Research have repeatedly reported that principals influenced student achievement through leadership on building school capacity for improving teacher professionalism. For principals, enabling effective communication is one approach to build up school capacity and one basic competence to lead effectively. This study aimed to identify and assess effects of communication in the relationship between principal leadership and teacher professional learning in Hong Kong primary schools. Two questionnaires were combined to survey teacher perceptions of principal leadership and school capacity from a sample of 970 teachers from 32 local primary schools. Baron and Kenny’s (1986) four-step causal process for mediation analysis was employed, integrated with bootstrapping method. Significance and size of the mediating effect of communication were further tested. Next, mediating effects of communication between the seven core areas of principal leadership practices and teacher professional learning were examined and compared. The findings affirmed the mediated leadership structure. The implications are that, effective communication helps teachers come to understandings across differences and work together to shape the working environment and meet the targets of their professional learning. As resources providers and communicators, principals should lead adequately to ensure the key precondition of successful teacher professional learning – effective communication.

The importance of expanding the leadership capacity of schools as a means of supporting education reform has been recognized by school system globally over the past decade. This has Ied to an intensified focus on school-based management, teacher leadership, distributed leadership, and shared leadership as potentially efficacious approaches to achieving this goal. This has been the case as well in Hong Kong where the formal adoption of school based management over a decade ago has Ied to the use of ‘school management teams’ as a vehicle for leading schools. In this study, we examine how levels of cooperation and constructive controversy evidenced within school management teams (SMT) relate to a broader levels of collaboration among teachers. Dyad survey data was collected from SMT members and teachers at 32 primary schools in Hong Kong. Results of multilevel regression analysis indicated that cooperation among members in these SMTs was positively related to levels of teacher collaboration. Moreover, the use of constructive controversy within SMTs mediated the path and contributed additional variance explained to the level of school-wide teacher collaboration. These findings affirm that the leadership dynamics of School Management Teams in Hong Kong primary schools do appear to have a positive influence on potentially important school level conditions. Notably the findings are also consistent with findings from similar studies of senior management teams in private sector organizations in China. If substantiated in further studies, the results suggest that investments in building broader leadership capacity in Hong Kong’s schools are achieving some system-level goals.

Schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged contexts have gained increasing policy and research attentions in western countries (Muijs, Harris, Chapman, Stoll & Russ, 2004), but this still an under-researched area in Hong Kong. Previous local research on schools and principals that showed academic success (e.g., Darren, Walker & Ko, 2014) may overlook schools that may show strengths in non-academic areas. Mixing data and analysis from different research projects can enrich research findings in schools in similar challenging contexts but differed in areas of school improvement (medium of instruction vs career education). For example, this paper reports findings of two schools in the same catchment area, but in different academic bands (Band One vs Band Three). Comparing the current results with the conclusions on school improvement in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas reported by Muijs and colleagues (2004), we find that leaders in the two case schools tended to be more transformational than instructional and looked for strategies and approaches that might assist their schools. They would recruit from the existing staff, empower them to enrich existing work with new meanings in their contexts. For example, in the Band One school, the principal communicated their academic focus on English as a vision and mission for the school to achieve the EMI status that would allow them to use English as a medium of instruction for all subjects other than Chinese Language and Chinese History. In contrast, the principal of the Band Three school soon identified that their mission was to set up goal orientations for students at different year levels through career life planning. Both principals had made the school improvement sustainable by maintained the improvement with a strategic and operational focus that was compatible with the wider structural and cultural reform agendas. Evidence also indicated that the school improvement processes involved structural, functional and cultural

Civic education is a component of the school curriculum in most countries yet it is not always given a high priority compared to subjects such as Mathematics, Science and Language. Given the current climate of concern related to youth radicalization, the apparent attractiveness of radical solutions to social problems and the importance of adolescence as a key time for political socialization, new efforts should be made to make civic education a more central and more relevant part of the school experience. In particular, the role school leadership can play in developing more civically-oriented schools should be examined. Kennedy, Li & Chan (2014) and Li & Kennedy (2015) reported studies of the individual school and community influences on Hong Kong students’ civic knowledge and understanding. The results suggested that school could be differentiated by the extent to which students were encouraged to participate in school civic activities. School with high levels of student participation tended to have students with higher levels of civic knowledge. At the same time, resources in the community were also a significant influence on students’ civic learning. This result highlighted the importance of leadership in creating a culture of participation and suggested that ‘leading for civic learning’ should be a priority in responding to the current need for more relevant and meaningful civic education in schools. The purpose of this paper is to explore in greater depth what it means to adopt ‘leading for civic learning’ as a motif for student civic development. Implications will be drawn for classroom pedagogy, the school curriculum and school policies in order to show how schools might respond to the current climate of youth disaffection and alienation.

This paper examines the changing nature of principals’ work in the context of the global movement of education reform. This changing nature is not uncommon in different education systems across various societies. Case study was approach to unpack Hong Kong principals’ struggles posed by the changes in education policy and increasing student diversity in a Chinese context. Three research questions are addressed: (1) What challenges did the principals face at the time of the education reforms? (2) What was the major shift in the principals’ work in addressing the challenges? (3) How did the principals’ changing scope of work inspire new opportunities for their schools? Multiple qualitative data were collected including semi-structured interviews and documentary evidence such as school reports and school development plans. There was extensive change to the principals’ work due to the gap between the policy and practice of the education reforms in the past decade. Despite this change, they could identify new opportunities from the challenges that saved the schools from the threat of closure. The principals were also inspired to set out on new directions for their schools. The implications of the principals’ changing work for school improvement are also discussed.