New teachers enter schools with already established beliefs about principals.This paper reports on the nature and primary influences on what a group of Hong Kong pre-service teacher participants believe about principals. The nature of beliefs reflect underlying personal constructs that relate to interpersonal communication and management. Influences include past school principals, school leaders and parents. Beliefs were attained using a modified personal construct interview and analyses of participant stories. Findings highlight a close association between the leadership/management style of the principal whom participants would like to beand mothers, and the interpersonal behaviour of fathers and the principal whom participants would not like to be. The authors argue that reforms are needed in the course design of teacher education, teacher induction and programmes of professional development for principals. These reforms must address the influence personal history has on an individual's thinking about teaching, interpersonal communication and leadership - a reform process that begins with teacher educators and principals reframing their beliefs and associated practices.
[Copyright of Educational Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0013188011040931]

This study is part of a cross-cultural investigation that was initiated in Sweden followed by studies in Australia and Singapore. This paper shows how a phenomenographic approach may be used to reveal the qualitatively different ways in which 40 students in Hong Kong primary and secondary schools experience and understand the phenomenon of graphic representations of quantitative data. An outcome space depicting four variations of the children's understanding are revealed.
[Copyright of Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0031383990430102]

The Hong Kong Classroom Environment Scale (HKCES) is a new instrument designed to assess upper primary and junior secondary school students' perceptions of actual and preferred classroom environment. The development of the scale involved 2 stages of study. In the 1st stage of study, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses clearly identified 4 dimensions of classroom environment: teacher involvement, teacher support, order and student involvement and collaborativeness. In the 2nd stage of study, the instrument was administered to a new sample of about 6,000 students from 13 primary schools and 5 secondary schools for cross-validation.
[Copyright of Educational Research & Evaluation is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/edre.9.4.317.17813 ]

After considering colonialism and the transition of Hong Kong, this article explores the state of curriculum management now at the micro- level, through a case study of two secondary schools, It provides a picture of the tensions, compromises and evolution of the educational system.
[Copyright of Curriculum Studies is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14681369800200024 ]

Relatively little is known about how and by whom curriculum leadership and management occur inside secondary schools, especially in Asian contexts. This article aims to analyse curriculum decision-making in two academically effective secondary schools in Hong Kong. It employs qualitative methods to capture the contributions made by various school personnel, and in particular the principals, to curriculum leadership and management. Data for the two schools show that whilst neither of the principals plays a significant role in curriculum monitoring and innovation, the vice-principal (male), the senior teachers and teachers in one school were perceived to place more emphasis on curriculum monitoring and innovation than their counterparts in the other school. Whilst teachers in both schools shared high expectations for students' academic achievement, one subtle difference between them related to the pursuit of academic excellence. In one school, students did not exert much pressure on their teachers whereas in the other school, teachers felt they had to fulfil students' demands for good lesson preparation and take account of students' opinions of their teaching.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632439968970]