including project learning. A recent survey has indicated that over 80% of Hong Kong primary and secondary schools have adopted project learning as a curriculum task. Such an outcome is hard to reconcile both with the culture of Hong Kong schools and the generally bleak picture that pervades the literature on educational change.In seeking an explanation for this apparent success we focus attention on the policy instruments that were used by government agencies to facilitate the process of implementation. Our analysis revealed that teachers were caught in a pincer movement that involved voluntary activities promoting project learning and coercive measures that monitored and evaluated successful implementation. Teachers' views of these policy instruments differed markedly from those of policymakers. This confluence of mixed approaches, while apparently successful, is also shown to be problematic. Finally, the paper is located in a theoretical framework with its origins in recent policy theory that to date has not been applied to educational contexts.
[Copyright of International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership is the property of Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://journals.sfu.ca/ijepl/index.php/ijepl]

Different scholars have defined and redefined leadership at different levels and in different contexts (e.g., Ball, 1981; Hargreaves, 1967; Richardson, 1973), although the results of research on the characteristics of effective leaders may not apply in all contexts. This study compares and contrasts the meanings of leadership in the Hong Kong secondary school context, and examines whether educators at different levels hold conflicting opinions of the qualities of leadership. The study adopts both quantitative and qualitative approaches to examine whether principals and teachers interpret leadership differently. The results show that these two groups of educators do indeed hold different views about what it means to be a leader. The reasons for these different points of view are explored.
[Copyright of International Education Studies is the property of Canadian Center of Science and Education.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ies]