A quasi-experimental research study is reported in this paper. Its aim was to evaluate the effects of different types of pedagogy on the cultivation of students' critical thinking dispositions. One hundred and forty Secondary 4 students (i.e. tenth-grade students at 15–17 years of age) from two Hong Kong schools joined a teaching intervention in which they learnt strategies of argumentation through an established critical thinking framework (i.e. Kuhn's model The Skills of Argument, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991]). Analysis revealed collaborative group work to exert positive impacts on students' development of critical thinking when used in conjunction with explicit instruction in reasoning and evidence-based justifications during the intervention. The research results also showed the students who received teacher guidance to have engaged more interactively in joint learning tasks, thereby illustrating the important role of the teacher in facilitating group discussions.
[Copyright of Thinking Skills and Creativity is the property of Pergamon Press.]

The purpose of the study is to examine Hong Kong teachers' perceptions of distributed leadership. Data were collected from six primary schools with a total of 155 teachers responding to a self-developed survey. Descriptive, reliability, and MANOVA data analyses were done with the application of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) programme. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), 14 components were identified, including: (1) "school organisation," (2) "school vision," (3) "school culture," (4) "instructional planning," (5) "improvement of learning and teaching," (6) "teacher leadership," (7) "principal leadership," (8) "output effectiveness," (9) "quality effectiveness," (10) "change effectiveness," (11) "organisation and planning effectiveness," (12) "interpersonal relationship effectiveness," (13) "value effectiveness," and (14) "overall effectiveness." Inter-correlations were found among the identified components. Significant differences were found between teachers with different roles with the highest involvement and dimensions of school organisation, teacher leadership and interpersonal relationship effectiveness. Meanwhile, significant differences were revealed between teachers' roles in the highest positions and dimensions of improvement of learning and teaching, as well as principal leadership. Such findings suggest that teachers' perceptions of distributed leadership were related to teachers' roles, including delegated responsibilities and degree of role participation in the schools. Implications for practice and research are discussed at the end of the paper.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge.]

As a form of school-based management (SBM), the School Management Initiative (SMI) reform in Hong Kong provides a framework for more teacher participation in decision making. This exploratory study aimed to provide a preliminary investigation of the characteristics of participative decision making in schools after implementing the SMI scheme by using a 3-dimensional model and both quantitative and qualitative methods. There were two SMI schools, two principals, and 105 teachers involved in the study. The findings revealed a deprivation state in decision making regarding issues of managerial and technical domains at individual, group and school levels in the sampled schools, but teachers in general had shown a positive attitude towards the opportunities for more participation provided with the implementation of the SMI scheme. Also there were strong interactions between decision domains and levels of decision issues in predicting teacherparticipation discrepancies. The characteristics of participation patterns revealed are interesting and can provide useful information for facilitating implementation of the SMI scheme and teacher participation in decision making. The findings support the usefulness of the 3-dimensional model in studying the patterns of participation in a larger sample of SBM schools, if not all, in both local and international contexts.
[Copyright © 1997 The Chinese University of Hong Kong.]

This article reports the findings of a one-year longitudinal study that investigated the impact of group work on the development of students' critical thinking in Hong Kong secondary schools. It explores whether the participation of teachers in a group-based teaching intervention adapted from an earlier study conducted in the United Kingdom (UK) facilitated students' use of critical arguments in Liberal Studies lessons. In addition to examining students' critical thinking skills through test performance and the use of reasoned justifications in written class-work, the article also discusses the applicability to the Hong Kong context of the programme on which the intervention was based. In general, the results of the study indicate that group work is more effective than whole-class instruction in developing students' critical-thinking skills and that students make better progress in 'teacher-supported' than 'student self-directed' group work.
[Copyright of Cambridge Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2014.897685]

This article reports a case study that investigated the ways in which heads of subject departments managed the development and application of new assessment strategies in one secondary school in Hong Kong. The data of the study were gathered through participant observation and interviews with 12 teachers who participated in an assessment for learning project in the school. The results show variation in the leadership approaches adopted by the department heads, highlighting the dichotomy between managerial accountability and professional empowerment as their perceived mandate, and techno-instrumentalism and autonomous explorations as their visions for school-based renewal initiatives. The findings of the study highlight the subcultures within subject departments resulting from the different leadership styles enacted by the subject leaders, and point to the need for further investigations into the mediating roles of culture of subject disciplines and contextual variables that shape the dynamics of educational management.
[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/10.1080/13603124.2012.672654]