In the era of globalisation, competition has also become global. In higher education, countries worldwide are attaching increasing importance to international ranking exercises and subscribing to the 'world-class universities' paradigm, complemented by various strategies to benchmark with leading universities in order to enhance the global competitiveness of their universities. This is particularly so in Asia as it emerges as the centre of fast-growing economies of the world. Against this wider global policy backdrop, this article reviews major policies introduced and strategies employed by the government and universities/higher education institutions of Hong Kong in the quest for world-class status. It critically examines the 'politics of competition' among institutions for both state and non-state resources, in recruiting and retaining global talent, and in internationalising their curricula in order to achieve their global aspirations. It also explores the intra-institutional 'politics' within institutions involving tensions between teaching and research, and among different discipline areas.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2011.564998]

This paper views seeking the optimal balance between state strengths and the scope of state functions for 'good governance' as the formation of a homogenization-heterogenization matrix of policy initiatives in different social settings. Homogenization refers to a global tendency for institutional changes and governance framework to change state capacity, while heterogenization refers to the local adaptation of these global transformations. The paper attempts to take educational decentralization as an example of policy initiatives to assess and analyse the significance of the two opposite poses in four East Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs) (Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan). The paper's position is that it may be useful to see these four NIEs as making up two clusters. It sees political democratic transitions in Korea and Taiwan as important local factors affecting the developments of educational decentralization in the two societies, while reforms in Hong Kong and Singapore seem to be more consequences of managerial and market values. However, the NIEs face the question of how to maintain sufficient 'stateness' in the decentralization process. To conclude, the paper considers that achieving the balance of 'stateness' is the key to success in state-building.
[Copyright of Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057920903156888]

A Chinese translation of the Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS), a quantitative instrument employed mainly in Western higher education contexts for collecting students' feedback on their learning patterns (in the form of students' processing strategies, regulation strategies, learning orientations and conceptions of learning), was adapted and validated for application in the new response-context of Hong Kong post-secondary education via a large student sample. The reliabilities of the adapted ILS scales, as reflected by Cronbach's coefficient alphas, were found to be generally satisfactory. From an exploratory factor analysis conducted on the adapted ILS scales, four factors were identified that resemble the relevant features of the factor structure reported in a study in an Indonesian response-context. Overall, the present study provides qualified support for the reliability and validity of the adapted ILS for application in the context of Hong Kong post-secondary education.
[Copyright of Quality in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13538322.2010.506717]

The year 2008 marked the 11th anniversary of Hong Kong's return from the UK to the People's Republic of China. In this decade, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government has repeatedly emphasised the importance of the development of national identity and patriotism in school education, and has at the same time introduced diverse cultural values into the school curriculum. This article explores the dynamics and complexity of the relationships between the state, globalisation and nationalism in Hong Kong that are re-shaping music education in response to contemporary socio-political changes. It argues that Hong Kong school music education has made a gradual cultural shift towards globalism and nationalism, and away from the Westernism that has dominated Hong Kong music education since before the change of sovereignty on 1 July 1997. The article concludes with a discussion of how music education might juggle two pairs of relationships in the curriculum: between global and national cultures; and between the education of cultural values and nationalism in Chinese music. There is pressure to rethink teacher education in terms of the need to be aware of the socio-political environment in which it operates, and within which it makes music education socially relevant.
[Copyright of Music Education Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14613800903390741]