Language in education debates in Hong Kong focus on the role and status of English (as the former colonial language and an important means for international communication); Cantonese, the mother tongue of the majority of the population; and Putonghua, the national language of China. I will examine language in education policy from an historical perspective, with particular emphasis on the period after the retrocession of Hong Kong in 1997. The questions I will address include: How have the role and status of each of the three language changed over time? What are the major influences on policy decisions? What do policy changes reveal about educational values and ideologies in Hong Kong? Who wins and who loses out?

In recent years, educators in Hong Kong have raised concerns about the examination culture that pervades the school system. Their arguments have focused on the detrimental effect that examination preparation has on student learning, and they advocate the introduction of less formal alternative practices that promote assessment for learning. The government, prompted by the impact of globalization and new technology on the economy that demand a more sophisticated workforce, has encouraged schools to adopt these new approaches to assessment. However, early indications suggest that there is considerable resistance to these moves from teachers and parents. Teachers tend to have difficulty in assimilated the new philosophy of assessment into their pedagogical beliefs and practices, while parents are concerned that informal assessment will undermine the value of standard, formal testing as a fair and objective means for determining social advancement. This paper discusses these tensions and presents a small-scale study that provides insights into current assessment practices in the classroom. It concludes that, given the tensions, informal assessment for learning needs to be implemented gradually in Hong Kong to ensure acceptance and sustainability.
[Copyright © 2012 North-West University.]

In 2007, the Comparative Education Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong co-published with Springer a book entitled Comparative Education Research: Approaches and Methods (edited by Mark Bray, Bob Adamson and Mark Mason). The book was well-received. It was translated into six languages (Chinese, Farsi, French, Italian, Japanese and Spanish), and became a core text for comparative education courses in five continents. It has also been a core text in the editors' own courses, especially at the masters and doctoral levels. In 2013, the editors and authors decided to embark on a second edition which was published at the beginning of 2014. Some chapters were dropped, one was added, and all were revised. This presentation will reflect on the strengths of the book and will summarize the changes. It will consider on the one hand the ways in which the changes for the second edition respond to the evolving field, and on the other hand the ways in which the editors and authors hope to shape further evolution.

Since the creation of systems of mass education, national governments have looked beyond their borders to identify how to develop and improve their education systems. For many decades, the developing world looked to the education systems of the affluent and industrialized West. Since the mid-1980s, however, the source of models of best practice has shifted following the introduction of international tests of pupil achievement, e.g., the studies carried out by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), as well as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Such studies are seen as providing objective evidence of the effectiveness of school systems, and a common feature has been the consistently strong performance of pupils from a number of East Asian contexts (including Hong Kong), and some Scandinavian countries (especially Finland) (Grek 2009, Alexander 2010, Morris 2012). The education policies and practices of these "high performing" education systems and economies have emerged as models of best practices for policy makers around the world (Steiner-Khamsi 2004). Thus what was predominantly a West-East policy flow has become multidirectional. Historically, Hong Kong appropriated British education models as part of its colonial heritage. Significant reforms, tailored to the local context, were proposed by visiting experts from the UK. The process of decolonization began in 1984 with the Joint Declaration, stipulating the retrocession of the territory in 1997. Education policies in Hong Kong since the mid-1980s reflect the parting of ways in the political sense, as Hong Kong distances itself from its colonial past and draws increasingly on other sources to reform the educational system. As one of the "high performing" countries on both PISA and TIMSS, Hong Kong has been used as a model of good practice in many countries, especially in the West

Hong Kong’s high ranking in the OECD’s PISA study and other international assessments has caught the interest of policy-makers internationally who are searching for policy models and classroom practices to learn from. This paper will investigate the nature and validity of the comparative international references made about education in Hong Kong and lessons that might be usefully learned from its experience. It will do this by exploring the outcomes of research that gathered views of stakeholders in Hong Kong, including policy-makers past and present, teachers, principals, academic experts, and parent and employer groups, along with the views of policy-makers, researchers and Chinese community leaders in UK. These perspectives shed light on the reasons – within and beyond the classroom - behind Hong Kong’s success, as well as on the strengths and limitations of schooling that may be misunderstood internationally, in particular in its perceived success in achieving the holy grail of quality and equity in education. Listening to local voices raises questions as to whether strengths in one system as identified by international agencies can be used by policy-makers elsewhere to guide or justify reforms when they are not familiar with the local context and its nuances. The paper draws on work for the research project ‘Hong Kong as a Source for Education Policy in England: Rhetoric and Reality’, funded by The UK Economic and Social Research Council/Research Grants Council, Hong Kong, Joint Research Scheme.

The value of student voices in dialogues about learning improvement is acknowledged in the literature. This paper examines how the views of students regarding School-based Assessment (SBA), a significant shift in examination policy and practice in secondary schools in Hong Kong, have largely been ignored. The study captures student voices through a survey of 423 Secondary 5 students and interviews with 45 students in 3 schools concerning the use of SBA in the high-stakes assessment for the English Language subject. Results suggest a wide range of student perceptions of, and responses to SBA and related feedback. In general, students indicated that they did not appreciate SBA and were unable to capitalise on the feedback. The paper argues that the intentions of SBA can be threatened if these negative tendencies are not addressed through teacher education, and calls for a dialogic model that allows student participation in debates about learning improvement.
[Copyright © 2015 Australian Research Council.]

Since the retrocession of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the Hong Kong SAR government and key curriculum developers have been determined to make use of the school curriculum (formal and informal) and in particular, the two history subjects, 'Chinese History' and 'History,' to promote a national identity among students. This study shows that a Chinese national identity in ethnic, cultural and historical terms has been promoted through 'Chinese History.' At the same time, through the other history subject, 'History,' a Hongkongese identity that includes both an international and a national dimension has also been made possible. However, it is argued that in promoting a sense of national identity through the school curriculum, the government has turned the curriculum to a form of nationalistic propaganda. In addition, the emphasis on national identity would create tension between Hong Kong students, students from China and ethnical minority students.
[Copyright ©2014 National Academy for Educational Research.]