This article unpacks how neoliberal discourse functions as a dominant but problematic system of reasoning that changes and shifts the ways in which we come to think about early childhood education and care. A post-structuralist lens is deployed to understand the production of fears and hopes under the looming shadows of contemporary education reforms and social policies. Highlighting Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea as three cases from East Asian cultures, this article seeks to elucidate how a similar neoliberal economic and political imaginary is at work to (re)construct East Asian children as human capital for the alchemy of productive citizens in the 21st century.
[Copyright of Policy Futures in Education is the property of Symposium Journals.]

The mandatory use of mother tongue education in Hong Kong after 1997 met strong objections from the local community. While the government put forward a comprehensive educational agenda to justify the implementation of the policy, this paper raises the question of whether the change in language policy was mainly driven by an educational agenda, or whether there were other underlying agendas. To address the question, the history of the medium of instruction in Hong Kong is reviewed, and the experience of three decolonised Asian countries, Malaysia, Singapore and India, is discussed. The paper suggests that the political agenda has always played an important role in language policy formulation and implementation. In view of the important role that language plays in nation building and social reconstruction, it is inevitable that Chinese medium instruction will become more and more important. How the government will balance the need to strengthen the national identity of Hong Kong people and the need to maintain the international out look and economic development of Hong Kong will have a major impact on there view of the new medium of instruction policy in 2001.
[Copyright of Language, Culture and Curriculum is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908319908666578]

Since Hong Kong's sovereignty reverted to China in 1997, the university Adult and Continuing Education (ACE) sector has faced an array of unprecedented challenges created mainly through government policy initiatives, an associated and rapid increase in the demand for continuing education, and dramatic changes in the nature of that demand. This paper reports the outcomes of a qualitative study that examined how the sector responded to these challenges. It identifies and describes a triangle of inter-related strategies of response, namely 'building organisational strength', 'programme planning and development' and 'quality assurance'.
[Copyright of Research in Post-Compulsory Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13596740600768943]

As part of the reform of the overall education system in Hong Kong, the government set a target in October 2000 of raising the percentage of senior secondary school graduates who could receive higher education from the current 30% to 60% within a period of ten years. Prior to this announcement, however, the School of Professional and Continuing Education of The University of Hong Kong (or HKU SPACE for short) had already taken the lead by establishing the first Community College in March 2000. The Associate Degree programme of the College offered an alternative route to higher education to many aspiring young people. The broad-based curriculum with its equal emphasis on science and humanities (as well as solid generic skills) is a new attempt to produce people that can meet the challenges of the knowledge society. The first intake of 740 students in 2000 was followed by a second intake of more than a thousand in 2001. This paper examines the experience gained during the first two years of this new development, and explores the role of community colleges in general in the education reform movement and human resources development strategy of Hong Kong.
[Copyright of International Journal of Lifelong Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0260137032000055312]

This article explores the changing educational landscape in Hong Kong prior to and following its transition to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. It does this through an analysis of the rise and fall of a specific curriculum reform, the Target Oriented Curriculum (TOC), which straddled the political reunification. The article draws on a range of published research and evaluation projects and the analysis focusses on the four key elements of public policy, namely the origins, the nature, the policy actions used and its impact on practice.
[Copyright of Journal of Education Policy is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02680930110100036]