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)).]

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

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.

Since the publication of the Education Commission Report No. 5 in 1992, the Hong Kong community like other international communities, put increasing emphasis on creating a quality professional teacher work force in schools. This is culminated at the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in July 1997 when the Chief Executive, Mr. Tung Che Hwa, announced in his Inauguration Speech that all new primary and secondary teachers should be degree holders with formal professional training. Among the many needs and initiatives to upgrade the teaching force, the situation in primary school sector draws great attentions of the education community. At present, over 80% of the primary school teachers are non-graduates but professionally trained. At the same time, the primary school sector also attracts quite a number of the fresh university graduates without professional training to take up teaching posts. This phenomenon is not encouraging to the healthy development of a strong graduate teaching force in the primary school. In order to improve the situation, two areas of work need to be carried out. First the Hong Kong community needs to create opportunities for non-graduate teachers to upgrade themselves to become graduates. Second, postgraduate training program should be developed urgently for untrained graduate teachers in the primary school. Responding to the above, this paper examine the issues related to the development of a Postgraduate Diploma in Education program (PGDE) for in-service primary school teachers with special reference to the expectation of the school principals who are the key actors in the primary school sector. Data of the present study are drawn from a large market study for PGDE program development. Two types of data are available for analysis, namely the quantitative data from survey to a random sample of 392 primary schools (return rate was 80.6%), and qualitative data from interviews with 21 primary school principals. The expectations