Purpose: Both Hong Kong and Singapore leverage teacher collaboration to improve student learning, but state reforms differ in how teacher collaborative capabilities are prioritized. This paper provides a nuanced comparison of Hong Kong and Singapore teachers' values (risk-taking, power distance and uncertainty avoidance) to develop insights into how different policy focuses cultivate teachers' capabilities to focus on improving student learning. Design/methodology/approach: Employing Hargreaves and Fullan's (2012) concept of professional capital, statistical analyses determine teachers' values profiles of high, medium and low professional capital in the respective contexts. Leveraging related research on Singapore teachers (Lee and Lee, 2018), nuances in teachers' values in the Hong Kong results are identified via cluster analysis and explained via structural equation modelling. Findings: Medium professional capital Hong Kong teachers' values matched Singapore's, but teachers in other clusters are nuanced. Compared to Singapore teachers with similar levels of professional capital, high professional capital Hong Kong teachers have higher uncertainty avoidance, while low professional capital teachers are the opposite. In Hong Kong, high uncertainty avoidance values positively influence teacher leadership and focus on student learning. Nevertheless, as with their Singapore counterparts, high professional capital Hong Kong teachers have low power distance and high risk-taking values. Originality/value: This paper raises awareness regarding policy's influence in cultivating teachers' values and their transformational change capabilities. By comparing two hierarchical Chinese societies, the discussion questions whether Chinese and Western cultural influences are mutually exclusive, and whether transformational change in cultural values, if achievable, is necessary. Copyright © 2021 Emerald Publishing Limited.

This paper compares teachers’ values (risk-taking, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance) that prevail in Hong Kong and Singapore, and the teachers’ collaborative professional development practices in school to develop insights to how different approaches to school reforms shape convergent / divergent ways of cultivating teachers’ professional capabilities. Using statistical cluster analysis, teachers are sorted into different levels of PLC engagement (high, medium, and low professional capital) in the respective contexts, and compared for differences in teachers’ values relative to their local compatriots. The results are compared between teachers in Hong Kong and Singapore to identify policy implications arising from different approaches to reforms in collaborative teacher professional development in two Chinese contexts. Copyright © 2021 CESHK.

This paper examines the influence of professional learning communities (PLCs) on informal teacher leadership in Hong Kong schools to overcome issues reported in the literature on the challenges to teacher leadership posed by Chinese hierarchical school contexts. We test the relations among PLC, informal teacher leadership, teacher focus on improving student learning, principal instructional leadership, and middle leadership (e.g., subject heads) with structural equation modeling of survey responses from 638 teachers of primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong. The results show an overall positive influence among all factors in the study. PLCs have the highest positive influence among the factors considered in this study. PLCs are highly influential in promoting informal teacher leadership, which in turn has a high positive linkage to teachers’ focus on improving student learning. In addition, principal instructional leadership has a high positive influence on PLCs, while middle leadership has a moderate positive influence on PLCs. To further enhance teacher leadership capabilities that promote teachers’ focus on improving student learning, we provide recommendations to boost PLC and middle leadership capacities in schools. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s).

This paper introduces and summarizes the articles in this Special Issue of the Journal of Educational Change on “Identity Grafting: Teacher and School Development in Chinese School Systems.” (Lee, Managing Chineseness: Identity and ethnic management in Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017). It begins with Fengqiao Yan’s key thoughts and alternative views on the modernization of China’s academic system. Next, it surveys Fei Yan et al.’s study, which examines Beijing teachers’ and students’ responses toward the recent history textbook reforms in mainland China to instill the Core Socialist Values of the Chinese Communist Party. Third, it examines Wing On Lee and Ji Qi’s study, which maps the identity journeys of migrant Chinese communities in Beijing. Fourth, it summarizes Koon Lin Wong et al.’s study, which revisits the dilemma Hong Kong teachers face because of the obligation to implement the national education agenda. Fifth, it extends insights from Maxwell Ho and Daphnee Lee’s study of student behaviors in financial literacy education to understand the underpinning identity influences of the recent waves of student protests in Hong Kong. Sixth, the paper introduces Daphnee Lee’s study of the group dynamics of Singaporean Chinese teachers who engage in professional learning communities to achieve change, and the cultural identity processes that explain why some teams of teachers resist educational change, while other teams of teachers can come to embrace it. Copyright © 2021 Springer Nature B.V.

This paper examines the global implications of policy borrowing, employing case examples of Chinese school systems, which enjoy the success of grafting new identities to improve education. The paper comments on contemporary scholars’ use of identity grafting theory (Lee in Managing Chineseness: identity and ethnic management in Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017) to generate insights on how schools, teachers and students engaged educational change in mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Scholars presented empirical findings by using identity grafting constructs to explain education stakeholders’ diverse responses to change: (1) born-again—rejecting change by reviving traditional practices; (2) repression—repressing traditional identities instead of embracing change; (3) integration—combining traditional identities and progressive change to achieve a balance; and (4) situationalism—developing new identities that transcend boundaries between traditional identities and progressive change. The scholars contributed research that advances the theorization of identity grafting. First, rising born-again Chinese sentiments seek to reject the imposition of a singular Chinese identity imposed by state governments. Born-again Chineseness no longer singularly focuses on defending traditional identities against Western influences. Second, a better understanding is achieved on identity repression—change resistance results from a displaced focus on repressing traditional identities. Third, the prevalence of identity integration strategies can be explained by intensive policy borrowing in the region. Policy borrowers need to ensure externally imposed identities are represented to overcome challenges generated by identity grafting strategies that impede progressive change. This popularity of integrationist strategies accounts for the challenges in achieving identity situationalism—policy borrowing needs culturally divisive identity markers that provide clear indicators to

This paper examines the unintended consequences of state language policy and planning (LPP) that adopt subtractive approaches on teachers' subsequent receptivity to policy fine-tuning. A comparative approach is adopted in this statistical study of two strategic contexts, where the influence of the world's two leading languages—English and Mandarin—manifests in the home language conversion patterns of ethnic Chinese teachers of Hong Kong and Singapore. The interplay among state, education, and family linguistic domains provides the framework to understand how teachers exercise agency underpinned by their sociolinguistic background (childhood home language—CHL) and home language conversion preference (home language as adult—HL). The results show that teacher CHL–HL conversion preferences underlie their response to state LPP initiatives and influence LPP outcomes in the education domain. The results are theorized in terms of the prevailing values in Hong Kong and Singapore that shape teacher agency, the unintended outcomes of subtractive LPP in education, and the probable outcomes on the linguistic vitality of local and dominant languages in Hong Kong, with the interplay between future subtractive LPP and teacher agency. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This paper provides a critical re-examination of prevailing case study approaches that select ethnic minority cases based on racial identities. It revisits the importance of distinguishing between concepts of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ (Brubaker, 2004 Wallerstein, 1991), and proposes a language-informed approach to reconceptualize these constructs in view of the power dynamics that results in their conflation.I examine the language developments that structure the school context to highlight the power dynamics of Hong Kong’s shifting identity from special administrative region to its eventual integration into Mainland China. A language-informed approach provides an illustrative case of language developments that propel schools into the unintended consequence of enculturating Cantonese-speaking (Hong Kong) students to embrace Mandarin (Mainland). Language developments coalesce into a coherent strategy that elicits the voluntary cooperation of autonomous Hong Kong schools to conflate the race and ethnic identities of Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking students.Lexis Elementary is a school in Hong Kong located near the border of Mainland China. Due to poor school enrolment, it had a close-shave with school closure. The school survived by enrolling students from across the border from Mainland China, where the language is Mandarin rather than Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong. The consequence is a transformation in the school language profile. From juggling between English and Cantonese, Lexis Elementary students are now predominantly Mandarin speakers.The case study demonstrates how the economics of school survival coalesce with language developments to produce trickle-down effects on the conflation of race and ethnic identities. It highlights the need for language-informed case studies to chart the structural racism that underlie the complex webs race and ethnic identities entrenched in language development. I draw attention to how ethnic minorities are sequentially rendered invisible

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how principals' leadership approaches to teacher professional development arise from school banding and may impact upon teacher professional capital and student achievement. Design/methodology/approach: The case study is situated within the context of school-based management, comprising reflective accounts of nine school principals selected by stratified sampling from a sample of 56 Hong Kong schools to represent Bands One, Two, and Three schools. The reflective accounts were triangulated with observations of teachers and analysis of school websites. Findings: First, under school-based management, principals remain obliged to recognize the power of state-defined examinations in determining the schools' future priorities. Second, the exercise of school autonomy in response to this obligation varies, depending upon the competitive advantage schools have in the school banding system. Ideally, effective school-based management is dependent upon the principal's capacity to facilitate good instructional practices. However, principals need to adjust their leadership practices to school contextual demands. Third, adaptations to contexts result in the varied developments of teacher capacities in schools, corresponding with the types of principal leadership adopted. Originality/value: While statistical studies have identified attributes of exemplary principal leadership, few studies have examined the qualitative reasons for the exemplification of these attributes, and the influence of the school context in shaping these attributes. Departing from assumptions that leadership attributes are intrinsic to individuals, this paper considers how principals contextualize leadership in teacher professional development to the schools' student academic achievement.
[Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited.]