This study attempted to identify communication as a human relational 'path' through which principal leadership influenced teacher professional learning. The data was collected from a sample of 970 teachers from 32 Hong Kong primary schools. Online survey was administered, with two questionnaires to measure teacher perceptions of principal leadership and school capacity. Baron and Kenny' s (1986) four-step causal process for mediation analysis was employed and integrated with bootstrapping method. Further significance of the mediating effects of communication was tested, and the sizes for both the direct and indirect effects in the relationship were made explicit. The findings affirmed the role of communication as a mediator in the relationship between principal leadership and teacher learning.
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Reduced class sizes have a positive impact on pupil achievement and classroom processes. Pupils receive more individual attention and are better behaved and more on-task in small classes. In Hong Kong, small-class teaching has become a major government policy in primary schools. It is being implemented in phases, beginning in the 2009–2010 school year in Primary 1. Research shows that the benefits of a small-class environment are not automatic if teachers do not make changes to their teaching practice; hence, various types of campus-based professional development programmes have been organised for teachers to adapt their teaching in the small-class environments for the purposes of optimising the student learning. However, teachers tend to revert to their usual teaching practice soon after undertaking the relevant professional development training. School support is essential to provide encouragement for continuous improvement in order to sustain the effect of the campus-based professional development programmes. This article begins with an overview of the research on class size, then describes the implementation of small-class teaching policy in Hong Kong, compares the campus-based with school-based professional development programmes in small-class teaching, analyses the weakness of the existing school-based professional development programmes and finally argues that a self-owned model of school-based teacher development can be effective in sustaining the effect of the professional development programmes that teachers have undertaken.

This study is the part of a larger study on investigating Hong Kong (HK) prospective teachers’ (PTs) Subject Matter Knowledge (SMK) and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). In this paper, five HK PTs’ SMK and PCK on teaching one topic regarding square root were investigated. The results suggest that insufficient understanding on the concept of algebraic operation is the major obstacle to limit those student teachers from teaching students with mathematical understanding. The results further echo with the viewpoint that SMK and PCK are two interrelated constructs and rich SMK leads to high quality of PCK.

Student engagement is recognised as a key process that can assist students’ learning. This paper reports a study in which three variables were examined to assess their potential in creating engaging and participative classrooms. The focus was on ‘teacher engagement in the community’, ‘teacher engagement in school’ and ‘teachers’ teaching confidence’ and their impact on the way teachers perceive their classrooms. Data was drawn from the International Civics and Citizenship Study, and the views of over 1400 teachers in 90 Hong Kong schools were analysed. The results of the study showed that teacher engagement is an important construct that directly supports teachers’ positive descriptions of their classroom activities. At the same time, teacher engagement also influenced teachers’ confidence in their teaching which in turn influenced the positive descriptions of their usual classroom activities. The theoretical foundations of these results are discussed as well as the implications for teachers’ professional lives, for policymakers concerned with enhancing teacher quality and for school leaders with responsibility for teacher professional development.

In recent years, many governments of East Asian countries, such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong have initiated educational reforms to transform schools for sustainable outcomes. Promoting teacher leadership has been identified as part of the educational reform agenda in global quality discourses. This paper aims to offer insights into the practice of teacher leadership in a Chinese early childhood education context. The central tenet of teacher leadership is change agentry. Like its counterparts in the Asia Pacific Region, early childhood education in Hong Kong has historically been characterized by minimum training and a modified form of apprenticeship. Therefore, preschool teaching is likely to be identified as non-professional occupation. Preschool teachers seldom play a key role in supporting, stimulating, or catalyzing change. After the change of sovereignty from British to China in 1997, the local government has increased investment in early childhood education. Over the past 20 years, upgrading teacher professional qualifications has been used as amain strategy to enhance the quality of ECE. This raise an important question: Can preschool teachers move beyond the role of apprentice and become change agents for school development? Adopting a case study approach, the study reported in this paper is to examine the changing role of teachers in school development. The construct of change agency was examined from the perspectives of various school stakeholders (i.e. preschool principals, key stage coordinators, and classroom teachers). The findings indicated that the key stage coordinators who are teachers holding functional posts acted as teacher leaders to play the role of agents in leading changes beyond classroom in various areas including curriculum and pedagogy, teacher professional development, home-school collaboration, and community-school involvement. Meanwhile, the classroom teachers mainly acted as followers in the change process. The practice

The focus of this study is to understand the impact of culture on learning that gives insight into how teacher education can be improved. This paper begins by inquiring into the Confucian Heritage Culture and explaining how it shapes Hong Kong Chinese learners into bicultural individuals who are still sticking to a traditional mode of learning. Two cases, explored through a teacher educator's interpretations of experience, are presented to illustrate how a narrative approach is adopted to change the learning habits of student teachers. This study argues that story telling offers opportunities for both teachers and learners to make meanings from their experiences of cultural tensions to facilitate reflection that gives rise to changes in learning.

Hong Kong is an international city, with people of different races. In recent years, the number of people from South Asia, especially from Nepal, Pakistan, and India, is rising rapidly. Increasingly more of them are choosing to study in public schools, where learning the Chinese language is compulsory. However, the Chinese language is too difficult for them to learn, and their failure in the public examination usually presents an obstacle to further study in universities as well as to their career prospects in Hong Kong. Moreover, many non-Chinese-speaking (NCS) students have experienced racial discrimination in daily life in public transport, public places, and schools in Hong Kong. They find it difficult to make friends with the local people because they do not know Cantonese or use inaccurate pronunciations. Since 2006, the mission to provide formal education to NCS students was buttressed by ‘designated schools’ which were nominated by the Education Bureau (EDB) to admit more NCS students. However, recent complaints regarding the allocation of NCS children in multiethnic schools as a form of cultural segregation and discrimination has resulted in an increasing demand for spaces in mainstream schools where Chinese is the main medium of instruction. Hence, NCS students have to face more difficulties in learning and in managing interactions with local students. In this research, a case study of a multiethnic school was performed to examine the major challenges faced by the non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students when learning Chinese and how the school helped these students overcome their challenges. How the multiethnic school developed a suitable environment for promoting multicultural integration and harmony in the school was also studied. Through investigations of school documents, observation of lessons and activities, and discussion with teachers and students, the school was determined to have applied a suitable range of strategies to provide pleasurable and