This paper outlines the application of a particular model of content analysis to the evaluation of an online discussion group. A set of online discussion data from a group of students enrolled in an educational management course offered by the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) was examined. The provision of the online discussion facility for this group of students was mainly for enrichment purposes and their participation was completely voluntary. Overall, the analysis confirmed the usefulness of Henri's model in examining the interaction and learning processes in an online forum. It also provided insights towards increased understanding of the complex processes and methodological considerations involved in analysing online conferences.
[Copyright of Distance Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587910500081327]

There is an increasing demand from the public and the field to improve the quality of early childhood education in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Education Commission has recently released an "education blueprint for the 21st century", which presents a set of reform proposals for the education system in Hong Kong. In the document, early childhood education has been acknowledged as the foundation for life-long learning. A key reform proposal is to build a new culture for quality early childhood education through upgrading professional competence and enhancing quality assurance mechanisms. The present paper provides a general background of existing practices in the preschool years, highlights issues that require attention in order to improve quality, and outlines the reforms introduced by the Education Commission. The implications of these reforms and the associated challenges are then discussed in the areas of quality assurance, curriculum, professional development, parental involvement and financial assistance for the early childhood education sector.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443022000022387 ]

As a former colony, Hong Kong's education system has been powerfully influenced by ideas from the West. However, these influences have been mediated by a number of factors of contingency - the most important of which is culture - which shapes implementation, particularly of what counts as successful practice. The aim of this paper is to trace the interpretation and implementation of key ideas about school leadership and to offer some analytical projections into the future based on current trajectories. It explores three broad sets of constraints on the development of leadership practice: the features of the Hong Kong school system, the influence of a Confucian cultural tradition, and the process oriented nature of the professional practice of effective school leadership. The paper concludes by offering an analysis of how this dynamic process view of leadership can be used to understand current attempts to build a school-based approach to educational leadership.
[Copyright of Journal of Educational Administration and History is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220620802507268]

This study followed 88 children in Beijing and Hong Kong for three years to investigate the relationships between the early teaching of literacy skills and later literacy outcomes. The children were administered the Preschool and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale at the age of five years, and three years later. Their parents and teachers reported on their involvement in literacy teaching, the home/classroom literacy environment and their beliefs about language learning. Findings showed that the Hong Kong cohort significantly surpassed their Beijing counterparts in literacy attainments at age five and age eight. After controlling for age, site, maternal education and teacher qualification, formal literacy activities in early childhood significantly contributed to literacy attainment at primary school, whereas informal literacy experiences did not. Results suggest that the complicated nature of Chinese orthography may make early instruction particularly valuable in Chinese literacy acquisition. The psycholinguistic, pedagogical and sociocontextual accounts and implications of these findings are discussed.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430600789365]

An urgent need for a relatively large number of qualified Putonghua language teachers in Hong Kong has led the Open University of Hong Kong to establish a distance education programme for in-service language teachers, most of whom are non-native speakers. The programme designed by the university involves distance study coupled with regular face-to-face tutorials, and is designed to enable the in-service teachers to apply their learned knowledge directly in their daily teaching. The article explains how evaluation of the first presentation of the course in 1996 showed that the course alone could not fully address the actual deficiencies in the teachers' Putonghua listening and speaking skills while, additionally, there was also a need to restructure the teaching methodology component of the course. The basis upon which these judgements were made is explained, and the steps taken to strengthen the course to meet these perceived deficiencies, while not adding to the students' workload, are outlined.
[Copyright of Open Learning is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/026805100115434]

As growing numbers of countries adopt market-oriented policies for steering higher education, there is increasing interest in accountability mechanisms that improve the capacity of colleges and universities to independently assure the quality of their academic degrees and student learning. Academic audit, first developed in the UK and subsequently adapted to countries such as Sweden, New Zealand and Hong Kong, offers such an approach. What problems have these countries encountered in implementing academic audits with regard to: the focus of audits; the selection and training of audit teams; the nature of audit self-studies; the conduct of audit visits; audit reports; and audit follow-up and enhancement activities? This paper reviews the lessons learned from these early experiments with academic audit and suggests guidelines for the design and implementation of effective audit processes.
[Copyright of Quality in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13538320020005945]