Curriculum implementation as both an educational practice and a policy conundrum has been the focus of academic research since the 1970s. A new perspective is taken in this article by borrowing from the literature on policy implementation in multilevel systems of government. The concepts of 'hard' and 'soft' policy are used to show that policy-makers choose from a range of strategies and it is these choices rather than teacher attitudes that may account for the level of implementation of a policy. A case study of curriculum implementation in Hong Kong is used to show how 'hard' and 'soft' policy can be identified in practice.
[Copyright of London Review of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14748460.2011.550433]

The twin policy domains of accountability and autonomy have featured in recent education reforms in many countries, signalling new relationships between governments and educational institutions. Despite different national and localised contexts, a number of common 'global' trends have been identified. However, simultaneously context-specific differences are also evident. For us, the concept of 'globalisation', when it implies policy homogenisation, is too blunt an instrument to critically analyse these major reforms. We would argue that there are still too few studies on globalisation processes grounded in detailed examinations of particular historical times and geographical spaces. Our research is located within the tensions between global commonalities and localised differences.
This paper reports research on changing accountability and autonomy in higher education in three 'Asian' countries. Empirical data has been collected in the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong and Singapore in an attempt to begin to redress a 'Western' hegemony in such research. Within each national context two different types of universities became case study sites for the analysis of both commonalities and differences in accountability and autonomy policies and practices. The current paper focuses in particular on the conceptual and methodological framings of the research and presents some preliminary findings.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

This study investigated how a set of newly developed indicators of early learning and teaching by the government, which was based on western ideology of child learning, was implemented in a Chinese context like Hong Kong. Twelve early childhood settings of 5747 children and 284 staff volunteered to implement the indicators within two years and the processes were observed and analysed. A multi-method, multi-source data collection strategy was used to document the self-evaluation and improvement process. All the participating settings went through the five stages of the evaluation cycle: understanding the Performance Indicators, assessing learning and teaching, formulating an action plan for improvement, implementing the action plan, and reflection. The results indicated that: (1) implementing a quality assurance cycle took time, resources and commitment; (2) the implementation helped to enhance practitioners' professionalism; and (3) teacher professionalism was the key to the success of this quality assurance mechanism. The socio-contextual factors and the educational implications of these findings are discussed.
[Copyright of International Journal of Early Years Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669760701516942]

This article traces the processes for encouraging and/or ensuring the accountability of teachers in Hong Kong. It is argued that, if examined historically, the nature of teacher accountability has been determined by the government, whose approach has been ambivalent and paradoxical. Up until the mid-1980s, through inertia and non-decisions, the low level of professionalization of teaching was reinforced. Subsequently, from the late 1980s onwards, the government resisted and diluted attempts by the professional community to regulate itself. Most recently it has sought to introduce systems to allow the government to scrutinize teachers in an ostensible attempt to promote the level of teacher professionalism, whilst at the same time attempted to maintain the low status of the main institution dedicated to teacher education. These are analysed in terms of the differences between professionalism and professionalization, the government's own legitimacy and the changing political context.
[Copyright of Research Papers in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267152032000177007]

Governments around the world have adopted school self-evaluation as an essential corollary to the local management of schools. Typically this has been accompanied by prescribed frameworks, indicators and scoring systems, tending to promote a form of ritual self-inspection rather than an ongoing and dynamic process of self-evaluation. It is argued that these have derived more from an accountability imperative than an improvement motive and as such have tended to disempower rather than empower schools. This article examines the inherent tensions between external accountability and internally driven school improvement. The example of Hong Kong's new relationship with schools is used to illustrate how those issues play out in the implementation of large-scale reform, drawing parallels and contrasts with Ofsted's New Relationship with Schools in England. The responsiveness of Hong Kong's Education Development Bureau to evidence from independent research carries lessons for other countries in which such evidence has been ignored or marginalised by policy-makers. It is, in many respects, an exemplary case study of change management.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632430802292332]