Developing early-career teachers' leadership is a part of teacher learning both inside and outside schools. Teachers' learning processes have not yet been explored in relation to principals' delegation and teachers' recognition of leadership roles in a culturally hierarchical structure. This article discusses a cross-case study of four early-career Chinese teachers' experiences of leadership development in the Hong Kong school system. After teaching for five years, the teachers' leadership capabilities are reflected in their functional roles, membership, and promotion in their schools as approved by their school principals. Implications for teacher leadership development through teacher learning are also discussed. Copyright © 2017 Education Pub.

In Hong Kong, many school principals have outsourced their extra-curricular activities to reduce the workload of teachers and provide more activity options for students. This article reports on a qualitative study aimed at examining the views of a group of 16 teaching professionals from ten primary schools in Hong Kong on the effectiveness of, as well as the major concerns about, outsourcing extra-curricular activities. The findings indicate that three themes emerged from the data regarding the effectiveness of outsourcing extracurricular activities to external organisations: (1) reducing teachers' workload and cost saving; (2) enhancing the expertise of teachers; and (3) catering for the needs of both parents and students. On the other hand, the major concerns about outsourcing activities were: (1) increasing administrative duties; (2) quality of the activities; (3) linking activities to school curricula; and (4) student discipline. It is recommended that school, government and parent representatives be involved in the monitoring of delivering outsourcing activities.
[Copyright © 2015 Education Pub.]

This article discusses how a newly established senior secondary school in Hong Kong tried to actively engage students in the school decision-making process. It first explains how democratization could come about, the actual measures adopted, and the initial success achieved. Then the article proceeds to explain how challenges, such as conflicting interests of the students and tension between students and the administration, surfaced when the school became more established, grew in size, took in more students, moved into a bigger campus, and subsequently needed to face the public examinations. In conclusion, the article discusses changes in school governance that could be helpful in meeting the challenges. Institutionalising student participation, such as forming a student council, is discussed together with other useful changes. It is hoped that this article can be useful to people interested in the democratization of school governance, and the impact on school democratization of such factors as institutionalisation and increasing school size.
[Copyright © 2010 Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration & Management (CCEAM).]

In Hong Kong, aspiring and newly appointed principals are required to have a good mastery of leadership capacities for the new paradigm of education development in the 21st century. This paper aims to examine the perceptions of 188 aspiring principals on the applicability of the leadership capacities they are equipped with in the principalship training programme to their leadership positions in their schools. A questionnaire consisting of 24 questions in six core areas of leadership was constructed and mailed to the sample two years after they were awarded the Certificate for Principalship. The findings demonstrated that most of the participants perceived the leadership capacities of 'strategic direction and policy environment' and 'quality assurance and accountability' to be more applicable to their leadership positions in school than those of 'teacher professional growth and development', 'external communication and connection to the outside world', 'learning, teaching and curriculum' and 'staff and resources management'.
[Copyright © 2014 International Studies in Educational Administration (Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration & Management (CCEAM)).]