This article examines the politics of school-based management (SBM) in Hong Kong, with a specific focus on the conflicts between the state and three Christian churches (Catholic, Anglican, and Methodist) running state-funded religious schools. Although the state based its advocacy for SBM on neoliberally driven ideas of participation, transparency, and accountability, religious groups expressed worry about the loss of control over schools as an institution of value transmission anchored in religious beliefs. This article uses the SBM controversy as a case study to advance geographical debates on religious schools and argues that neoliberalism forms a necessary lens through which to examine the state-religion relations concerning religious schools. It offers an analytical framework that emphasizes the mutually constitutive relationship between religious schools and state building. It lends evidence to this argument by situating religious schools in the context of neoliberalization of education policies and arguing that faith-based sensibilities create new vectors of resistance to neoliberalism as a distinctive secular formation. The empirical analyses address three questions. First, we develop a detailed analysis of the discourses and rationalities upheld by the Hong Kong government and the churches. Second, we consider interactions and exchanges between the state and the churches, focusing on the assertions, negotiations, and concessions that both needed to make in a prolonged struggle over the decision-making process. Third, we reflect briefly on the aftermath of the passing of SBM to situate the churches' concerns in a broader context of neoliberal education policy.
[Copyright of Annals of the American Association of Geographers is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd.]

This study examines the development of education and the curriculum for children with mental handicap in Hong Kong, the influence of the Target Oriented Curriculum (TOC) reform on the development of the curriculum for these children and its implementation in a special school over a period of two years. Three research strategies were used: historiography, naturalistic evaluation and a case study. Data was gathered by means of document collection, interviewing and observation, and analysed by the method of constant comparison. The findings are considered in the light of political, technological and cultural factors in the developments of education and curriculum for children with mental handicap, in the introduction of the TOC to these children, and in the school personnel's interpretation and views towards its implementation. The extent of implementation of the TOC in the case study school was examined with regards to changing practices in materials, teaching approaches and teachers' beliefs. Five key themes emerged from the study: the extent of TOC implementation at school and classroom levels, the Education Department's commitment towards the education of children with mental handicap, whether curriculum reform was truly considered necessary, the ethos of teaching and the culture of special education/schools. It was concluded that the implementation of the TOC for children with mental handicap was a poor example of effective change, given the problematic nature of the reform, in particular the inadequate management of the change process. It was also evident that this reform repeated many past failures, making long term success of the TOC in special schools somewhat doubtful.

This thesis presents three research studies on fundamental movement skills (FMS). The thesis aims to provide insight into FMS teaching and learning in primary school physical education (PE) and to examine the effectiveness of a school-based intervention that can improve FMS proficiency among primary school children in Hong Kong. The first study (Chapter 2) examined the relationships between FMS, perceived physical competence, perceived movement skill competence, enjoyment, and physical activity (PA) among primary school children in Hong Kong. The differences among these variables in terms of gender and grade level were addressed, as well as FMS acquisition and mastery levels among primary school children from grades one to six were reported. Their results revealed that locomotor skill competence had an indirect effect on self-reported PA through perceived physical competence and enjoyment after adjustment for age, gender, and body mass index. Overall, children exhibited low levels of FMS proficiency and moderate-to-vigorous PA. Students from higher grade levels, particularly girls, had lower levels of perceived physical competence, movement skill competence, and enjoyment as compared with younger students. The second study (Chapter 3) examined the current FMS teaching practice in primary school PE. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach to explore the views of teachers and students on their experiences of PE for FMS development and on the motivational climate in PE. The quantitative data demonstrated that students' active time during FMS class was low. Teachers spent a large amount of time on instructions and management but spent a small amount of time to engage the students in movement skill activities and games. Thus, students were prevented from remaining physically active during FMS practice throughout the lessons. The interviews with the students also indicate that the PE lessons offered are not effective enough to provide a broad range of game-related movement

This paper provides a brief overview of current educational evaluation measures and related issues in Hong Kong. The foci of measures for discussion are quality assurance mechanisms especially school self-evaluation (SSE) and external school review (ESR), and Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA). Three questions are posed for discussion: (a) How can we promote coherence among educational reform (highlighting students' whole-person development) and educational supervision and evaluation policies (stressing academic performances) in both rhetoric and practice (b) How can we promote a systematic linkage between centralized systems (ESR, SSE, BCA/TSA) and localized systems (teacher evaluation) so as to drive school improvement/effectiveness and teacher development/effectiveness (c) How can we help relieve teachers' workload and anxieties linked with educational evaluation and foster a shared community of educational evaluation among government agencies, SSB/SMC/IMC and teachers. Copyright © 2009 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Originally, the capitalist society in Hong Kong under communism is exceptional, but the “one country, two system” formula was a makeshift stratagem by the Communist Chinese government. The twenty years of history witnessed the tension of ruling and policy implementation. Education policy in political conflicts is, of course, the other arena in the Hong Kong context which reveals competitions, controversies and struggles among the cultural hegemonic engineering. This paper can contribute to enigmatic understanding and interpretation of generating educational reform and implementing education policy in this twenty years history of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
[Copyright © 2017 Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan.]

Aims: This paper was intended to explore the leadership practices of principals for knowledge management (KM) in the school context, and the influence of KM on the strategic planning (SP) capacity of school organizations to provide quality education for effectively coping with the challenges from education reforms. Methodology: A single-case study was conducted in a secondary school in Hong Kong. The school participated in a two-year QEF project for applying KM concepts and mechanism. In-depth interviews were conducted with the school principal, middle managers, and front-line teachers to investigate the leadership practices of the principal to implement KM in the school, and the influence of KM on the school's SP capacity for providing quality education. Results: Setting school direction for KM, developing teachers' skills and awareness for KM, creating supporting conditions and infrastructures for KM, aligning KM with the school's teaching and learning process, and building external coalitions for KM were found as the principal leadership practices for school KM. These practices could support the school in adopting the codification and personalization KM strategies and facilitate the acquisition, storage, and sharing of knowledge in the school. KM could help the school to effectively acquire, store, and share the knowledge for strategic analysis, choice, and implementation in the SP process, improving the school's SP capacity for providing quality education. Conclusion: Principal leadership has significant effect on the successful implementation of KM in the school context, which in turn plays an essential role on the school's SP capacity for providing quality education.

In response to the emerging challenges in the 21st century, there have been numerous education reforms worldwide in the last two decades. From the case of Hong Kong, this speech aims to address the key features and trends of education reform phenomenon commonly happening in different parts of the world. It will help international educators, policy-makers, researchers and change agents to understand the complicated dynamics and issues involved in the formulation and implementation of systemic reform, including (1) conflicts and diversities among stakeholders, (2) constraints with limited resources for reform initiatives, (3) knowledge poverty and ignorance in practice of reforms at different levels, (4) conflicts and time competitions among a wide range of parallel changes, and (5) paradigmatic gaps in planning and implementing reforms. Without addressing these issues, many education reforms with good intentions finally failed in “reform syndromes” and “bottle necks” in the last decades. This speech will draw global implications from the local lessons for future research and policy development on education reforms.

To maintain one's competitiveness edge in a global sense, we have observed a wide spread drive in various economies on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education at different levels of education. The emphasis on STEM education originates in the US back in the middle of last century, since then tremendous input of resources and efforts have been put into STEM education for its development and implementation. The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region highlighted Hong Kong's commitment to STEM education in his three successive Policy Address in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Echoing this high level commitment were the reports on STEM education published by the Education Bureau of the HKSAR Government and the Academy of Sciences of Hong Kong. Given these, there is still a wide spectrum of views as to the “What” and “How” of STEM education among stakeholders. While hero cases of STEM education and learning resources have sprung up in the past few years, we yet have to see sufficient research evidence to shed lights on the ways to scale up the initiative. This speech will attempt to reflect on the global and local lessons on STEM education.

教育局於 2008/09 學年起開設高級小學學位教師職級，為小學副校長，其職責是要協助校長處理下列四方面工作：課程發展與管理，學與教及學生評估；全校參與的關顧輔導與學生支援；人力資源管理；學校管理、評估及發展。自職位設立後，本地學者和專業團體對副校長的專業成長有更多的關注和研究，基於早年研究發現人力管理是小學副校長常擔當的職責之一；香港初等教育研究學會其後進行小學副校長人事管理的調查，就副校長的職責、人事管理困難和持續發展需要作深入研究。此文將結合該調查數據和文獻資料，分析和討論香港小學副校長在人事管理的專業發展需要，並就相關在職培訓作出建議。