Teachers’ attitudes towards parental involvement play an important role in the ways they approach children’s families. This study examined Hong Kong pre-service early childhood teachers’ attitudes towards different types of parental involvement strategies and investigated whether these attitudes were related to the quality of relationships within their own family. Data were collected from 163 Hong Kong pre-service early childhood teachers via questionnaire. Results showed that engaging families in school decisions was perceived as the least important and feasible. The pre-service teachers also felt least confident in implementing it. There were, however, discrepancies in the perceived levels of importance, feasibility and confidence towards other types of parental involvement strategies. The levels of cohesion and expressiveness in pre-service teachers’ own families were positively related to their attitudes towards some types of parental involvement strategies. These findings suggest that teacher educators should take pre-service teachers’ family experiences into consideration when preparing them to work with children’s families. Copyright © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This study aimed to explore the principals’ perspectives in terms of their understanding, support and expectation towards programming education among primary schools in Hong Kong. 147 primary school principals (30.2%) responded to the survey. The results indicated that all principals have positive perspectives towards programming education in all three aspects. Their major concern was the competency of teachers in teaching programming. They suggested that more teacher development courses should be provided to address this problem. Copyright © 2019 Central China Normal University.

Home-school collaboration can bring numerous benefits to children, teachers and families. One of the major responsibilities of early childhood teachers nowadays, therefore, is to collaborate with families and involve them in their children’s education. However, not all pre-service teachers demonstrate high levels of willingness and readiness to do so. The present study aims to identify the character strengths and parent-related perceptions associated with pre-service early childhood teachers’ positive attitudes towards collaboration with families and confidence in implementing home-school collaboration activities. A total of 250 pre-service early childhood teachers were recruited from a university in Hong Kong and surveyed. Results of hierarchical regression analysis showed that after controlling for the year of study in the teacher education programme (as a proxy of professional knowledge), pre-service teachers’ character strength of judgment, perception of parents’ responsibilities in children’s education and perception of parents’ trust towards kindergarten teachers were significant correlates of their attitudes towards collaboration with families. Meanwhile, pre-service teachers’ character strength of judgment, character strength of social intelligence, perception of parents’ parenting competence, perception of parents’ trust towards kindergarten teachers were significant correlates of their confidence in implementing home-school collaboration activities. These findings suggest that in order to better prepare pre-service teachers to collaborate with families, it is important for teacher educators to help them develop positive perceptions about parents, an attitude of openness to diverse perspectives, and the skills of responding to others’ feelings in caring ways in different social situations. Copyright © 2018 HKERA International Conference.

The outsourcing of education services has been widely adopted across international contexts as a ‘tested solution’ or panacea to meet various educational problems including school management, curriculum design, teaching and student discipline. Contracting third-party providers, it is argued, enhances organisational goals such as efficiency, quality and school improvement. However, the outsourcing of education services has also impacted on established notions concerning the boundaries around teachers’ work. This paper deploys the framework of discursive institutionalism to offer insight into how the idea of outsourcing has been activated and circulated by discursive communities in three diverse international settings. Despite its problem-solution logic, the institutionalisation of outsourcing creates its own problems, not least the undermining of teacher professionalism, the ‘businessification’ of schools and a diminishing of their educational mission. Copyright © 2019 British Association for International and Comparative Education.

This study aims at elaborating the reform policy effects on school leadership practices for quality educational development in the evolving hybrid of Western and Confucian cultures in Hong Kong. Why were education reforms and changes intensified in Hong Kong's education system in the post-1997 decades? How were these reform policies effectively implemented to bring about the changes in the school community? What insights into educational development can be drawn from the policy effects of school-based improvement on school leadership in the changing cultural context? The findings derived from the content analysis of the meanings of the articles selected by a systematic review approach show an urgent need for success in the political and cultural shift in alignment with the international trend of neoliberal-driven educational outcomes in the post-1997 period. School leadership was turned into collaborative whole-school participation in policy indigenising for improvement in a highly accountable context. These insights inspired us to conceptualise a framework of quality education development in policy borrowing/indigenising in school-based improvement. Copyright © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The education quality assurance policy and the high speed of knowledge expansion knowledge have impacted on and created challenges for school management. The nature of school management becomes more challenging, complex, analytic and data driven. Developing an innovative management approach to support schools to leverage knowledge from the existing organisational information and data resources to plan for improvement will provide practical help to school leaders and also contribute to the existing school management theories. This study aims to examine the effect of Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) four modes of knowledge conversion including socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation on enhancing strategic planning capacity of schools in Hong Kong, and to identify the critical success factors for institutionalizing the SECI knowledge creation mechanism in the Hong Kong school context. This study examines whether institutionalising the SECI mechanism in schools could enhance their strategic planning capacities. Experimental research design were adopted as the research strategy. A quantitative questionnaire survey were conducted to collect data from secondary schools in Hong Kong. Multilevel structural equation modelling were applied to examine the predictive effects of the mechanism on strategic planning capacity and to identify the school level and teacher level contextual factors for institutionalising the SECI mechanism. Results show that the externalization and combination processes support the planning, implementation and evaluation processes, and collaborative culture is identified as the critical success factor to facilitate the externalization and combination processes for creating knowledge for implementing the strategic plan. Nurturing a culture of systems thinking in the schools are critical to managing effective strategic planning processes. The identification of collaborative culture for institutionalizing the SECI mechanism in schools is