This study examines the impact of principal leadership practices on student academic outcomes in four Hong Kong primary schools. Given the increased accountability mechanisms confronting schools in Hong Kong, this study is based on the assumption that principal practices that respond directly to accountability policy or link to human resources development will be most influential. This does not necessarily contradict the assumption that principal leadership practices are generic and contextualised. This study will adopt a case study design. The data will be collected from 4 local schools with varied strategies, including online student math tests, and teacher questionnaire surveys. The student math test items will be selected from item banks of standardised tests. The questionnaires will be adapted from Walker and Ko’s (2011) and Leithwood and Jantzi’ s (2000) scales respectively, each covering extensively 7 dimensions with the number of items reduced to 33. The test scores will be aggregated and standardised, and used as student academic outcomes. The two questionnaires will be combined and used for the teacher survey. They will attempt to measure teachers’ perceptions of principal leadership practices and conditions in the schools. The individual responses of the participants will be aggregated to the person level and school level, and then subjected to descriptive, comparative, and inferential statistical analyses. Factors from both principal leadership practices and school conditions that synergistically contribute to student achievement will be indentified and verified, and effects specified. Given the limited number of schools in the sample, findings at the teacher and student levels will be triangulated and discussed as rich descriptions of cases. It is hoped that it will inform practitioners and researchers the interrelatedness between principal leadership practices, school conditions, and student achievement. The findings may also generate some indicative findings

For the analysis of Hong Kong education policy in history, we apply theories of the state for the historical comparative research. For the description of the establishment of sociological concepts, some key concepts are set as the mediation of history. Weber’s historical sociology makes concepts establish idea types. They are used as yardsticks to facilitate and enrich the understanding and explanation of historical events. They give a cultural historical explanation of casual relevance of multi-causality of historical events. In the Hong Kong historical context, the education policy is one of governing policies. With the application of concepts, the different levels are global, state, institution and politicking. The key concepts established are helpful for more accuracy in handling the recognition, explanation and analyses of policy implementation. A series of education policies analysis applied is the powerful indication of theories of the state to have deep understanding of the functioning of the Hong Kong Government in our history.

The restructuring of the academic structure and curriculum of the senior secondary education in 2009 has witnessed the on-going drive of the Hong Kong Education Reform in 2000 for a “more flexible and diversified” curriculum (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2005, p.9). To develop students’ ability to make connections across knowledge and concepts from different disciplines and to examine issues from multiple perspectives, new interdisciplinary subjects like Liberal Studies and Integrated Science are introduced into the new senior secondary curriculum. Whilst their introduction would definitely create stress and concerns of teachers, in preparing for new but broader subject content that may require completely different teaching strategies, teachers of traditional disciplinary subjects would also face new challenges through changes in the subject curriculum, teaching and assessment. This symposium therefore aims to discuss how teachers perceive the challenges of teaching interdisciplinary subjects and discipline-based subjects. Before the actual implementation of those new curricula, we have developed and administered specific research tools (in form of interview guidelines and questionnaires) to collect qualitative and quantitative data from curriculum planners and school teachers for the aforementioned interdisciplinary subjects and a number of disciplinary subjects, including Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Geography. Interview data will be used to discuss on how teacher-practitioners’ views are compared with the curriculum planners towards the implementation of Liberal Studies and Integrated Science, whereas both interview and questionnaire survey data from teachers of disciplinary subjects of Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Geography have been analysed to reveal the teachers’ key concerns and perceived problems as arisen from the change in curriculum organization and structure, emphasis on nature of science, science, technology, society and environment, fieldwork and

This paper aims to explore substantive findings from Hong Kong research studies of educational leadership published in core international journals between 1995 and 2014. It employs a systematic research review approach to analysis across a total of 160 published research papers. The review focuses on identifying and key research issue from a clearly delimited body of the relevant papers comprised of empirical, non-empirical and review/synthesis types of studies. The findings of the published papers are then explored and synthesized for any emergent theme as the research issue that might characterize the development of Hong Kong educational leadership in the past two decades. Analysis of the emergent themes is a two-stage process: (1) a comparative mapping of the themes cross the published paper; and (2) and in-depth coding of the themes for unlocking the meanings of the key research issues. The review results illustrate a methodological pattern, a set of key research issues and a research agenda grounded in the substantial findings of the published papers. The discussion highlights the issues of Hong Kong educational leadership the scholars were concerned with, affecting the frontline of kindergartens, primary and secondary schools.

Teacher leadership plays a critical role of school improvement. However, the leadership development of beginning teachers is often neglected. This presentation examines the impacts of principal-teacher interactions on the teacher leadership development of twenty beginning teachers in Hong Kong. Case study approach was adopted. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and documentary evidence such as school development plans and school reports. Results show that the beginning teachers were able to take up formal and informal roles of teacher leadership early in their teaching career. The characteristics of the principal practice and three types of impacts of principal-teacher interactions on developing teacher leadership are identified. This presentation highlights the role of principal in teacher’s leadership development. Implications for school leadership and teacher education programmes are also discussed.

Despite school middle leaders are growing in their importance in the school in recent years, the understanding of their leadership roles and practices are unclear. In addition, the changing expectations of middle leadership lead them into confusion of roles and an unknown space of practice. This paper intends to portrait the conception of middle leadership in schools in light of the teachers' perception and expectation of middle leadership. Data were collected from interviews of four subject department heads/coordinators and five subject teachers who worked with the middle leaders closely in three special schools in Hong Kong. Initial findings show that the middle leaders were struggling with role ambiguity – unclear positioning of work, which led to overloading and frustration in work as they often developed a symptom of doing this and that. Although both the middle leaders and teachers often had high and broad expectations for middle leaders, i.e. excellency in both professional and management duties, it is found that the middle leaders were usually ill-prepared for the multiple roles. The paper concludes that middle leaders have to understand the breadth, depth and substances of middle leadership in school so that they can be prepared well for performing their roles and responsibilities.

The twenty-first century is a period of educational reform, of which school improvement has been one of the strategies for successful change stressed by various entities. Under the foremost notion of schools’ quality assurance and improvement, different places in the world have marked the significance of performance assessment on early childhood education. In Hong Kong, the previous Education and Manpower Bureau launched a “Voucher Scheme” for early childhood education in 2007. The Scheme requires participating kindergartens to undertake a self- and external- evaluation in order to strengthen their quality assurance mechanism, and to make the education more accountable to parents and society. Making use of a local school as an illustration, this paper presents and discusses the case under the “School-based Quality Improvement Scheme” organized by the Centre for Early Childhood Research and Development of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The main support depicted in the case will adopt the “Performance Indicators Framework of the Hong Kong Early Childhood Education” as a theoretical and practice reference on discussions. The plan, process and outcomes of the Improvement Scheme on the case under studied will also be briefly introduced.