Purpose – Over the past decade, studies of school leadership effects have increasingly aimed at identifying and validating the paths through which principal leadership impacts key teaching and learning processes in schools. A recent meta-analysis by Robinson and colleagues identified principal practices that shape teacher professional development experiences in schools as the highest impact path used by instructional leaders. The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships between principal leadership, dimensions of school capacity, and teacher professional learning in 32 Hong Kong primary schools. Design/methodology/approach – The study employed a cross-sectional research design and quantitative methods to analyze teacher perceptions of principal leadership and key school conditions. The research employed hierarchical linear regression analysis to explore survey data collected from a sample of 970 teachers. The surveys covered a range of principal leadership and school capacity dimensions, as well as a measure of teacher professional learning. Findings – Results indicated that multiple dimensions of principal leadership made significant contributions to both school capacity and teacher professional learning. The presence of cooperation, trust, communication, support for students, and alignment, coherence, and structure in schools also affected teacher professional learning. Research limitations/implications – These findings contribute to the global discourse on leadership for learning. The study addresses the need established by multiple scholars (e.g. Leithwood, Hallinger, Heck, Robinson, Witziers) for research that further illuminates “paths” and “intermediate targets” through which leadership impacts teaching and learning. The findings elaborate on the means by which leadership can enhance school capacities that directly impact teacher classroom practice and student learning. Consistent with other scholarly research (e.g. Bryk and Schneider, Louis and colleagues

Since the introduction of accountability framework was introduced in 2003 and the school-based management policy that included parents as school managers was reinforced, a community model in Hong Kong secondary schools seems emerging. Drawing from a landmark study in Hong Kong secondary schools that looked into the impact of principal leadership on student outcomes using both cognitive and affective data, this paper begins with an examination of the empirical evidence that seems to support a positive prospect for a community model. Specifically, the leadership dimension that characterizes principals’ external communication and connection was most highly correlated with the dependable variable, the school condition Support for Students. However, using hierarchical multiple regression, this leadership dimension was also found contributed to only about 3.38% of the variance. This result contrasts with that quality assurance and accountability policy of schools tended to have a negative impact on support for students. Moreover, for some of the forty-seven principals investigated, their scores in this dimension were the lowest among all the seven leadership dimensions studied. These results suggest a mixed message. On the one hand, they indicate that a good communication and connection with parents and the community seemed to help principals provide better support for students. On the other hand, many principals are yet to prepare for the change in power structure in school management (Walker, 2004). In the interviews with the principals and key staff teachers, some strategies adopted by schools to attempt a community model were found. First, as most schools in Hong Kong also have strong affiliations with or under the governance of religious bodies or charitable organizations, some forms of external communication and connection to the community may have already existed. Second, some secondary schools were eager to build stronger connections with primary schools in the local

This study attempted to identify effects of trust between principal leadership and teacher professional learning in Hong Kong primary schools. To verify the potential mediating effects of trust as a component of school capacity, survey data with a sample of 970 teachers from 32 local primary schools was used. Two questionnaires were combined to investigate principal leadership and school capacity in the schools. Baron and Kenny’s four-step causal process for mediation analysis was employed to have a preliminary inquiry. To compensate weaknesses of the orthodox regression based approach, significance of the mediating effects of trust were tested using the Sobel’s test and bootstrapping method. Next, the seven core sets of principal leadership practices were used as multiple predictors, and mediating effects of trust between them and teacher professional learning were also examined. The findings affirmed the role of faculty trust as a mediator between principal leadership and teacher professional learning in Hong Kong primary schools.
[Copyright © 2015 The Author(s).]

This study tests mediated principal leadership effects on teacher professional learning through collegial trust, communication, and collaboration in Hong Kong primary schools. It is based on a series of single mediator studies, and uses the same convenience sample of 970 teachers from 32 local primary schools. It also adopts Hayes’ (2013) regression-based macros, integrated with bootstrapping method, to examine and compare sizes and proportions of potential mediating effects of the three human relational variables. The findings affirm the role and nature trust, communication, and collaboration play in the mediated relationship. In contrast, the mediating power of collaboration is non-significantly stronger than that of communication, and is more than doubled that of trust. The conclusion is that, a school environment featuring mutual trust, effective communication, and genuine collaboration is a core condition for teacher learning and change. Provided that the forces that bind people together in schools are multiple, principals are recommended to create school culture and conditions strategically for teacher learning to thrive.

This paper aims to explore substantive findings from Hong Kong research studies of educational leadership published in core international journals between 1995 and 2014. It employs a systematic research review approach to analysis across a total of 160 published research papers. The review focuses on identifying and key research issue from a clearly delimited body of the relevant papers comprised of empirical, non-empirical and review/synthesis types of studies. The findings of the published papers are then explored and synthesized for any emergent theme as the research issue that might characterize the development of Hong Kong educational leadership in the past two decades. Analysis of the emergent themes is a two-stage process: (1) a comparative mapping of the themes cross the published paper; and (2) and in-depth coding of the themes for unlocking the meanings of the key research issues. The review results illustrate a methodological pattern, a set of key research issues and a research agenda grounded in the substantial findings of the published papers. The discussion highlights the issues of Hong Kong educational leadership the scholars were concerned with, affecting the frontline of kindergartens, primary and secondary schools.

Since the mid-1990s, teacher professional community has achieved increasing influence as a strategy for facilitating productive change in schools. This study investigates the impact of principal quality and leadership on the development of teacher professional community in Hong Kong primary schools. More specifically, we examine the means by which principal quality, leadership, and organizational trust impact the strength of teacher professional community. Using survey data from 32 Hong Kong primary schools, we found that principals are crucial for the development of teacher professional community. Implications of the major finding are discussed in terms of research, policy, and practice.
[Copyright of Leadership & Policy in Schools is the property of Taylor & Francis. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2014.901396]

Research on school improvement tends to assume that school improvement is a school-wide process. Nonetheless, some researchers have also proposed that secondary schools are comprised of subcultures centered on subject area departments. It has further been suggested that variations in the sociocultural organization of subject departments could produce differential results in the learning outcomes of students. To date, however, few empirical studies have examined the leverage offered by this perspective. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by analyzing changes in the learning outcomes of subject departments over a 3-year period as compared with patterns of whole school improvement in 47 Hong Kong secondary schools. The results support the proposition that theory, research, and practice on secondary schools will benefit from viewing their improvement from a perspective that takes into account the diversity of department-level conditions and learning outcomes.
[Copyright of School Effectiveness and School Improvement is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2014.882848]

A recent review of research identified two Asian societies that represented 'positive outliers' in the production of published knowledge on educational leadership and management: Hong Kong and Israel. These were the only Asian societies that had produced a critical mass of publications in this field in international journals over the past two decades. The current study examined the nature of the publication corpus from Hong Kong and Israel in an effort to understand factors that may have contributed to this capacity for high research productivity. The results suggested that different strategies may have accounted for research capacity development in these two societies. Directions are identified for future research.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2014.934780]

Over the past 30 years, school principals have been exhorted to articulate a clear vision as a key tool for stimulating the improvement of teaching and learning in their schools. Over the past decade, as school systems have sought to distribute leadership more broadly within schools, the same imperative has applied to middle-level leaders. Indeed, a key assumption underlying the move towards sharing leadership responsibilities more broadly has been the belief that this would strengthen collective efforts and reduce the gap between goals and outcomes. Yet, to date, there have relatively few investigations of the extent to which middle-level leaders are contributing to school improvement efforts. This study sought to understand how shared vision within school management teams (SMTs) impacts teacher commitment and teacher support for students through school alignment and coherence. Dyad survey data were collected from 411 SMT members and 559 teachers at 32 primary schools in Hong Kong. Results indicated that shared vision in SMTs is positively related to teachers' perception of school alignment and coherence, teachers' commitment and teacher support to students. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2014.938039]

A recent study of scholarship on educational leadership and management in East Asia identified a rapidly growing corpus of published studies focusing on educational leadership and management in Hong Kong. This article undertakes a "topographical analysis" of this literature with the aim of describing the nature of topics and research methods employed over the past decade. The authors analyze the body of articles published in a "core" set of eight educational leadership and management journals between 1995 and 2012. The descriptive study offers insights into the nature of this emergent literature from a single non-Western society.
[Copyright of Leadership & Policy in Schools is the property of Taylor & Francis. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2013.826809]