Studies on school leadership in Hong Kong have mainly focused on primary and secondary schools, with only a handful of studies looking at leadership in early childhood education. This paper aims to report the findings of a study on strategic leadership in Hong Kong's kindergartens. It discusses the challenges that Hong Kong kindergarten leaders are facing and the need for practising strategic leadership. It then reports the findings of practices valued by the leaders of Hong Kong kindergartens. The findings of this study reveal, that apart from the abilities to exercise sound planning and management in school, leaders' reflective, flexible and systems thinking and their willingness in continuous professional and network development are crucial to leading today's kindergartens. This study also indicates that leaders' contextual intelligence is important for exercising strategic leadership. The significance of this study lies in its contribution to the investigation of leadership practices in early childhood education, the need to further explore how well kindergarten leaders are practising strategic leadership and the implications for the development of principal preparation programmes.
[Copyright of Educational Management Administration & Leadership is the property of SAGE Publications Ltd.]

為應對香港社會多元化且高質量的教育需求,香港政府於1991年設計並實施了"直接資助學校計劃"。"直資學校"在享受政府發放的經常性津貼的同時被允許收取學費,並享受較大的辦學自由權,用以向學生提供額外的支持服務。研究發現,這一政策在提升香港學校系統教育質量與效率的同時,可能導致社會階層差距擴大等教育不公平問題。政府未來採用教育財政手段、政府政策制度及政府輔助型服務等干預方式對現有的"直接資助學校計劃"進行改進和完善,在提升香港地區基礎教育的質量與效率的同時,確保教育公平。

港臺兩地的教改(教育改革)抱著革故鼎新的追求起步,教改的配置也幾近完美,然而結果卻是教改的主攻目標未能達成,甚至還派生出一系列新的棘手問題。兩地教改主攻目標落空的過程與事實,至少給我們留下了可資借鑒的四條教益:理想的教改目標往往知易行難,與本土文化"決裂"的教改難以成功,沒有不知疲倦的教師和無所不能的培訓,世上幾乎沒有有利無弊的教改舉措。

This article examines the politics of school-based management (SBM) in Hong Kong, with a specific focus on the conflicts between the state and three Christian churches (Catholic, Anglican, and Methodist) running state-funded religious schools. Although the state based its advocacy for SBM on neoliberally driven ideas of participation, transparency, and accountability, religious groups expressed worry about the loss of control over schools as an institution of value transmission anchored in religious beliefs. This article uses the SBM controversy as a case study to advance geographical debates on religious schools and argues that neoliberalism forms a necessary lens through which to examine the state-religion relations concerning religious schools. It offers an analytical framework that emphasizes the mutually constitutive relationship between religious schools and state building. It lends evidence to this argument by situating religious schools in the context of neoliberalization of education policies and arguing that faith-based sensibilities create new vectors of resistance to neoliberalism as a distinctive secular formation. The empirical analyses address three questions. First, we develop a detailed analysis of the discourses and rationalities upheld by the Hong Kong government and the churches. Second, we consider interactions and exchanges between the state and the churches, focusing on the assertions, negotiations, and concessions that both needed to make in a prolonged struggle over the decision-making process. Third, we reflect briefly on the aftermath of the passing of SBM to situate the churches' concerns in a broader context of neoliberal education policy.
[Copyright of Annals of the American Association of Geographers is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd.]

This study examines the development of education and the curriculum for children with mental handicap in Hong Kong, the influence of the Target Oriented Curriculum (TOC) reform on the development of the curriculum for these children and its implementation in a special school over a period of two years. Three research strategies were used: historiography, naturalistic evaluation and a case study. Data was gathered by means of document collection, interviewing and observation, and analysed by the method of constant comparison. The findings are considered in the light of political, technological and cultural factors in the developments of education and curriculum for children with mental handicap, in the introduction of the TOC to these children, and in the school personnel's interpretation and views towards its implementation. The extent of implementation of the TOC in the case study school was examined with regards to changing practices in materials, teaching approaches and teachers' beliefs. Five key themes emerged from the study: the extent of TOC implementation at school and classroom levels, the Education Department's commitment towards the education of children with mental handicap, whether curriculum reform was truly considered necessary, the ethos of teaching and the culture of special education/schools. It was concluded that the implementation of the TOC for children with mental handicap was a poor example of effective change, given the problematic nature of the reform, in particular the inadequate management of the change process. It was also evident that this reform repeated many past failures, making long term success of the TOC in special schools somewhat doubtful.

This thesis presents three research studies on fundamental movement skills (FMS). The thesis aims to provide insight into FMS teaching and learning in primary school physical education (PE) and to examine the effectiveness of a school-based intervention that can improve FMS proficiency among primary school children in Hong Kong. The first study (Chapter 2) examined the relationships between FMS, perceived physical competence, perceived movement skill competence, enjoyment, and physical activity (PA) among primary school children in Hong Kong. The differences among these variables in terms of gender and grade level were addressed, as well as FMS acquisition and mastery levels among primary school children from grades one to six were reported. Their results revealed that locomotor skill competence had an indirect effect on self-reported PA through perceived physical competence and enjoyment after adjustment for age, gender, and body mass index. Overall, children exhibited low levels of FMS proficiency and moderate-to-vigorous PA. Students from higher grade levels, particularly girls, had lower levels of perceived physical competence, movement skill competence, and enjoyment as compared with younger students. The second study (Chapter 3) examined the current FMS teaching practice in primary school PE. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach to explore the views of teachers and students on their experiences of PE for FMS development and on the motivational climate in PE. The quantitative data demonstrated that students' active time during FMS class was low. Teachers spent a large amount of time on instructions and management but spent a small amount of time to engage the students in movement skill activities and games. Thus, students were prevented from remaining physically active during FMS practice throughout the lessons. The interviews with the students also indicate that the PE lessons offered are not effective enough to provide a broad range of game-related movement

This paper provides a brief overview of current educational evaluation measures and related issues in Hong Kong. The foci of measures for discussion are quality assurance mechanisms especially school self-evaluation (SSE) and external school review (ESR), and Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA). Three questions are posed for discussion: (a) How can we promote coherence among educational reform (highlighting students' whole-person development) and educational supervision and evaluation policies (stressing academic performances) in both rhetoric and practice (b) How can we promote a systematic linkage between centralized systems (ESR, SSE, BCA/TSA) and localized systems (teacher evaluation) so as to drive school improvement/effectiveness and teacher development/effectiveness (c) How can we help relieve teachers' workload and anxieties linked with educational evaluation and foster a shared community of educational evaluation among government agencies, SSB/SMC/IMC and teachers. Copyright © 2009 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Originally, the capitalist society in Hong Kong under communism is exceptional, but the “one country, two system” formula was a makeshift stratagem by the Communist Chinese government. The twenty years of history witnessed the tension of ruling and policy implementation. Education policy in political conflicts is, of course, the other arena in the Hong Kong context which reveals competitions, controversies and struggles among the cultural hegemonic engineering. This paper can contribute to enigmatic understanding and interpretation of generating educational reform and implementing education policy in this twenty years history of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
[Copyright © 2017 Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan.]

Aims: This paper was intended to explore the leadership practices of principals for knowledge management (KM) in the school context, and the influence of KM on the strategic planning (SP) capacity of school organizations to provide quality education for effectively coping with the challenges from education reforms. Methodology: A single-case study was conducted in a secondary school in Hong Kong. The school participated in a two-year QEF project for applying KM concepts and mechanism. In-depth interviews were conducted with the school principal, middle managers, and front-line teachers to investigate the leadership practices of the principal to implement KM in the school, and the influence of KM on the school's SP capacity for providing quality education. Results: Setting school direction for KM, developing teachers' skills and awareness for KM, creating supporting conditions and infrastructures for KM, aligning KM with the school's teaching and learning process, and building external coalitions for KM were found as the principal leadership practices for school KM. These practices could support the school in adopting the codification and personalization KM strategies and facilitate the acquisition, storage, and sharing of knowledge in the school. KM could help the school to effectively acquire, store, and share the knowledge for strategic analysis, choice, and implementation in the SP process, improving the school's SP capacity for providing quality education. Conclusion: Principal leadership has significant effect on the successful implementation of KM in the school context, which in turn plays an essential role on the school's SP capacity for providing quality education.