Despite the increasing number of studies on educational leadership during COVID-19, little attention has been paid to the intersections of different educational experiences and perspectives of school leaders, students, and their families that occur both inside and outside of schools. Drawing on eight case studies of public primary schools in Hong Kong, this article explores the challenges and strategies of online learning with a focus on effective leadership practices for supporting economically disadvantaged students during COVID-19. To incorporate the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, a series of questionnaires were distributed to principals (n = 8), teachers (n = 150), parents (n = 775), lower primary students (n = 855), and upper primary students (n = 850) and interviews were conducted with principals (n = 8), teachers (n = 37), parents (n = 32), and students (n = 62). Findings indicated that school leaders and teacher teams demonstrated strategic leadership practices prioritising and responding to the needs and constraints of economically disadvantaged students and their families. The present study draws attention to leadership encouraging collaboration among schools, families, and the wider community, which has become necessary during the shift to online learning during COVID-19. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

In response to the needs for kindergarten principals to foster teachers' capacities and commitment, this study examined the relationships between professional learning communities, principal leadership practices, and teacher commitment to kindergartens among 2106 teachers from 153 Hong Kong kindergartens, analyzing by using multilevel structural equation modeling. The result showed that principal leadership practices facilitated the development of professional learning communities at school and teacher levels, and exerted a direct effect on teacher commitment at the teacher level. However, the mediating effects of different professional-learning-community components were found distinctive. Implications for leading kindergartens in the reform time are discussed. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s).

This paper examines the influence of professional learning communities (PLCs) on informal teacher leadership in Hong Kong schools to overcome issues reported in the literature on the challenges to teacher leadership posed by Chinese hierarchical school contexts. We test the relations among PLC, informal teacher leadership, teacher focus on improving student learning, principal instructional leadership, and middle leadership (e.g., subject heads) with structural equation modeling of survey responses from 638 teachers of primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong. The results show an overall positive influence among all factors in the study. PLCs have the highest positive influence among the factors considered in this study. PLCs are highly influential in promoting informal teacher leadership, which in turn has a high positive linkage to teachers’ focus on improving student learning. In addition, principal instructional leadership has a high positive influence on PLCs, while middle leadership has a moderate positive influence on PLCs. To further enhance teacher leadership capabilities that promote teachers’ focus on improving student learning, we provide recommendations to boost PLC and middle leadership capacities in schools. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s).

Currently, the challenges deriving from the complex and dynamic socio-political context in Hong Kong influence principals’ and teachers’ relationships and interactions. Academic autonomy in Hong Kong secondary schools is not simply granted by the principals, it is influenced by the society, school conditions and key stakeholders. This study employed qualitative methods to examine how principals negotiate the political context surrounding citizenship education and how these practices influence the civic learning in schools. The results revealed that in school citizenship education, when principals lacked a clear vision of citizenship education, most teachers were compliant and avoided discussing controversial political topics with their students. Such teachers had less autonomy and consequently less self-efficacy. When principals mediated the diverse needs of students and balanced the different expectations of school stakeholders, there were both compliant and critical teachers. Teacher autonomy and self-efficacy were also affected by the current socio-political context in Hong Kong. When principals had a clear school civic mission, the results differed across schools. These findings suggest that principals have to reflect on their own understanding of the purposes and perspectives of citizenship education significantly to meet the multiple demands of a complicated and turbulent socio-political environment. Copyright © 2020 The Author(s).

Research on principals' practice of democratic leadership for inclusion in schools has been undertaken in many parts of the world. This paper explores four principals' leadership journeys in response to social justice issues in increasingly diverse settings within public schools, in relation to demographic and cultural changes in Hong Kong. This research aims at exploring the issues in schools arising from contextual changes in the society, contextualising characteristics of principals' practices in relation to an emergent conception of democratic leadership practice in addressing the issues and identifying practical roles of democratic principal leadership in school transformation for diverse students' learning development. I adopted a cross-case study of the principals' leadership journeys through a theoretical lens of democratic leadership. The changes of demographic structure and cultural context and pressure from the central administration were the conditions of facilitating alternative practices of democratic principal leadership in a multicultural school context which evolved from the hybrid of Western and Confucian cultures in the city. These findings contribute to an international account of contextualising democratic leadership practices in a diverse Chinese school community. Copyright © 2020 The Author(s).

The objective of this paper is to determine the extent to which adopting Nonaka's SECI knowledge-creation processes enhances strategic planning capacity in the context of Hong Kong school education.A quantitative questionnaire survey is conducted to examine the predictive effects of the knowledge-creation processes of the SECI model on strategic planning processes. Data is collected from 42 principals and 392 teachers from 42 schools. A multilevel structural equation model is applied to examine the predictive effects of the mechanism on strategic planning capacity. Results show that the combination process of the SECI knowledge-creation model predicts strategic planning capacity, while a collaborative culture enables the process of knowledge externalization and combination. In response to the international debate on culture and context-dependent issues in using Nonaka's SECI model for knowledge creation, this study reaffirms that the SECI model is largely dependent on Japanese collaborative culture. The study also brings theories of knowledge management into discussion of strategic management in the school context. To enhance school planning capacity, school leaders should cultivate a collaborative culture to support the alignment of different departments in the knowledge combination process to craft strategies for development planning. Copyright © 2020 The Author(s).