It is a cliché that education reform without teachers' contribution would be futile. It is also true that in this fast changing world without change in teachers' fundamental belief and practices the outcome would also be the same. Having gone through eight years of educational reform in Hong Kong, there is a common belief that isolation strategy has disappeared. By this it means so long as one commits oneself to the business of education, a collaborative way of practices both vertically between leaders and the frontline teachers and horizontally among colleagues is deemed to be a culture within which one has to be exposed to influences from all sides. Whether such a condition is taken as a threat to or a resource for professional development depends not only on an individual’s perception and competence but also the kind of condition within which its counterparts have created. It is within this context that this paper attempts to propose a model for organizational development as a whole and teacher's professional growth in particular in light of jazz as a metaphor. The author will explain how this model sheds light on the possibility of how diversity and unity could work together in the service of nurturing excellence and creativity with ethical leadership as the foundation.

To argue against the current discourse on the language policy of Hong Kong, which has mainly focused on economic rationalism, a more holistic view with the educational value of language with respect to one’s civic duty in light of dialogic constructivism will be suggested. It proposes that the quality of a language as resources has to have something to do with the formation of one’s self and life history, the identification of a collectivity where one’s identity is appropriated, and the proliferation of a potential dialogic environment where creativity emerges in contrast to the current notion of a technical mentality of language use which leads to a closure of meaning making in our language policy. And it is towards such quality, which is based on the kind of value where identity, community, and the potential of a hermeneutic situation play fair that enhances understanding, this paper is driving.
[Copyright © 2006 The Chinese University Press.]

'Liberal Studies' has been fervently promoted as an initiative aiming at redeeming the quality of education in Hong Kong for the past year. This paper is the result of a critical analysis of its discursive formation process and particularly explores how teachers' role has been defined. An extensive study based on government documents and media both printed and electronic will be conducted and analyzed. It is observed as revealed by the current discourse that the role of teachers has been shaped within a positivist paradigm, which conceptualizes knowledge construction and the notion of teaching and learning within an input-process-output model. Consequently, teachers only serve to implement what has been passed down, a role likening to a technician meant not for provoking thought. It is argued that the capacity of leading thought provoking dialogue, which a technician is by nature not able to accomplish, is the fundamental prerequisite for teachers who are entrusted to teach the subject of 'Liberal Studies'. This paper argues that the notion of 'Liberal Studies' has to be re-conceptualized within the post-positivist paradigm which considers knowledge as something that emerges inter-subjectively. It entails that the encounter between teachers and students plays a pivotal role in co-constructing the world. Knowledge constructed in such a way implies the importance of what Gadamer has coined the 'fusion of horizons', based on which Mikhail Bakhtin's and Martin Buber's dialogism will be used under the umbrella term 'dialogic hermeneutics' to assert that the key of cultivating the spirit of 'liberal studies' in our students is an ethical rather than a technical issue. In short, in response to the positivist's deficiency in shedding light on how 'Liberal Studies' should be oriented, a post-positivist way of thinking is proposed and is regarded more illuminating in terms of its emphasis on divergent thinking, which celebrates dialogue - the breeding ground for liberal inquiry