This article reports a case study that investigated the ways in which heads of subject departments managed the development and application of new assessment strategies in one secondary school in Hong Kong. The data of the study were gathered through participant observation and interviews with 12 teachers who participated in an assessment for learning project in the school. The results show variation in the leadership approaches adopted by the department heads, highlighting the dichotomy between managerial accountability and professional empowerment as their perceived mandate, and techno-instrumentalism and autonomous explorations as their visions for school-based renewal initiatives. The findings of the study highlight the subcultures within subject departments resulting from the different leadership styles enacted by the subject leaders, and point to the need for further investigations into the mediating roles of culture of subject disciplines and contextual variables that shape the dynamics of educational management.
[Copyright of International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603124.2012.672654]

Changes in assessment practices in the direction of assessment for learning (AfL) can be a powerful force to enhance student learning. This article presents a case study of teacher learning in an AfL project in Hong Kong. In the Project, AfL strategies were adopted in Chinese Language and English Language classrooms at the junior secondary level. By examining subject leaders' and classroom teachers' experiences with the project reported in interviews, the paper enriches our understanding of the variations in the subject department contexts of teacher learning, the situatedness of teacher learning in terms of knowledge about student learning, understanding of AfL and curriculum leadership, as well as the relationship between teacher learning and changes in assessment practices. The article concludes with suggestions on fostering subject departments to be expansive environments for teacher professional learning and to be a vehicle of internal change, alerts the importance of integration of AfL into teachers' pedagogical content knowledge and the subject curriculum, and highlights the cultural dimension as an issue for further study in AfL.
[Copyright of Professional Development in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19415250903554087]