This article reports the results of a case study involving two ethnic Chinese students, one from Malaysia and one from Indonesia, who chose to pursue higher education in Hong Kong. By placing the students at the centre of an investigation of the social, political, economic and educational contexts of their home countries and host territory, the study sought to gain a holistic understanding of cross-border mobility. The findings suggested that the students’ personal backgrounds and dispositions mediated the external push-pull factors involved in their decisions. The data showed that the two students’ cross-border mobility allowed them to redefine their ethnic identities and create global academic and professional identities. The implications of the purposes of cross-border mobility and methods for examining student mobility are discussed.
[Copyright © 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.]

In a highly interdependent globalize world, internationalization of higher education becomes increasingly important in preparing future leaders and citizens to address global issues and challenges like shaping sustainable development, international solidarity and global peace. In recent times, commercial and financial interests have become the over-riding concern in the internationalization process in universities in different parts of the world (Knight, 2006) and the commitment to the development of human flourishing in terms of just and caring societies have gradually been displaced. This paper presents a study of internationalization strategies in higher education institutions in Hong Kong’s aspiring development into a regional education hub. The study examines how to attract students from three overseas markets, namely India, Indonesia and Malaysia, to pursue higher education in Hong Kong. The study found that the strategies of internationalization at both system and institutional levels attempted to address problems generated from the barriers of exporting higher education and build on the attractions of studying in Hong Kong’s higher education. While these strategies helps serve the end of attracting overseas students, the authors caution the importance of going beyond recruiting overseas students and put forward a more “humanized” way of looking at internationalization to counteract the overriding economic-driven globalization.

This paper reports a study on the leadership capacities of a group of 185 aspiring principals. A questionnaire consisting of 24 questions was constructed to examine the levels of leadership capacities of these aspirants. The findings indicate that the aspirants seemed to feel more competent in the leadership area of 'teacher professional growth and development' than they did with regard to 'quality assurance and accountability', 'learning, teaching and curriculum', 'strategic direction and policy environment', 'external communication and connection to the outside world', and finally 'staff and resources management'.
[Copyright © Elsevier Ltd].

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on an exploratory study regarding the present situation of middle managers in schools; their professional development needs; and requirements of middle leaders for quality school management so that contents of existing professional development programmes could be improved to meet the needs of middle leaders of primary school education. Design/methodology/approach: Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper reports on a study of the training needs of middle leaders in primary schools in which their present situation, their needs for professional development and requirements for quality school management and leadership are explored. The study adopted survey questionnaires as the main method of data collection. To supplement quantitative data with regard to the professional development needs, six middle managers were purposefully selected for semi-structured interviews. Findings: The findings suggest that there are insufficient training opportunities for middle leaders in primary schools and that there is a strong demand for including the notions of interpersonal skills, crisis management, resources management and understanding of education ordinances in the professional development curriculum for middle leaders. The study recommends that training programmes should exert focus on meeting the specific needs of middle leaders and the content and approach be multi-dimensional. Originality/value: In spite of the small scale of the survey study, the data collected from individual in-depth interviews can provide the investigators with supplementary information on their professional development needs which also serves the purpose of triangulation. The finding can also be a very constructive reference for course providers who wish to re-engineer and improve the quality of professional development programmes for middle leaders. This may help arouse their interests and enhance their learning motivation.
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In Hong Kong, many school principals have outsourced their extra-curricular activities to reduce the workload of teachers and provide more activity options for students. This article reports on a qualitative study aimed at examining the views of a group of 16 teaching professionals from ten primary schools in Hong Kong on the effectiveness of, as well as the major concerns about, outsourcing extra-curricular activities. The findings indicate that three themes emerged from the data regarding the effectiveness of outsourcing extracurricular activities to external organisations: (1) reducing teachers' workload and cost saving; (2) enhancing the expertise of teachers; and (3) catering for the needs of both parents and students. On the other hand, the major concerns about outsourcing activities were: (1) increasing administrative duties; (2) quality of the activities; (3) linking activities to school curricula; and (4) student discipline. It is recommended that school, government and parent representatives be involved in the monitoring of delivering outsourcing activities.
[Copyright © 2015 Education Pub.]

This book reviews and analyses the issues and policies of internationalization and exportation of higher education and investigates the strategies and models of education hub development in the context of globalization, with Hong Kong in the Asia-Pacific region as a case study. It examines the close relationship between education hubs and higher education, as well as the strategic functions of an education hub in the future development of a society in a competitive global environment. It also analyses the major strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of Hong Kong’s higher education in relation to its potential for exporting higher education to Asian markets. In particular, it reviews the current state of higher education services offered by Hong Kong in three target markets and their segmentation and proposes the most appropriate market entry strategies for education service providers.
[Copyright © 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.]

In the era of colonial rule, citizenship education was characterized by depoliticization in which the British government did not allow teachers to do any form of political teaching in schools before the 1990s and there was a lack of any democratic values and critical thinking skills in the content of civic education or social studies curriculum. After the sovereignty was returned to China in 1997, Civic Education in Hong Kong has still been criticized as being apolitical in nature. The intention of developing students with the ideology of participatory democracy and active citizens has been minimised while patriotic and national education has been put in top priority in the curriculum reform since 2001. Interestingly, a few secondary students took initiatives to participate in the mass demonstrations on 1st July and in the candle nights of memorizing the victims in the Tiananmen Square Incident on 4th June every year. The aim of this article is to report a study of how some young people have become active and participatory citizens in an apolitical educational context of Hong Kong. The interpretive methodological approach for collecting and analyzing data was employed in this qualitative study. Based on data collected from focus group and individual interviews with secondary school students and civic education teachers respectively, this article explores how students are socialized to be active and participatory citizens. The results show that students experience primary socialization in schools where civic education teachers having critical mindsets and deep beliefs in pursuing social justice will help catalyze their political socialization process during which the students gradually develop within themselves the passion of civic consciousness and the competence of civic courage. These are the necessary qualities that help facilitate youngsters to participate in social services, social and political gatherings and demonstrations. It is also found that other secondary