We used social learning theory to examine whether a supportive school environment and formal entrepreneurship education (EE) are linked to secondary school students’ entrepreneurial attributes. We obtained responses to survey questions from 850 students from a total of 28 secondary schools in Hong Kong. We then employed structural equation modelling to test the associations of formal teaching and the school environment with students’ entrepreneurial attributes. Entrepreneurship consists of four distinct constructs: opportunity recognition, innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactiveness. Students in supportive school environment show greater entrepreneurial attributes, but those receiving formal teaching of entrepreneurship show fewer entrepreneurial attributes. These findings provide important insights that can be used for reassessing notions of entrepreneurship in school students, particularly in secondary school students. Copyright © 2023 AERA.

The critical mass of modern educational provision in Hong Kong has long been provided by the private sector. The public education system was created by the charities and religious bodies during the colonial period, though the government was later involved in the management of the system (see Choi & Kan, forthcoming, for the development of educational governance in Hong Kong). Thus, the presence of the private sector in ‘public’ schooling has long been the norm. When the educational privatisation trend, which started in the US and UK in the 1980s, reached Hong Kong, the government opened doors for further privatisation of public schooling, in the form of educational outsourcing. Educational outsourcing soon became prevalent: a document-based study on outsourcing in English teaching in a third of publicly funded secondary schools (Choi, 2018) showed that three-quarters of schools outsourced, with three contracts per year on average. However, the practice did not draw much attention from the public or scholars, in this ‘already outsourced’ education system (Bates, Choi, & Kim, 2019, p. 10). The lack of attention partly came from the fact that the introduction of educational outsourcing was subtle. It was conducted as part of a wider initiative of the privatisation of public services and occurred through system change rather than through legislation or policy. For instance, the Education Bureau (EDB), a counterpart of the Ministry of Education of some countries, instituted the School-based Management (SBM). The SBM allowed for schools to deploy their funds with maximum autonomy. EDB additionally created funds to support schools through outsourcing. Because English is recognised as a crucial social capital for securing higher education and prestigious jobs, schools mobilised the extra funds to purchase English teaching, making it the most popular area for outsourcing (Choi, Walker, Tang, Ko, & Chiu, 2018). Drawing on data collected through three interrelated research projects

Many tertiary educational institutes are adopting English as the medium of instruction (MOI) globally. In 2014, a publicly funded university in Hong Kong introduced a new language policy that marked a major shift in practice by switching the main MOI to English from Classical Written Chinese and spoken Cantonese, the predominant local language. The new policy caused some anxiety among staff and students as to how the change might be implemented effectively.This chapter analyzes this transitional process through a case study including surveys and interviews. After the introduction of the context in terms of the language-in-education policies and other changes, the case study findings are presented in terms of the perceptions of the reforms and challenges experienced by the staff and students. It then reports how these challenges were addressed through different support measures with some success, and the principles pinning down those initiatives. It also analyzes how the reform created impacts in unintended areas, such as potential mission drift. It concludes with a reiteration of the evolutionary nature of MOI and other educational reforms, and some suggestions on planning and managing those reforms to minimize the reform costs. Copyright © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Lily I-wen Su, Hintat Cheung, and Jessica R. W. Wu; individual chapters, the contributors.

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.

Globalisation has made higher education increasingly internationalised, reinforcing the importance of English as a means for academic communication. In this regard, many universities in non-English-speaking countries mandate that local first-year undergra

The outsourcing of education services has been widely adopted across international contexts as a ‘tested solution’ or panacea to meet various educational problems including school management, curriculum design, teaching and student discipline. Contracting third-party providers, it is argued, enhances organisational goals such as efficiency, quality and school improvement. However, the outsourcing of education services has also impacted on established notions concerning the boundaries around teachers’ work. This paper deploys the framework of discursive institutionalism to offer insight into how the idea of outsourcing has been activated and circulated by discursive communities in three diverse international settings. Despite its problem-solution logic, the institutionalisation of outsourcing creates its own problems, not least the undermining of teacher professionalism, the ‘businessification’ of schools and a diminishing of their educational mission. Copyright © 2019 British Association for International and Comparative Education.

Language-in-education – including language pedagogy, an integral part of planning language-in-education – has been one of the most popular areas of policymaking in many contexts, as languages are perceived to have utilitarian values. Numerous studies have been conducted to evaluate the impact of individual policy cases, and the factors which contribute to their impact. However, often these studies understand a policy as a static product and the discussions are limited to a particular policy. Reflecting the current understanding of a policy as an iterative process and taking a comparative perspective, this paper presents a framework which will help investigate and discuss implementation and impact of a language-in-education policy. In particular, it shares insights from analyses of relevant policies from telling case contexts of Hong Kong and South Korea. Drawing on general policy studies as well as language-in-education research, the paper will contribute to building the knowledge base of language-in-education research and to improving the effectiveness of language-in-education policy processes, by providing a tool to help better understand and research the phenomena reflecting their situatedness and the complexities involved and to predict the trajectory of such policies. Copyright © 2018 Asia TEFL.