Challenges to equal educational opportunities for all students still exist in many places across different societies in times of increasingly diverse student populations in schools. Not only students with different learning abilities but also those from different social, cultural and ethnic backgrounds have diverse learning needs. We argue that inclusive education should take a broader perspective regarding students of difference and/or difficulty,while principals play out important leadership roles for equal educational opportunity in schools. This paper aims to examine two principal leadership approaches to practices for the diversity of student populations. By conducting a cross-case study, the principals cultivated an inclusive and multicultural school environment for the students. The findings show that the principals turned their schools around by adopting similar and different leadership practices. Hence, they can transform the schools towards more inclusion for students of differences and difficulties. 隨著學校學生的差異性不斷擴大,在不同地方為所有學生提供平等教育機會仍然面對各樣挑戰。主要除了學習能力的差異,亦可能因來自不同社會、文化及種族背景,學生的學習需要變得更複雜。我們認為校長在平等教育機會中擔任重要的領導角色,而融合教育應以更全面的觀點去應對學生的學習差異與困難。這篇文章以跨個案研究分析兩位校長在面對學生複雜和差異的學習需要時的領導方式,為學生的學習提供一個共融及多元文化的校園環境。研究結果顯示兩位校長實踐相似但不相同的領導方式促使學校轉型,他們帶領學校發展成為更能接納學生差異與困難的共融校園。
[Copyright of Hong Kong Journal of Special Education is the property of Special Education Society of Hong Kong Ltd.. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
https://sites.google.com/a/seshk.org.hk/seshk-org-hk/c_publication]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how principals' leadership approaches to teacher professional development arise from school banding and may impact upon teacher professional capital and student achievement. Design/methodology/approach: The case study is situated within the context of school-based management, comprising reflective accounts of nine school principals selected by stratified sampling from a sample of 56 Hong Kong schools to represent Bands One, Two, and Three schools. The reflective accounts were triangulated with observations of teachers and analysis of school websites. Findings: First, under school-based management, principals remain obliged to recognize the power of state-defined examinations in determining the schools' future priorities. Second, the exercise of school autonomy in response to this obligation varies, depending upon the competitive advantage schools have in the school banding system. Ideally, effective school-based management is dependent upon the principal's capacity to facilitate good instructional practices. However, principals need to adjust their leadership practices to school contextual demands. Third, adaptations to contexts result in the varied developments of teacher capacities in schools, corresponding with the types of principal leadership adopted. Originality/value: While statistical studies have identified attributes of exemplary principal leadership, few studies have examined the qualitative reasons for the exemplification of these attributes, and the influence of the school context in shaping these attributes. Departing from assumptions that leadership attributes are intrinsic to individuals, this paper considers how principals contextualize leadership in teacher professional development to the schools' student academic achievement.
[Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited.]

The roles of principal leadership in change management have long been documented. The key concern to examine in this study was the dilemmas and measures confronting principals’ when they led changes to instigate inclusive education in Hong Kong. Thus, this paper aims to report sources of dilemmas and how principals tackled them in the change process. Ten principals of schools recognized for effective inclusive education practices were interviewed in a qualitative study. Findings suggested that the process of leading change was very complex. Two dilemmas were identified: (a) principals’ struggles between benefits and issues of participating in inclusive education and (b) autocratic initial decisions versus need for staff involvement. The second dilemma stemmed from not involving key staff while the implementation required their active participation. Thus, the existing organizational culture and personnel capacities became obstacles required for the success of inclusive education. The leadership measures to tackle the obstacles began by building a shared vision which in turn required both transactional and transformational leadership activities in order to increase teacher commitment to reforms. This study has contributed to change leadership theories in affirming the need to include socio-political contexts in examining leadership decisions toward school reforms.
[Copyright © 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.]

This study attempted to identify communication as a human relational 'path' through which principal leadership influenced teacher professional learning. The data was collected from a sample of 970 teachers from 32 Hong Kong primary schools. Online survey was administered, with two questionnaires to measure teacher perceptions of principal leadership and school capacity. Baron and Kenny' s (1986) four-step causal process for mediation analysis was employed and integrated with bootstrapping method. Further significance of the mediating effects of communication was tested, and the sizes for both the direct and indirect effects in the relationship were made explicit. The findings affirmed the role of communication as a mediator in the relationship between principal leadership and teacher learning.
[Copyright © 2016 Rowman & Littlefield.]

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.

This study focused on the collaborative structure-building behavior of school principals and examined how such behavior affects teacher empowerment. More important, it tested the mediating effects of participative management and learning culture. By collecting nested data from 104 schools in Hong Kong and adopting multilevel structural equation modeling, we found that teachers' sense of autonomy and self-efficacy were correlated at the individual level but were independent at the school level. The effect of building collaborative structures on teachers' self-efficacy was mediated by both participative management and learning culture, whereas the effect on autonomy was mediated by participative management only. The findings contribute to the literature in at least 2 ways. First, the inclusion of both principal leadership and school-level factors provides more refined predications of teacher empowerment. Second, the testing of the theory-grounded hypotheses in an Asian society verifies the validity of certain cultural assertions about this region.
[Copyright of School Effectiveness and School Improvement is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2014.888086]

This article aims to identify leadership roles for quality in early childhood programmes in the local settings of a sample of Hong Kong preschools. Two schools were selected for the study, both of which were rated as excellent in the quality assurance inspections of a local education authority. Effective leadership was explored from the multiple perspectives of various school stakeholders, including school governors, principals, teachers, members of support staff and parents. The qualitative interviews were used for data collection. The interview data indicated that the teachers, members of support staff and parents quite often viewed themselves as followers and were dependent on a single leader, the head. As perceived by the school stakeholders, the principals tended to take up three major roles: role model, school manager and mentor for curriculum and pedagogy. Characteristics of the associated patterns of the three leadership roles were similar to those of moral, managerial and instructional leadership documented in the Western literature. The implications of the study for promoting moral leadership and developing teacher leadership are discussed.
[Copyright of International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603120903387561]