This pilot study is to examine whether it is valuable to implement jazz choral practice in Hong Kong primary school setting. The findings can serve as a reference to explore the possibilities of promoting jazz education in Asian countries or in China. The participants were 70 public primary school students from grade 2 to 5 in Hong Kong. All participants were asked to sing jazz warm up exercises written by Kirby Shaw in their choral rehearsals. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Findings were presented from two perspectives - student perspective and observer perspective - in this study. After rehearsals, students were asked to complete a questionnaire related to the response in singing jazz music. Video recording and field notes were captured to observe the behaviour and expression of the participants. Six dimensions of contents were observed during the rehearsal including physical actions, verbal behaviour, expressive behaviour, spatial relations, temporal patterns and verbal records. The results have indicated that it is beneficial to use Jazz warm up exercises in the traditional choral practice in Hong Kong primary school setting.
[Copyright of Music Education Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2013.788142]

The Hospital Authority employs over 60,000 staff and manages 41 public hospitals and institutions, 47 specialist outpatient clinics and 74 general outpatient clinics throughout Hong Kong. It received HK$41.14 billion (L3.475 billion) of funding from the government in the year 2012 to 2013, which represented 92% of its funding income (Census & Statistics Department, 2013). This public healthcare system uses 3% of the Hong Kong gross domestic product (GDP) to provide 88% of inpatient services and 28% outpatient services locally, while the private sector provides only 12% of inpatient services and 72% of outpatient services with 2.3% of GDP. There is a heavy reliance on the public sector to provide healthcare to most of the patients requiring more intensive hospitalization. Hong Kong currently only has about 280 specialists in psychiatry serving a population of over 7 million people, of whom 90 work in the private sector. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Mental Health Atlas 2011 country profiles (WHO, 2011), the number of psychiatrists per 100,000 population is 4.39, compared to 12.76 in Australia, 10.1 in Japan, 5.12 in Korea, and 2.81 in Singapore. There is a shortage of psychiatrists, especially in the public mental health sector, which urgently needs to be tackled. This article looks at the current trend in psychiatry teaching and recruitment from medical school and the training scheme provided by the Hong Kong College of Psychiatrists.
[Copyright of International Review of Psychiatry is the property of Informa Healthcare. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/09540261.2013.816656]

This paper attempts to identify the leadership practices and qualities of school principals engaged in implementing a curriculum reform in Hong Kong. Based on interview data of school principals, this paper shows that the types of instructional leadership practices that school principals adopt and the contextual conditions in which these practices occur are key factors explaining the differential effectiveness of implementation efforts. Six efficacious instructional leadership practices and two contextual conditions critical to their development were identified. This paper reconceptualises instructional leadership as a collective and transformational endeavour, functioning in communities of practice to support school development at different levels.
[Copyright of School Leadership and Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2013.813459]

Outcome-based education (OBE) is a current initiative in Hong Kong universities, with widespread backing by governments and standards bodies. However, study of students' perceptions of OBE and validation of understanding these perceptions are lacking. This paper reports on the validation of an OBE-specific instrument and resulting preliminary findings. Instrument responses (n = 89) were analysed using Rasch and exploratory/confirmatory factor analyses. Both approaches identified two dimensions (i.e. evaluation and comparison). Challenges and modifications to the instrument items and their relationships to constructs are discussed. Preliminary findings suggest students did not perceive significant differences between OBE and traditionally organised courses. Lack of explicit discussion of OBE with the students may have denied students the ability to make fully informed evaluations of OBE innovations. Implications for instrument validation and evaluation of initiatives in an OBE context are discussed as is the broader issue of transparency in teacher education curriculum design and implementation.
[Copyright of Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2013.787392]