Since the mid-1990s, teacher professional community has achieved increasing influence as a strategy for facilitating productive change in schools. This study investigates the impact of principal quality and leadership on the development of teacher professional community in Hong Kong primary schools. More specifically, we examine the means by which principal quality, leadership, and organizational trust impact the strength of teacher professional community. Using survey data from 32 Hong Kong primary schools, we found that principals are crucial for the development of teacher professional community. Implications of the major finding are discussed in terms of research, policy, and practice.
[Copyright of Leadership & Policy in Schools is the property of Taylor & Francis. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2014.901396]

The fields of gender and educational leadership have been enriched recently by analyses of national case studies from non-western contexts. By contextualising women's career development, these studies highlight the importance of including experiences other than those generated from Anglo-American-Australian contexts, thus broadening our knowledge base for more nuanced theorisation in the field. This paper contributes a close examination of the career histories of eight female primary school principals in Hong Kong. Our analyses identify a range of facilitators, including the expansion of promotion opportunities, strong values placed on education and training, professional encouragement and support and help in relieving family responsibilities. Valuable these factors may be, but we argue that they are incidental, informal, familial and individual, and incur the costs of burn-out and guilt. The discussion not only underlines the significance of case study and cultural and contextual specificities, it also provides a nuanced understanding of Chinese patriarchy.
[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/10.1080/03057925.2014.884919]

Over the past 30 years, school principals have been exhorted to articulate a clear vision as a key tool for stimulating the improvement of teaching and learning in their schools. Over the past decade, as school systems have sought to distribute leadership more broadly within schools, the same imperative has applied to middle-level leaders. Indeed, a key assumption underlying the move towards sharing leadership responsibilities more broadly has been the belief that this would strengthen collective efforts and reduce the gap between goals and outcomes. Yet, to date, there have relatively few investigations of the extent to which middle-level leaders are contributing to school improvement efforts. This study sought to understand how shared vision within school management teams (SMTs) impacts teacher commitment and teacher support for students through school alignment and coherence. Dyad survey data were collected from 411 SMT members and 559 teachers at 32 primary schools in Hong Kong. Results indicated that shared vision in SMTs is positively related to teachers' perception of school alignment and coherence, teachers' commitment and teacher support to students. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2014.938039]

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]