The present study is an analysis of curriculum-related papers in primary education published by the education departments of New South Wales, Australia, and Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. The aim is to unravel and contrast the ideological positions adopted by the two communities in their approaches to first language education so that common-sense beliefs and practices may be challenged. Analysis shows that the Australian school discourse system exhibits characteristics of progressivism, utilitarianism and reconstructionism whereas the Chinese system in Hong Kong displays combined elements of European classical humanism and Confucianism. It appears that the Australian system prefers flexibility, free choice, individual autonomy, student-centredness, and exploratory spirit, whereas the latter inclines towards uniformity, orderliness, harmony, language-centredness and discipline. The Australian emphasis in language education is social, functional and communicative, while the Chinese focus is on formal correctness and integration of language, morality and aesthetics. These different ideological inclinations are suggestive of similar orientations at the societal level and affect the discourse practices at the situational level of the classroom.
[Copyright of Language and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500780208666832]

This study examines teacher receptivity to the curriculum change embodied in the new environmental education guidelines in Hong Kong. A questionnaire survey, based on a 'receptivity to change' instrument, was distributed and case studies conducted. The analyses revealed that such variables as the perceived non-monetary cost-benefit of implementing the guidelines, perceived practicality, perceived school and other support, and issues of concern were predictors for teachers' behavioural intentions towards promoting environmental education. The qualitative part of the research also found that, in addition to the factor of perceived non-monetary costbenefit, the dominance of organizational factors may work to shape teachers' receptivity to environmental education.
[Copyright of Journal of Curriculum Studies is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/002202700182871]

Traditional studies of teacher commitment often ignore the effect of interactions between personal characteristics and school environment and the implications of their findings are inevitably limited. Responding to this research gap, the present study aims to investigate the contingency relationship of school organizational health to teacher commitment with multi-level statistical analysis. The study was a survey involving 20 aided primary schools and 423 teachers in Hong Kong. The findings suggest that three school organizational health factors such as morale, consideration and institutional integrity are related to teacher commitment through interactions with the teacher personal characteristics such as position, marital status, and length of service in the school. The result supports that the relationship between school organizational health and teacher commitment is contingent upon teacher characteristics. The interesting findings can provide implications for school improvement and future research.
[Copyright of Educational Research & Evaluation is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/edre.5.3.249.3883]

A lack of analysis and research into primary education in general, and primary school leadership in particular, has left primary practitioners exposed like never before to the vagaries of policy-makers and unpredictable contextual pressures. The purpose of this article is to initiate discussion on the state of primary school leadership in Hong Kong since 2000. It attempts to explore some of the major reforms and other contextual factors impacting primary school leaders and comment on the challenges which accompany these. It further proposes that when initiatives confront the existing structural and cultural make up of primary schools they are blocked by what we call the bottleneck effect. The article also attempts to explain and illustrate this effect and what it means for primary school principals. It is hoped that the analysis serves to highlight interest in primary school leadership in Hong Kong and stimulate research in the area locally and internationally.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632430802499994]

Teacher attitudes and practices are considered as essential in fostering parental involvement in school education. In Hong Kong, amongst possible types of home–school links, teacher–parent communication about children's learning has been agreed to be the primary concern of both schools and parents. This paper reports a test of a psychological model of teacher–parent communication in Hong Kong primary schools. The model has taken into account the theory of planned behavior, self-efficacy theory, expectancy theory and theories of family–school relations. Scales for measuring the criterion and predictor variables have been developed. Variables that associated with teacher communication intention and practices were identified and path analyses linking the variables in a conceptual model were conducted. Results show that teacher commitment and teacher efficacy in working with parents have significant predictive power for teacher intention. Teacher intention, together with teacher commitment, has predictive power for teacher's time spent in communicating with parents. Relationships between individual teacher beliefs and the criterion variables are also described and discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Studies is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03055690050022661]