This chapter considers the cutting-edge of educational leadership in Asia, which people view as encompassing leadership research, policy, and practice. It uses the concept of geography, literally and metaphorically, to examine the terrain in which the three dimensions of educational leadership are enacted. To do this, the chapter first defines the broader Asian region to demonstrate its complexity and diversity. Then, it delineates the scope of the research knowledge base, the physical terrain, on educational leadership in Asia, focusing on the diverse Confucian heritage societies of East Asia, which tend to have newly emerging research capacities. The chapter uses the research knowledge base to examine the dimensions of policy and practice by considering the political influence on educational leadership and then on the cultural contexts. For this portion of the analysis, it focuses on five Confucian-heritage societies: mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Vietnam.

Since 2000, all schools in the public sector in Hong Kong have implemented school-based management. However, it is only recently that the government has passed a new bill to enforce the setting up of a mandated structure of the school-based council in schools. Many school sponsoring bodies are worried about a possible diminution of their control as a result of the new management committee structure. At individual school level, the readiness of school principals, teachers and parents seems to be the core of the question. Principals’ transformational and curriculum leadership in local schools seems to be weak. As a result, policy-makers attempt to work out ways to enhance the implementation of school-based management by providing training for school managers, promoting home–school relations and encouraging the professional development for principals. In addition, there is a need to enhance leadership development for supervisors and middle managers. Future challenges to schools include carrying out a smooth transformation of the present school management structure to the required incorporated management committees, effective implementation of school-based management under the new bill and quality training for other stakeholders.
[Copyright © Springer 2005.]

Given that the concept of community college in Hong Kong has only been introduced 10 years ago, with the new “3-3-4” education structural reform, the leadership in community college will become more challenging. In this paper, the aim is to provide a personal philosophy on how educational leaders should lead in community college settings given the highly diverse student backgrounds. The perspective of why we, as educational leaders, should reflect, reconstruct, and reengineer on community college leadership will be discussed. We will give insights on how different it is between leading in university and in community college, particularly in Hong Kong. Common issues and difficulties encountered by top managements, supporting staff, teachers, and students are identified and explained. The importance of relationship and dialogues in our context of building a true community is presented. The paper will conclude with the notion of how an authentic leader should be in leading community college in Hong Kong. It is expected that the direction of this personal philosophy will have a major impact in the both local and global leadership in education.

This study examined teaching efficacy for inclusive practice in a pre-post matched-sample of 737 teachers in Hong Kong taking a basic university-level course in inclusive education. The results demonstrate that regardless of demographic variables such a course is effective in improving teacher efficacy for inclusive practice, with female teachers making larger gains in the area of managing behaviour when compared to their male counterparts. Further, increased knowledge of legislation and policy, and a reduction in concerns about inclusive teaching were found to be the major predictors of improved teaching efficacy for inclusive practice.
[Copyright of International Journal of Inclusive Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2013.819941]