Policies of career education facilitate the sustainable development of young people in aspirations, identities and pathways of their career development in senior secondary education. In Hong Kong, the policy has been implemented in public schools since 2014. Principals are responsible for leading a whole-school participation in career education for all students. However, student population of individual schools is more diverse than where they were due to a large number of immigrants from different parts of mainland China and other Asian societies. Many principals have experienced the challenges of increasing diversity in schools, if not any opportunity. This paper aims to explore principal leadership for whole-school participation in student career development. Two research questions are asked: What are the challenges of whole-school participation facing the principals in diverse contexts of individual schools? To what extent do students with different cultural, religious and social backgrounds experience the importance of career development in senior secondary education? We adopted a case study of three secondary schools located in different school districts in Hong Kong. The principals were invited to individual semi-structured interview, while 4 to 7 students from each grade of senior secondary education were invited to a focus-group interview in each school. The findings unveil discrepancy of the expected outcomes of the education between the principals’ experiences of the challenges from a leadership perspective and the students’ experiences of any opportunity for their career development from a user perspective. Potential for positive change through the participation in CLP education varies depending on individual students’ awareness, aspiration and exploration of personal career goal. Implications of principal leadership for whole-school participation in career education in relation to equal opportunity for all students are also discussed. Copyright © 2019 UCEA

This paper examines the global implications of policy borrowing, employing case examples of Chinese school systems, which enjoy the success of grafting new identities to improve education. The paper comments on contemporary scholars’ use of identity grafting theory (Lee in Managing Chineseness: identity and ethnic management in Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017) to generate insights on how schools, teachers and students engaged educational change in mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Scholars presented empirical findings by using identity grafting constructs to explain education stakeholders’ diverse responses to change: (1) born-again—rejecting change by reviving traditional practices; (2) repression—repressing traditional identities instead of embracing change; (3) integration—combining traditional identities and progressive change to achieve a balance; and (4) situationalism—developing new identities that transcend boundaries between traditional identities and progressive change. The scholars contributed research that advances the theorization of identity grafting. First, rising born-again Chinese sentiments seek to reject the imposition of a singular Chinese identity imposed by state governments. Born-again Chineseness no longer singularly focuses on defending traditional identities against Western influences. Second, a better understanding is achieved on identity repression—change resistance results from a displaced focus on repressing traditional identities. Third, the prevalence of identity integration strategies can be explained by intensive policy borrowing in the region. Policy borrowers need to ensure externally imposed identities are represented to overcome challenges generated by identity grafting strategies that impede progressive change. This popularity of integrationist strategies accounts for the challenges in achieving identity situationalism—policy borrowing needs culturally divisive identity markers that provide clear indicators to

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).

This paper aims at extending the understanding of principal leadership in support of teachers' development of robot-based pedagogy for students in a cross-school professional learning community (PLC) of Hong Kong's special education. Sixty representative teachers from over 30 special schools, that is 50% of the total number of special schools, participated in the community over the past 2 years. The teachers not only developed the pedagogy but also observed and collaborated in the schools regarding their technological, pedagogical and content knowledge. The development of robot-based learning for individual students' different special educational needs is an innovative differentiated approach to fostering socially just learning in schools. The key research question is: How could teacher professional development of robot-based pedagogies for all students build a social-justice school? We adopted a qualitative cross-case study of four schools participating in the PLC. Although the professional development did not aim at principals' and teachers' social-justice practices for all students, the case study demonstrated the principals' leadership support and the teachers' enthusiasm for learning to change their pedagogies with the use of new robotic technology for socially just differentiated teaching. Implications of the cross-school PLC for building social-justice school communities are also discussed. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Given substantial school autonomy in Hong Kong, different school leadership practices can yield different school environments for teachers, different degrees of teacher empowerment, and different civic teaching approaches. Principals can influence their school environment in civic learning and allocate resources to support civic education. Considerable attention has been given to the concept of ‘leading for learning’ (Goker, 2006) but there has been little attention given to civic learning in schools and how it might be facilitated by principals (Xu and Law, 2015). Given the volatile and uncertain external environment that students as future citizens face, civic learning must now be considered a priority. Kennedy, Li and Chan (2015) and Kennedy and Li (2017) have shown that school level factors can influence students’ civic learning, although the results are somewhat mixed, clearly this requires further investigation. This study extends this line of research by examining how principals create school civic teaching environments and how these influence teachers in their roles as civic educators. The results showed that the complex historical-cultural and socio-political contexts of Hong Kong have influenced school leadership when it comes to teaching civics, and the researcher has highlighted three main patterns of school leadership needed for civics teaching. When school leadership lacked a clear vision of citizenship education (pattern 1), most teachers were compliant and avoided dis-cussing sensitive political topics with their students. When school leadership mediated the diverse needs of students and balanced the different expectations of school stakeholders (pattern 2), there were both compliant and critical teachers. When school leadership had a clear vison of the school’s civic mission (pattern 3), the results differed across schools. These findings implied that principals have to significantly shift their understanding of the purposes of citizenship education

Many societies, including Hong Kong, allow for outsourcing curriculum delivery to third parties using government funds (state-funded ed-outsourcing). Previous research conducted in other contexts at the respective levels of government and schools suggests that outsourced education perpetuates or even aggravates the educational inequity observed in overall education. However, empirical research documenting the interaction between government policies and school-level practices is very limited, especially in the Asian context. Considering the great role played by context in shaping the impact of a policy, there is a need for research that addresses this gap. This paper, drawing on government documents on relevant policies as well as reports on grant use allocated for ed-outsourcing from a third of Hong Kong secondary schools, shows that while the government is trying to ensure educational equity through ed-outsourcing, some equity-related issues have remained. It also identifies the factors contributing to the equity landscape around ed-outsourcing and presents policy suggestions to ensure the equity of education provided in partnership with third parties. Copyright © 2019 Asian Productivity Organization.