This study tested how collaboration, as a component of school capacity and a potential mediator, affect the relationship between principal leadership and teacher professional learning in Hong Kong primary schools. To investigate teacher perceptions of principal leadership and school capacity, two questionnaires were combined to use. The online survey was administered with a sample of 970 teachers from 32 primary schools. The orthodox regression based dour-step causal approach (Baron & Kenny, 1986) integrated with the bootstrapping method, was adopted for mediating analysis, with the composite score of principal leadership as the predictor. Upon the affirmation of the presence of the mediating effects, significance and strength were further assessed. This study stepped further to test the overall effect of the seven core areas of principal leadership, as independent predictors, on teacher professional leaning via the possible mediating effects of collaboration. The findings affirmed that, collaboration did play a mediating role between the relationship of principal leadership and teacher professional learning in Hong Kong primary schools.

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.
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This study is an extension of a previous methodologically exploratory study which established several multilevel value-added models to identify how different student and school factors influenced student English reading attainment in the nested school structure. The present study moved a step further to compare effectiveness of the models and determined the one most efficient at estimating school effects on adding value to their students' English reading ability from Secondary 1 to Secondary 6. Effectiveness of the most parsimonious model at presenting and interpreting the substantive findings was further tested using the same set of data. The data was collected from 3,993 students of 66 Hong Kong secondary schools in 2006. Students' English ability was tested at Form 1 intake and tested again at Form 6. The background information, such as student and school demographic and contextual factual data, was also collected. Partialing out influence from student and school level background factors, the relative progress made by students from different schools was compared. Specific findings on value-added effects of the schools are plotted thus providing distinctive graphic information. The findings will provide some insightful indications to the authorities and educational practitioners for student improvement and school effectiveness.

In the cognitive-psychological process in second language (L2) learning, explicit and implicit knowledge acquisition is always related to automatic and effortful processing. Based on the interlanguage hypothesis and error analysis, this study reviews learning experience of four English learners from China who currently live in Hong Kong. A focus group interview was organized with a convenience sample of four participants whose English proficiency levels distinctively vary. Content analysis was conducted on the verbatim transcripts, and reveals the nature of the participants’ second language input, the types of learning strategies they have employed, the state of their interlanguages, and the types of errors they make. In addition, a piece of written work was analysed to identify errors the participants made. Attempting to advance into the terrain of second language acquisition (SLA) theories, this study answers some specific questions with self-reported information and theoretical exploration. Despite little ground for scientific generalization considering the nature of this multiple case study, it displays to the readers some theoretical insights in terms of English as a Second Language (ESL) Chinese learners studying in Hong Kong. The recommendation is that, instruments like the grammaticality judgement task be employed to catch more information about the nature of learners’ interlanguages. Combined with corpus analysis and computer-aided error analysis, it will add to the body of SLA literature more insightful findings.

This study examines the impact of principal leadership practices on student academic outcomes in four Hong Kong primary schools. Given the increased accountability mechanisms confronting schools in Hong Kong, this study is based on the assumption that principal practices that respond directly to accountability policy or link to human resources development will be most influential. This does not necessarily contradict the assumption that principal leadership practices are generic and contextualised. This study will adopt a case study design. The data will be collected from 4 local schools with varied strategies, including online student math tests, and teacher questionnaire surveys. The student math test items will be selected from item banks of standardised tests. The questionnaires will be adapted from Walker and Ko’s (2011) and Leithwood and Jantzi’ s (2000) scales respectively, each covering extensively 7 dimensions with the number of items reduced to 33. The test scores will be aggregated and standardised, and used as student academic outcomes. The two questionnaires will be combined and used for the teacher survey. They will attempt to measure teachers’ perceptions of principal leadership practices and conditions in the schools. The individual responses of the participants will be aggregated to the person level and school level, and then subjected to descriptive, comparative, and inferential statistical analyses. Factors from both principal leadership practices and school conditions that synergistically contribute to student achievement will be indentified and verified, and effects specified. Given the limited number of schools in the sample, findings at the teacher and student levels will be triangulated and discussed as rich descriptions of cases. It is hoped that it will inform practitioners and researchers the interrelatedness between principal leadership practices, school conditions, and student achievement. The findings may also generate some indicative findings

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.