Research Findings: This article describes research into leadership practice for school improvement in Hong Kong preschools at a time when there was a move toward increased accountability. Two schools were selected for study, both of which were rated as excellent in the quality assurance inspections of the Education Bureau. Leadership practice for school improvement and related factors were investigated from the perspectives of various school stakeholders.
Practice or Policy: The findings indicate that the 2 case study schools adopted different approaches to the process of change. One school principal delegated more to her subordinates and sought a radical change in the curriculum. In contrast, the other school principal imposed more restrictions on the exercise of authority in decision making and delegation and tended to follow the logic of a quick-fix approach. Overall, though the 2 schools adopted different approaches to curriculum change, the exercise of leadership in both schools was still highly centralized. The characteristics of leadership practice as perceived by various school stakeholders were different from the concepts of distributed leadership documented in the Western literature.
[Copyright of Early Education & Development is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10409280903582835]

Research Findings: Hong Kong launched the new mechanism of the Quality Assurance Inspection (QAI) in 2000 to enforce accountability and school improvement in the sector of early childhood education. The QAI comprises 3 stages: school self-evaluation, external inspection, and release of the QAI report to the public. To understand the roles of self-evaluation and external inspection and their interactions, we analyzed all 80 QAI reports released by the government from 2004 to 2007 and interviewed the principals and teachers of 3 kindergartens that had been ranked excellent, good, and satisfactory on Learning and Teaching performance in the QAI. The results indicated that (a) school performance on self-evaluation was significantly and positively correlated with Learning and Teaching performance but negatively correlated with the number of problems found in the QAI, (b) all kindergartens reported 4 types of challenges brought about by the external inspection (i.e., uncertainty, personnel, workload, and psychological burdens), and (c) the QAI was a facilitative and productive process for school self-evaluation and quality improvement. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest that an effective quality assurance mechanism should maintain a balance between external and internal evaluations and should work toward school empowerment and improvement.
[Copyright of Early Education & Development is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10409281003638725]

This study aims to provide recommendations on school-based planning for the use of information technology (IT) to improve the quality of school education. Focus group discussions and case studies were conducted to collect the views of school practitioners on the need for IT in education and related areas of school-based planning. The results of this study indicated that schools in Hong Kong recognise the importance of Twenty-first Century Knowledge, the role of IT and the need for school-based IT in education plans. The schools put considerable effort into curriculum re-interpretation to accommodate the use of IT to improve learning and teaching, and have shown determination in their leadership to provide and manage IT infrastructure in response to the trend towards the integration of IT into school education. Four sets of school-based strategies are recommended to promote the role of IT in enhancing school education, namely the use of IT to foster the capability of enquiry learning, the promotion of self-regulated learning involving the use of digital resources, the use of digital student learning records to encourage assessment for learning, and the creation of a digital campus for effective learning and teaching.
[Copyright of Technology, Pedagogy and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14759390903255627]