Background: Hong Kong is currently a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. It has autonomy over many policy areas, including finance and education. It is a community of seven million people, which has changed its focus and identity significantly over the last 25 years, from predominantly manufacturing to a service and knowledge economy with particular strengths in financial services.
Purpose: This paper will consider the market for teacher education places and the market for teachers, and explore the career intention and commitment implications of high numbers of well qualified applicants applying for teaching in the context of reduced work opportunities elsewhere, an increasing higher education focus on intake scores and the challenge, for the teaching profession and the education system, of teaching becoming less secure work. Sources of evidence: Governmental and institutional publications and data, along with research and survey findings, together with comparative literature underpin the reactions to past, present and possible future effects on teacher education in Hong Kong.
Main argument: Given its financial focus, Hong Kong would be expected to suffer significantly during the recent financial crisis and that this would impact across all its sectors including Education and Teacher Education. In addition to the financial crisis, other changes have affected teacher education in Hong Kong, including major reforms in curriculum and school and higher education structure and a significantly diminished birth rate reducing posts in teaching, and raising concerns about job security.
Conclusions: Hong Kong is a very prudently managed economy with substantial reserves and a commitment to "small government" and the impact has been different from many other systems. Places on teacher education programmes remained unchanged. Applications for teacher education programmes however increased significantly during the crisis.
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This paper examines the criteria used by recruiting bodies to assess potential candidates for the post of principal of a secondary school in Hong Kong. A quantitative methodology is used to identify what recruiters seek in applicants. The expectations that recruiters have when assessing applicants can be seen as a form of proxy for the elements they consider would constitute a successful principal. Data were collected from school superintendents who had served as selection panel members. The findings confirm a four-factor set of expectations sought from applicants; these are Generic Managerial Skills; Communication and Presentation Skills; Knowledge and Experience; and Religious Value Orientation. The diversity of the backgrounds of the school superintendents was also explored. An understanding of the selection criteria may inform policy-makers and practitioners and improve the selection of candidates.
[Copyright of International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603124.2011.617838 ]

The "Certificated Teachers' Pay Dispute in 1973" ("the Dispute") was, historically the first collective insurgency of indigenous teachers as well as the first industrial action taken by local civil servants Teachers from publicly funded schools successfully claimed their economic demands from the then colonial administration Prima facie the subject matter of this study seems to be concerned only with the economic interest of a certain group of people However, an in-depth inquiry brings to the fore its underlying political theme, ie the redistribution of power Herein I use the "Political Process Model" as the theoretical framework and the "struggling for power" as the conceptual tool to operate the empirical data This study also verifies that the Dispute was the confluence of two major political processes, namely (1) an unprecedented political opportunity provided by changes in the political structure, and (2) the change of indigenous organizational strength The notion of "collective grievances" cannot provide a convincing explanation of the issues aforesaid
Academically, this study's significance is two-fold First, by way of comparative study, it proves the applicability of the "Political Process Model" to an authoritarian polity, provided that adjustment is made on the basis of the parameters proposed by Cook (1996) That is to say, political opportunity is rare in a closed political system and only arises in a particular "proximate environment" or a certain specific period of time It is non-structural Therefore the opportunity can only be measured by its functionality, which includes the diminution of the possibility of suppression and the access to the polity In respect of the latter, this study ushers in the new concept of "leverage" to explain how those groups far from the core of power used their numerical strength to successfully challenge the authoritarian colonial government
Secondly, in the process of sorting out the historical context of the insurgency